These “Difficult” Decisions

I know that it’s a bit early for sweeping comments 2014 seems to be the year of a lack of female character creation options. Or, more specifically, the removal of female character creation options for the sake of the game’s “quality.” This not so pleasant instance in this year’s list of noteworthy gaming news first reared its head in the form of Ubisoft’s “women are too hard to animate” controversy that served as a flimsy excuse for why Assassin’s Creed Unity did not feature any female assassin options in its multi-character arsenal. What was already a bad situation – a lack of female playable characters despite customizable male options – was made infinitely worse by ridiculous and poorly thought out statements as to why it happened as well as a non-apology apology. At first this seemed like an isolated incident; something that was an embarrassing mistake or snafu on Ubisoft’s part but hopefully something other companies would learn from and never repeat. That is, until I learned that a nearly identical incident recently occurred with the release of WWE2K15, the latest installment of the WWE based wrestling simulator published by 2K Games.

Okay, so I’m a little late with this write-up. WWE2K15 was released to fairly poor reviews back in the end of October but just recently released on current gen consoles. Because of budget restrictions, a number of features were removed in this edition, one of which was the option to create original female wrestling characters in the wrestler customization and creation tool. For those who may have never played a WWE game, the wrestler creation tool is a staple and one of the main draws of the game. It not only allows players to fulfill wrestling fantasies for themselves, but gives them a chance to be creative and create fun crossovers. The absence of an option to create an original Diva – what WWE calls its female wrestling brand – was already a huge blow. And then there was the interview.

In an interview with Game Informer, Visual Concepts art director Lynell Jinks stated the following in reference of the decision to leave out Diva creation options:

“This decision was extremely difficult, but a necessary one, in order to deliver a more focused and polished game,” Jinks writes. “The primary reason we did not announce these changes earlier is due to the team working until the last minute to retain as many features as possible.”

Well, based on the reviews, this game isn’t something I’d exactly describe as “focused and polished,” but that’s another matter entirely. Although it does seem like more features other than Diva creation were also cut, these features – including customizable arenas – don’t have as much weight or significance behind their being cut. Much like female options being cut from Assassin’s Creed Unity, cutting female options entirely gives the impression that the presence of female characters is, to an extent, disposable. While you can play some of the established Divas in this edition, female players who might want to create a female wrestler wont get to partake in that kind of fulfillment fantasy that male players can. And with no seeming reduction in the level of customization available for male wrestlers, it seems like they couldn’t bother to relegate any resources the Divas’ way. This only further contributes to the idea that Divas aren’t of the same importance as their male counterparts and that female wrestling fans aren’t a large part of the WWE market/fandom.

WWE already doesn’t exactly treat its Divas with the most respect. Often relegated to love interest storylines involving their Superstars or catfight drama and generally appearing in only one match per episode, and a sometimes dull one at that (which is even frequently used as a “bathroom break”), this latest omittance is not only a blow to representation of female characters in games but also professional wrestling as well.