Ubisoft Raising the Bar with Unusual Difficultly Slider

The more I read about the changes Ubisoft has been making to South Park: The Fractured But Whole, the more I'm okay with them having pushed back the release date. At this point the game should have been in our hands in the first quarter of 2016. But given Ubisoft's tendency to push games out for cash grabs, this is a nice change of pace for the developer. So we've been patiently waiting for the game to come to life. Small video clips trickled out from time to time. It was at PAX West last year with another video, and everything looked great on screen.

In the recent months, Ubisoft has been steadily putting out more information about the game. The latest announcement yesterday is one of the most interesting, and very South Park-like, features we've ever seen.

Like most games on today's market, there is a difficultly slider. You can play the game on easy or hard mode, and variations in-between. But here's the kicker: the difficultly level changes your character's skin tone. Eurogamer was given an early copy of the game to review and show off the character customization. You've got the standard stuff. Facial hair. Make-up. But watch the video around the 5:40 mark. When you get to the difficulty screen you'll notice that the easy settings will turn your character Caucasian. As you move up on the scale, your skin will change to darker shades, eventually to Black/African American. During the process, Eric Cartman will explain the sliding scale of difficultly: "Don't worry, this doesn't affect combat. Just every other aspect of your whole life."

The difficulty level will also affect how a character receives money and how other PC's talk to him/her. 

Bold.

Later on when you select your gender, you'll go into a counseling session with Mr. Mackey. If you pick a non-male character (female, cisgender, or transgender), it'll update your Stick of Truth backstory and make your new character canon. The tone and approach of this is just as intriguing as the difficulty slider. I know this isn't the first game to introduce multi-gender characters, but from a big-box studio like Ubisoft, this is an amazing step forward.

So yes. The internet is flipping out about this newest feature. And most of the reactions have been positive. There will be the few naysayers who want to be a white character on the hardest setting, but the social commentary is appropriate for this game. It's part of the South Park ideology to tackle these type of issues head on and not give a flying flip about the response. It's also very much in line with the superhero/comic book saga, which The Fractured But Whole is focusing on. POC superheroes are few, and usually badly stereotyped. Being a POC hero in South Park could mirror the journey of a POC hero in a comic book - a difficult trek to reach the top, or even just to be noticed!

I'm anxious to see what else this game has in store for us. This feels like a game that I will be streaming a lot of, and holding discussions on.

How Important are Female Protagonists in Video Games?

Quantic Foundry, a consulting practices that focuses on analyzing games and gamers, created a survey to find out the not-so-direct answer.

Over the past few years, there has been a significant push-back from gamers to create more dynamic protagonists that are beyond the "single white male" trope that we've become accustomed to. We now have an annual review of E3 presentations, and their lack of inclusion of multiple character types in their "hero" wheel. The demographic for gamers has always been diverse. The average age for a gamer is around 35, not 18. But it's also been stuck with the notion that only young-adults, white men make up the majority of the audience. As such, games tend to skew their content to that demographic.

With more diverse individuals getting into gaming, how important is the protagonist when it comes to shaping the experience of the content? Do gamers respond differently to who is the hero based on their gender?

Quantic Foundry used survey data from 1,266 gamers ranging from casual to hardcore, and found that most men still don't care about female leading ladies. Across the board for women, casual, core, and hardcore all found that a female protagonist is extremely important. And as a hardcore female gamer, I agree. It's difficult to project ones-self into the world of the game when your only option is male. It also becomes a challenge to feel involved in the environment and the game discussions when your gender is not represented to some degree. Much like race or religion, when you see it absent or grossly misinterpreted in a game, you feel less compelled to be active in the narrative.

It also makes the story kind of dull when it's the same ol "hero" over and over again. The white middle-aged, single man with a scruff beard of 5 o'clock shadow, has been done. We've seen it so many times we don't find that story unique in any way. Because it's been done!

The games that have stood out this year have been because of their leading heroes and anti-heroes. Nier: Automata, Horizon: Zero Dawn, Gravity Rush 2, Little Nightmares are some of the leading games of 2017, for a banner year of stellar content. And none feature a white straight middle-aged male protagonist. They are women, people of color, and non-gendered creatures. This isn't to say that the stories in these games are more interesting due to gender and skin-tone. Rather, it opens up a wealth of opportunities to tell NEW stories.

Sadly, the survey also shows that the men who participated, in large, don't think that a female protagonist option is important at all. Casual gamers rank it at a 38% on the non-importance, which is the highest for that category. Hardcore gamers rank it at 32%, which ties with the "somewhat important" category - which is an interesting twist that I wasn't expecting. Core gamers also rank "somewhat important" as their highest at 28%. While the survey doesn't state race, I wonder if that plays a role in how some of these stats work out. I was expecting to see more hardcore male gamers rank "female protagonist options" in the not important at all. Instead it's an even split between not important and somewhat important.

Without the extra data, it's all speculation. But it'd be interesting to dive into and see if there's correlation between POC males and inclusion of more female characters in games.

I'm still arguing that we need more diversity in video games. Not as a woman, but as someone who gives a crap about the future of games. It's getting dull seeing the same stories told again and again. Let's add something new to the mix!