What if 'he' and 'she' were interchangeable in a game's story?

Comments made by Assassin's Creed Unity developers during E3 kicked off a conversation about the gender of playable video game characters, and one game writer recently pondered whether it would matter if a character's gender were simply made interchangeable.

In response to Ubisoft's statement that more than 8,000 animations would have to be redone in order for Assassin's Creed Unity to offer female avatars in its co-op mode, an animator who worked on Assassin's Creed 3 told Polygon that developers could just "replace a handful of animations" since male and female skeletons aren't usually very different — although he admitted that would be a "compromise in quality."

Sande Chen, a veteran game writer with credits including The Witcher, wrote in a blog post on Game Design Aspect of the Month last week that the aforementioned discussion reminded her of another thought experiment about characters' gender. What if developers weren't considering gender in the pre-production phase, or even during development, but instead were presented with a question about gender after a game was released?

Chen related the story of a developer of text-based romance games whose customers, after playing one of the studio's games, asked why the title didn't offer a same-sex romance option as in games such as Dragon Age 2. The company wondered if it could satisfy the customers simply by replacing the love interest's pronouns with those of the opposite gender — swapping out "he" for "she," or vice versa.

In Chen's opinion, that would not only undermine the story the developers were trying to tell, it would leave players feeling "cheated."

"I have played a Choose Your Own Adventure (CYOA) game that did something similar and I truly felt cheated because my choice of gender was as meaningless as the selection of eye color in the game," said Chen. "I understood that the author had very cleverly done this to avoid writing whole sets of branching narrative. Yet, I couldn't help but feel that the whole fun of choosing a female or male character in a romance game had been taken away from me."

The visual presentation of male and female avatars might be relatively fungible, if developers design a game that way from the start. But the way Chen sees it, an interactive story has to be written with unique relationships between characters of various genders. According to Chen, the studio ended up deciding not to make the gender pronouns interchangeable.

Source: Polygon

Titanfall gets 12 new achievements to boost your Gamerscore

Titanfall's fourth update brings with it 12 new achievements to help fatten up your Gamerscore.

Developer Respawn Entertainment released the update alongside its latest mode Marked for Death, mech decals and Titan Burn Cards.The new achievements, which offers players a total of 200 additional Gamerpoints, can be viewed below.

Polygon got a hands-on of the update's new mode during E3 which you can check out right here. At the time, Respawn Entertainment co-founder Vince Zampella told us that an Xbox 360 vernon of this update will release shortly after its launch on Xbox One and Windows PC, adding that updates for the 360 port will generally be delayed due to Bluepoint Games' efforts to integrate the patches.

• Blood Water: Kill 200 enemies on Runoff - 30G
• Runoff Connoisseur: Play every game mode on Runoff - 10G
• Side Pipe: Kill 25 enemies while wall running on Runoff - 20G
• Runoff Victor: Won a match on Runoff - 5G
• Swampland Connoisseur: Play every game mode on Swampland - 10G
• It's Safer Here: Don't touch the ground for 60 seconds on Swampland - 20G
• Tree Runner: Be airborne for 500 meters on Swampland - 30G
• Swampland Victor: Won a match on Swampland - 5G
• War Games Connoisseur: Play every game mod on War Games - 10G
• Faded: Killed 12 Pilots in a single match on War Games - 20G
• Super Faded: Killed 100 Pilots on War Games - 35G
• War Games Victor: Won a match on War Games - 5G

Source: Polygon

Rookie quarterback turns to Madden to prepare for NFL training camp

Teddy Bridgewater, drafted at the end of the first round by the NFL's Minnesota Vikings, has until July 25 before training camp officially begins. He's getting ready, ESPN reports, by importing the Vikings' playbook into Madden NFL 25 and using the video game to prepare for opposing defenses.
"It helps because you get one more rep than you had in practice, actual practice," he told ESPN, calling the plays "virtual reps."

"Any chance you get to take an extra rep or go the extra step, extra mile, it's going to be very beneficial transferring it to the field," he said.

At the University of Louisville, Bridgewater did the same thing with NCAA Football 14 — presumably with "himself" on the roster. (He could get a check somewhere north of $1,000 for his three appearances, as "QB#05" in that game, thanks to settlements EA Sports and the NCAA reached with current and former college players.)

Bridgewater is neither the first nor the only NFL figure to use Madden to prepare or credit it with his development. Margus Hunt, an Estonian and currently a second-year defensive end for the Cincinnati Bengals, said he taught himself how to play American football with Madden. And Raheem Morris, the former head coach of Tampa Bay (and currently an assistant with Washington) said he "majored in Madden" in college, saying it helped him develop his coaching philosophy today.

Madden NFL 15, with a renewed focus on defensive playability, arrives Aug. 26 for PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, Xbox 360 and Xbox One. For more, see Polygon's E3 preview.

Source: Polygon

Drive, Oldboy and Pacific Rim directors weigh in on Metal Gear Solid 5's latest trailer

Metal Gear Solid 5director Hideo Kojima is a self-professed cinephile — "70% of my body is made of movies," his Twitter profile says. For the latest Kojima-directed trailer for The Phantom Pain, he turned to famous film directors for feedback.

The trailer in question features scenes from the upcoming game set to Mike Oldfield's "Nuclear." Filmmakers like Guillermo del Toro, Nicolas Winding Refn and Park Chan-wook were not shy about heaping praise on Kojima's latest creation.

In a testimonial section on the Metal Gear Solid 5 website, Del Toro credits creator Hideo Kojima as a massive inspiration. Avi Arad, founder of Marvel Studios, credits the trailer as being full of "symbolism and philosophy that we come to expect from Mr. Kojima."

"For me, the sight of the Diamond Dogs and Snake putting the ashes on his face with multiple urns make me believe that a lot of history is going to be dealt with," he continued.

Refn compared Kojima's work to "the spirits of Dostoyevsky, Stanley Kubrick and Caravaggio."
"Using the art of gaming as his canvas, he boldly goes where no one has gone before," Refn said. "The trailers for Metal Gear Solid V, prove once again that Hideo Kojima is a master at portraying a wider and more complex view of human nature combined with breathtaking action sequences."

Oldboy director Park Chan-wook added that Kojima's work has attained the level of film quality.

"I have always been thinking that I want to see a film directed by Mr. Kojima, but after seeing the latest trailers for Metal Gear Solid 5, I realised I was wrong," Chan-wook said. "He has actually been making films in his own way already. Metal Gear Solid games are already films, the films of the future."

You can watch the trailer below. For more on Metal Gear Solid 5: The Phantom Pain, check out our in-depth preview from E3.

Source: Polygon