Right now, the Assassin’s Creed Sisterhood is working with Discord to raise funds for BCRF, or the Breast Cancer Research Foundation. Several community members are involved, helping to reach the goal of $50,000. Discord itself will be matching all raised funds up to $60,000, but perhaps the best part of such an event is how several people are involved (and not just the Sisterhood): it’s an all around effort, one which the Assassin’s Creed Sisterhood seems proud to be part of, and a powerful display of community.
Ever since the Assassin’s Creed Sisterhood was founded, it has had the expressed goal of “highlight[ing] and appreciat[ing] the women of AC, in the games, the dev teams, and community.” Indeed, a simple search through the tag on Twitter shows how much of this is the case, with the current work with Discord just being a recent example of the community’s good work, but it’s a beautiful thing with a dark past. As many know, the Assassin’s Creed franchise has always been dominated by male characters, and the summer of 2020 revealed the worst of it: Alexios only existing because the CCO wouldn’t allow Kassandra to be the sole character, Aya’s role being diminished from main character to side character, Elise potentially being playable but being denied that fact, and more.
However, this is not a problem that is unique to Ubisoft but one rampant throughout the game industry. So, when Game Rant sat down with Assassin’s Creed Sisterhood founder Kulpreet Virdi, we discussed everything from AC Valhalla‘s marketing and the Eivor Funko Pop to how the industry moves forward, but this idea that representation and inclusion is a force for good that extends well beyond Ubisoft was present throughout the conversation. To move forward, though, requires knowing where one is at.
As we discussed the overbearing presence of male Eivor to the underplayed and genuine Eivor Varinsdottir, it was in the context of there being no balance. Male Eivor got all the trailers and reveals; female Eivor got one slightly-modified-from-male-Eivor trailer. Male Eivor appears on the front of the case and in most major promotions, but he’s not the option player see if they choose the canon ‘Let the Animus Decide’ option. Merchandise, from T-Shirts to Funko Pops, lean heavily toward the male character. In short, there’s no proper balance between two characters who should have equal presence in the game. On this, Virdi said,
Exactly. It’s that balance, and I just feel like [Ubisoft] haven’t got that yet, but there is that opportunity to improve. There’s always an opportunity to improve. They just need to listen to that. Just look at Mass Effect. The recent trailer had some FemShep in it, and I mean, Mass Effect fans have always been championing her having more time in the marketing and having her front and center more often. A lot of the time, FemShep is their Shep. It’s not the other way around, and they want to be seen and heard and represented. And that’s the goal, the end of all of this is better representation.
Better representation for anyone and everyone with no barrier to entry or gatekeeping is a basic right. After all, fans who boot up any Assassin’s Creed game since 2015 will see a promise, not a disclaimer but a promise: “Inspired by historical events and characters, this work of fiction was designed, developed, and produced by a multi-curtal team of of various beliefs, sexual orientations, and gender identities.” However, before the aforementioned CCO ‘resigned’ from Ubisoft in 2020, who had the concentrated power to cut or change any project, it doesn’t seem likely that the expression of these faiths were as important as his narrative: “Women don’t sell.”
In terms of giving every character their due, in terms of balancing narrative, Virdi and Game Rant discussed everything from going back to a solo character game to making sure that, in terms of choice (which seems fated to appear in all future Assassin’s Creed games), both characters are fairly represented: in-game, trailers and marketing, merchandise, all of it. But in terms of the bigger picture, we asked about improvements AAA studios could make for purposes of better representation and inclusion:
I would just like to see more authentic representation for women and minorities, tell more diverse stories, explore the narrative within that. Only positivity can come out of that; there would be no negativity from exploring and telling these more diverse stories. Keep in mind that your playerbase is also very diverse. Think about the people who are playing your games and who are buying your games too. Representation is just so important, and it’s different for everybody. It’s very subjective, like if I play a game and I feel seen from the character, you might not feel the same way. You don’t feel represented, but I do.
The ability to be seen and be heard is, yet again, a basic right. Whether it’s in someone’s favorite music, in someone’s favorite comic book characters, or in someone’s everyday life, being seen and being heard is important. And, within the gaming industry, there is no balance in who is seen and heard. For example, one common argument proposed against the idea of games having strong woman leads…are game with strong woman leads. The Last of Us, Horizon Zero Dawn, and all of these very popular games with female leads are often used in arguments, not in celebration for what they achieved, but as a consolation prizes to dissuade other games from following their leads. We asked Virdi what she thinks about comments like these, to which she said,
You know, if you look at how many games there are with male protagonists and the number of games with a sole female protagonist, it just outweighs them. And it’s always the same games that are brought to light like Bayonetta, Nier: Automata, Lara Craft, Horizon Zero Dawn, or The Last of Us. But you can almost count on your fingers as to how many of those games there are, whereas there’s hundreds of games with male protagonists. And that how’s I respond to people, ‘okay, great, but you’re telling me the same handful of games with female protagonists.’ And that’s the problem, the fact there’s only a handful is the problem. And I feel like they don’t understand, it’s like ‘you’re already represented. You’ve got these four games, well it’s more than four, but you’ve got these games and you shouldn’t be asking for more.’ I feel like that’s quite offensive. A lot of women play games. We need more representation and diversity going forward, not just saying, ‘you’ve had these, now shut up.’
Study after study has proven Virdi right: women make up a significant portion of gamers. Responses that point to these aforementioned games as arguments against more representation in video games or that “Candy Crush doesn’t count” are not good arguments in nature—one can argue that these are kneejerk reactions to resist change and perpetuate an age-old idea that “video games are for boys.” Yet, video games were initially marketed toward whole families, while popularity among women led to games like Ms. Pac-Man. The choice to ever market them to boys was one made for survival, not due to any real demographic preference.
It’s not a cultural belief that “video games are for boys,” it was a marketing tactic that excluded a demographic because it had to in order to survive. It got lucky, as with many things in the game industry, it was all about luck. Of course, this begs a big question: It is not the 1980s anymore, the gaming market is not struggling but thriving, and the world has thousands of video games—why does the industry cling to a lost cause that study after study prove wrong, and community after community asks, “Can we please be seen, be validated, be justified in the eyes of something we love?” When asked how the industry could break from this mentality, Virdi responded,
I think they probably just need to listen, and it’s as easy as that. They just need to listen to their fandoms, to people who are actively saying to them, ‘things have changed.’ I guess from their perspective they may think, ‘oh well, is it a business risk to put a sole female protagonist when I know my game with a male protagonist will sell well?’ And if that’s your fear, then look at games like The Last of Us 2, look at the games that have done well like Tomb Raider, as they’re all really good games in their own right, and they all have really amazing female leads. And they do sell well. So this argument that ‘women don’t sell,’ you need to stop that and start listening to your consumer base. What’s going to happen is they’ll go to and buy someone else’s game where they do feel represented. You might lose people from your inaction if not taking on board the feedback people are giving you.
The ability to be seen and be heard is, yet and yet again, a basic right.
This whole issue, which isn’t even an issue, representation and inclusion is so important in any industry. It’s not just the games industry. I mean, I come from a law background and we’ve got a lot of work to do as an industry. We are getting better, we’re addressing it, and I think this [idea of representation and inclusion] is just one that stretches outside the industry. You can’t just look at it in just the games industry. Changes do need to be made in the industry, it’s just important to everyone, and it’s just an issue which matters to so many people.
I know so many people who come back to my tweets and say, ‘I just want a good game and I don’t care about representation,’ but to some people, it really does matter. For all of their lives, they might have been playing something where they never feel like they are represented, and it again goes back to that point that when you do feel seen, when you do feel heard, that feeling…you can’t compare to it. You really can’t. I always use the example of seeing a Sikh man in Syndicate. I’ve never seen a video game before, one that I’ve played, where you’ve seen a Sikh man. Yes, it was a man, but it was a man with a turban and I felt seen from that. I’ll never forget that, I’ll never forget that feeling, and if we get more people feeling that, it’s only a good thing. It would be something that would be so positive to so many publishers and developers if they get people feeling that way, feeling seen, and I guess it’s that…narrative that some people don’t care about representation, but they need to understand that people do. They can’t just ignore it. If you don’t care, fine, that’s your opinion. But other people really do care and it matters to them, so the conversation still has to be had.
There is still conversation to be had.
Assassin’s Creed Valhalla is available now for PC, PS4, PS5, Stadia, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X.
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