Since the announcement of Ubisoft’s next Assassin’s Creed game, Shadows, it has been at the center of a culture war. Most of the conversation has been carried out in intensely bad faith, focusing on the usual suspects’ hatred of any game that doesn’t center a straight white male character, but it’s also grown more complicated following a series of issues raised by Japanese audiences regarding promotional materials. Ubisoft has now released a lengthy statement via its social media.
It’s a somewhat ambiguous statement, in that it never actually says what it’s specifically addressing, nor what it’s potentially apologizing for. It’s also extremely obviously responding to arguments made by the anti-DEI hordes, while presenting itself as a direct communication with Japanese players alone.
Ubisoft has previously effectively shot down such bad faith responses, especially with regards to the comments made by Elon Musk, so it is peculiar to see the publisher bringing these subjects up again.
However, the main controversy that’s been raised focuses on the use of a modern-day reenactment group’s logo in marketing materials. Concept art on Ubisoft’s site showed a flag used by Sekigahara Teppo-tai, an infantryman reenactment group, but the publisher had not sought permission to use it.
At the time of the issue, the group’s “cannon chief” contacted Ubisoft, which responded by removing the piece of art from its site and apologizing. Sekigahara Teppo-tai were still not happy, given their flag will also appear in the game’s collector’s edition’s art book and it’s too late for Ubisoft to stop that. At the time, Ubisoft tweeted (in Japanese),
The art in question will not be used or distributed any further beyond this date, except for being included in the artbook in the Collector’s Edition. We deeply apologize for this matter.
However, so primed are those who believe they are saving gaming from the evil poison of progressive pleasantness, that any legitimate fault by Assassin’s Creed Shadows is leapt upon and blown up to the most enormous scale. It’s this that Ubisoft’s statement seems to be addressing.
Today’s statement, released in both English and Japanese, feels fairly defensive. It’s clear that Ubisoft’s development teams went into this game with a huge desire to recreate a period of Japanese history as accurately and respectfully as they could, much as they’ve approached other historical periods, but also wanted to do something off-piste and explore the (entirely real) person Yasuke, a black samurai. (His contested samurai status is, of course, fully dismissed by those acting as if they’ve just completed their post-doc in Japanese history, rather than read a Wikipedia entry).
Yet, it’s also a video game, not a documentary series on PBS. People can’t actually dive off tall, tall towers into a hay cart and not break all their bones, for instance. Nor can they, apparently, re-enter the past by using magic DNA machines. Despite this, the studio wants to make clear it’s not attempting reality. In the statement Ubisoft says,
…our intention has never been to present any of our Assassin’s Creed games, including Assassin’s Creed Shadows, as factual representations of history, or historical characters.
It’s such a “well, duh” point, but it’s one that unfortunately seems to need making in plain text amidst the ludicrous brouhaha that surrounds the game. So many bad actors are determined to win some imagined battle because one of the main characters is Black (it’s important to note the other main character is a Japanese woman).
However, the statement goes on to imply that other—entirely unmentioned—issues have been raised by Japanese players, and that the company is going to “continue our efforts” to respond to “constructive criticism.” “All game footage presented so far,” they say, “is in development and the game will keep evolving until launch.” It’s frustrating that these issues aren’t identified.
The most telling aspect of the response that directly addresses those who continue in the delusion that external companies are controlling the “woke” content of games, reads,
We also want to clarify that while we have been consulting with many people throughout the development process, they are in no way responsible for the decisions that are taken by the creative teams in the interests of gameplay and entertainment.
It goes on to add the publisher’s wish that everyone stop harassing such groups.
The final part of the statement reads:
The representation of Yasuke in our game is an illustration of [creative license]. His unique and mysterious life made him an ideal candidate to tell an Assassin’s Creed story with the setting of Feudal Japan as a backdrop.
While Yasuke is depicted as a samurai in Assassin’s Creed Shadows, we acknowledge that this is a matter of debate and discussion. We have woven carefully into our narrative and with our other lead character, the Japanese shinobi Naoe, who is equally important in the game, our dual protagonists provide players with different gameplay styles.
Lots of people want to see themselves represented as the main character of a video game. There are rather a lot of games that feature white men in this role, and indeed a fair few with Japanese men as the lead. This one, as it happens, features a Black dude and a Japanese woman. People can choose to buy the game or not based on this knowledge. It perhaps doesn’t help when publishers give oxygen to those who fail to grasp this simple concept by issuing forelock-tugging statements that attempt to address the bad-faith arguments such people raise.
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