It’s nice to think we have moved on from everyday sexism in gaming, action titles such as Control and Horizon Zero Dawn now regularly feature ladies as the protagonist and no one bats an eyelid. Multiplayer games include female characters and Cyberpunk 2077 is going one step further by not even assigning a binary sex to your avatar.
Of course there are still sewer dwellers who bitch about this sort of thing but thankfully they are in the minority. However, these progressive attitudes have yet to reach the shores of Russia where Battlestate Games are making the RPG MMO Escape from Tarkov. The game is set in the present day but does not allow you to play as a female. Battlestate have, amazingly, used the same excuse Ubisoft tried to fob everyone off with six years ago when they were asked when there were no playable women in the Assassin’s Creed multiplayer mode.
But there will be no playable female characters because of game lore and more importantly – the huge amount of work needed with animations, gear fitting etc#EscapefromTarkov
— Battlestate Games (@bstategames) January 6, 2020
Ladies are too hard to animate! That may come somewhat of a surprise to you all considering we know that other developers, notably those in Japan, have ‘perfected’ animating one lady specific body part.
(Cut to RuPaul looking directly to the camera and saying “Hashtag Improbable Boobs”)
They have also taken a leaf out of Kojima’s big book of sexism and used the excuse that the story won’t allow for ladies. This is despite them writing the story and quite able to change to include ladies whenever they want.
Battlestate’s tweet has been quickly countered by a female character artist.
Hello, I am a character artist with over 20 years experience and several game of the years under her belt.
If someone says "we didn't add girls because it costs too much" punch them in the head with their own asshole, because it actually doesn't.
— Delaney King?️? (@delaneykingrox) January 6, 2020
A previous interview has revealed that Battlestate’s refusal to add women due to animation limitations is not the real reason. Here’s WCCFTech talking with the developer from back in 2016.
Did you consider having female characters playable?
We considered that, but we came to the conclusion that women are not allowed to be in the war.
But these days, women are in the military…
I can agree with you and we discussed it for a very long time, but we came to the conclusion that women can’t handle that amount of stress. There’s only place for hardened men in this place.
Personally I have no problem being surrounded by hardened men. Fnar fnar.
They have since commented on the interview, “Regarding the 3 years old article with points about women in EFT,” they Tweeted. “The answers were done by one, not a key BSG employee which probably were misinterpreted and as a result didn’t reflect the official position of the company, that we always respected women in wars and military women.”
Battlestate have also been accused of abusing YouTube’s DMCA policy to remove videos that criticised their game, or used “negative hype”.
“We wanted to show that negative hype and misinformation cannot remain without any punishment. The game and this community do not deserve that.” they said in a statement.
Escape from Tarkov will be available from all good gammon suppliers as soon as it’s out of beta.
