Because this entire episode has convinced me that gamers are really, really stupid I’m going to use very small sentences and lots of pictures.
Assassin’s Creed is a really fun game.
Assassin’s Creed was made by a fairly large group of people.
As you can see from the last picture, one of them, the producer as it turns out, is a fairly attractive, and well-spoken young woman.
Ubisoft marketing took advantage of one of the team members being well-spoken and photogenic. The gaming press reacted…
…well… let’s just say restraining orders may be needed.
In fact, you might wonder if Jade Raymond’s Assassin’s Creed was an actual game, or if the entire purpose of creating a next-generation free-form adventure game set in the Crusades was simply an excuse to post pictures of pretty girls. The Internet is apparently short of these.
Hey, look, more!
This is from the unofficial Jade Raymond fan site. I wonder if my producer will ever get an unofficial fan site. Since he’s not very pretty, probably not.
But this is all just harmless fun, right? Right? Surely we can take the genre-bending spectacle of an actual gee-she’s-purty she-smells-nice can-I-see-the-rabbits-george woman in a significant game development role and not make something awful from it?
Yeah, whatever. This is the Internet. We break everything.
That vile little comic (trust me, it gets a lot more offensive) is now famous because Ubisoft is trying to sue it out of existence. Apparently they only like creepy Jade Raymond fanservice if it’s happy creepy fanservice. Or if it’s done by real game journalists.
By the way, Assassin’s Creed is really fun. For some reason I thought I should bring that up again. You know, in case seeing pictures of a real girl makes you forget. Apparently this is a problem many people have.
Other commentary on how we can’t have nice people (warning: both are apparently written by real girls and as has been shown, we just can’t handle this):
Game Girl Advance
Feministe
The always readable Sanya Weathers (who is also a real girl, but moreover also can and will kick your ass) has well-thought-out points as well.
#1 by Union on November 21st, 2007
Yet another example than comics and Islam should never mix.
#2 by Sutro on November 21st, 2007
Any claim that this, categorically, is -not- a potential publicity stunt by Jade/UbiSoft is a sexism in and of itself. It’s loaded with the inference that women can’t be equally as manipulative of the media as men.
Jade’s getting all sorts of e-sympathy now for being the ‘victim’ of a cruel Internet cartoon. It’s a phenomenon that absolutely wouldn’t have happened with a male ‘victim’ of a cruel Internet cartoon, and in fact if C&D letters would have been sent on on his behalf, many would already be calling the media manipulation card. Or that he’s actually Derek Smart in disguise.
Note that I’m not saying that Jade IS manipulating things in this fashion, I’m just saying that trundling blindly along the victim primrose path is 1.) a sexist attitude and 2.) possibly wrong.
I mean, there’s all sorts of confounds against the legal validity of even suing the cartoonist that even a first-year law student would know. If presidents of 1-2k enrollment colleges are considered “public figures” for the purposes of adjudicating if a campus newspaper cartoon is appropriate for the public figure satire defense, there’s no question that a publicized face (of a massively publicized game from a massively publicized game studio which will have box sales in the hundreds of thousands) meets the same qualification for public figure satire defense.
If it is actually conscious manipulation by Jade, I’ll be the first to give her mad props. Well played ma’am, well played. You just exploded your marketability.
-Sutro
#3 by Slyfeind on November 21st, 2007
And we wonder why there aren’t more women in gaming, when this is what they have to look forward to. Still, I can imagine the team while taking that photo….
Jade: “Me in the front? Oh boy, let’s make an Internet shitstorm everyone!”
Everyone else: “Ah hyuk hyuk, good ol’ Ubi marketting!”
It’ll wear off a couple more games from now, just like Rockstar’s shock value wore off. Then someone else will fill the void with something else.
Yeah, I know, that doesn’t make it better.
That there are women in the gaming industry is obvious. That some of them are good-looking is inevitable. Someone said on Gamegirl’s blog that it is a positive image, that we can see “non-freaks” in this industry, and think it’s a respectable profession. (Compare with, say, game designers in Korea who are practically treated like rock stars.)
And yeah, I know, that doesn’t make it better, either.
This whole “Women in (fill-in-the-blank)?! Inconceivable!” is so incredibly old, I don’t think it’ll ever go away. I hope not, actually. I really liked working in advertising, where I could pay the bills by pandering to lowest common denominators like that. Yay!
#4 by B on November 21st, 2007
I love the fact that you leave out the entire reason that Dave gave for making the comic, the fact that Jade agreed to pose for Maxim was left out of this article. And anyone trying to convince me that Maxim is a clean mag, I will direct you to a pile of them in the bathroom of almost all their subscribers. In the end I do not blame Jade or Dave, I blame Ubisoft, but being so stupid to not have seen something like this coming, or worse, which will happen. This comic would have blown over pretty quickly if they would have done nothing, now, well, who knows, lets see how fast Ubi can dig their own hole.
#5 by Jen on November 21st, 2007
Uh, Jade did not agree to pose for Maxim and never did. That was a vicious rumor in and of itself that was personally debunked by Jade.
#6 by Joey on November 21st, 2007
Artist Dave Cheung Responds To Jade Raymond Drama:
http://www.thebitbag.com/index.php/2007/11/20/artist-dave-cheung-responds-to-jade-raymond-drama/
#7 by mcclaud on November 21st, 2007
Jen: It was debunked AFTER Chugworth made the comic.
Anyway, it’s only a fucking webcomic. Why do people put so much emphasis on them?
#8 by Lucas on November 21st, 2007
That Dave Cheung’s reply is a joke, right?
#9 by Corwin Loa on November 22nd, 2007
Err, silly question. Would we have seen the same sort of up-in-arms response from everyone had it been a MAN in the comic? I seem to remember a huge number of equally insulting pictures/comics/shops of John Romero back in the day, and don’t remember the moral crusade against people poking fun at him.
EVERYONE who shows up in the spotlight on the internet deals with unwanted attention.
I guess I fail to see why everyone is up in arms to protect Jade based on the fact that she is a woman. I mean, its alright to take shots at male producers/developers, I would assume it is equally alright to take shots at females in the industry? At the point you take up arms to protect Jade because shes a woman, you’re kind of shooting yourself in the foot, are you not?
corwin.loa AT gmail.com if anyone reading cares to explain the difference to me, I would appreciate it.
#10 by Jeff Freeman on November 22nd, 2007
Wait… isn’t chatting-up the press a producer’s job? I mean… the producer’s job, surely.
I hadn’t assumed they were “taking advantage” of the blessings our Lord has bestowed upon her, so much as just having her do her job.
If I were the boss of everybody, my company’s public face would be a Betty Crocker. I’d swap him or her out with a fresh one every few years.
And you’d never hear about my community manager “moving on”, either. His name would be Professor Forym, no matter who sat behind the keyboard, until some scandal or such brought up the need for a public execution. Then my community guy would change handles, to appease the mob.
Just grabbing some employee whose job was something else, to be Betty Crocker for me, free, would be taking advantage, but that’s not the case here.
I’ve been watching a lot of TMZ lately. Entertainment “news” isn’t much different than this crap – movies and television just have more hotties. Way more. Seriously, even some of the guys are pretty.
But whether a person’s job is to act, sing, dance, or be Paris Hilton, there is a constant focus on their appearance, if they are hot.
Except for Beauty Pageant contestants, ’cause that’d be… well, ok, I don’t know why. But for the one group of people whose job is to be beautiful, there’s a focus on never mind about their looks, they are also human beings, blah blah etc.
Pretty people have fan sites, even if being pretty is about all they do. I’m a fan of acting, but more of gaming. Why shouldn’t my pretty girl fansite patronage go to one that makes games, rather than one that acts, or one that is just pretty?
Otherwise, hrm. The Internet meets Entertainment News. So, duh. No one expected Alien vs. Predator to be a romantic comedy.
We can have nice things. It’s just we’ll also have prison porn, and now you don’t have to go to prison to see it.
She is OK!
And really, there’s nothing going on here that didn’t happen pre-internet. It’s just, now you don’t have to go to the truckstop bathroom to see the graffiti. It comes right to you. Plus can be more niche.
But in terms of content, it’s not particularly worse or better than it was before.
Anyway… uhm. So what’s up with Ubisoft? Was it actually just a cease and desist? ‘Cause, that’s how lawyers ask for things like, “Please delete that post,” or “Stop using my art on your website,” etc.
UO GMs had worse than this. Is it sexist to get worked-up just because the victim happens to be a female?
Ohman, I hope not.
I’m gonna go on now thinking it was just a web comic, and that was just a request to delete the post. SomethingAweful made ‘em look stupid, and that’s ok too because that’s what SA is for.
That’s easier for me to file away in the ol’ brain than, “Ubisoft has never used the internet,” anyway.
Oh one more thing: you described her as “fairly attractive” and “photogenic”, etc. C’mon, now… she’s ranging from seriously attractive to absolutely beautiful depending on the photoshop time.
A journalist is supposed to act like he can’t see that? How foolish would that make him look?
She’s not a beauty pageant contestant.
#11 by Sutro on November 22nd, 2007
“Oh one more thing: you described her as “fairly attractive” and “photogenic”, etc. C’mon, now… she’s ranging from seriously attractive to absolutely beautiful depending on the photoshop time.”
Meh. She looks like your average (to take a college reference) Chi Omega member, marketing major to me. Were she in the marketing or PR department of UbiSoft, no one would think twice about it.
The Photoshop remark, however, is dead-on. Watch her producers’ video blogs and she’s on the high side of average in appearance, and the only qualification for that is just not to have remarkably ugly features, hit the gym a bit and don’t pound Big Macs. Yet Ubisoft’s staff pictures of her… sweet Jesus.
#12 by Anonymous Coward 916 on November 22nd, 2007
The lession to be learned; next time use one of the (male, overwheight, bald & with 3″ thick glasses) coders who hasn’t seen daylight for years to do the PR talks.
#13 by Roy on November 22nd, 2007
Oh, for gods’ sakes. Isn’t it possible to have a single conversation about this without somebody pointing out whether or not they think she’s hot?
If Jade didn’t have editorial rights of some kind over the other interviews she’d done, if she didn’t have approval rights of some kind, then you are right.
I doubt she didn’t have pre-publishing review and some editorial rights before publishing.
This has nothing to do with her vagina at all… Seriously, this is about her being responsible for her image to a degree.
Most people do not have editorial rights over their interviews- most writers don’t give them, and she certainly doesn’t have editorial rights over the forums on a site where fanboys are talking about how fuckable or not she is.
#14 by Jeff Freeman on November 22nd, 2007
Well, that was really the point I was trying to make: No. We can’t.
#15 by Phoenix Woman on November 23rd, 2007
Wonder what Dave Cheung’s parents think of his reinforcing racist sex stereotypes about Asian and Eurasian women?
#16 by mcclaud on November 23rd, 2007
Does it matter what Dave Cheung’s parents think about him being sarcastically sexist?
I’m starting to tire of the feminazis. Seriously.
#17 by Phoenix Woman on November 23rd, 2007
Well, then, EmCee, why don’t you go look up Mr. and Mrs. Cheung and show them their darling child’s oeuvre, if you think that they’d be proud of him for pushing the “Asian women are brainless sluts” stereotype? For that matter, what might they think of the community in which he works, where he’s cheered on and Ms. Raymond and/or her company were somehow “asking for it” when she and UbiSoft were only doing what every other MALE producer and company have done?
Granted, I’m not sure that filing a lawsuit was the smartest thing for UbiSoft to have done, but of course we all know that if they hadn’t, then the same regressed adolescents currently taking up the “she asked for it!” cry would be shouting “hey they didn’t sue, so they must not really be offended!”.
#18 by Mordur on November 23rd, 2007
Interesting enough, I didn’t really have her pegged as looking Asian until you point it out there. Nice one, lets make this not only about gender but race as well and see if we can make it go another round.
#19 by Idealist on November 23rd, 2007
Really, no, let’s not.
#20 by Jeff Freeman on November 23rd, 2007
Mordur, awesome.
I think the bottom line here might be:
There are three kinds of people: Tankers, Nukers, and Healers.
Now, Healers don’t like Nukers. Because Healers get nuked by Nukers.
But Nukers also nuke Tanks.
Or maybe that’s the bottom line to some other discussion.
Whatever.
#21 by J. on November 24th, 2007
JADE RAYMOND JADE RAYMOND JADE RAYMOND JADE RAYMOND JADE RAYMOND JADE RAYMOND JADE RAYMOND JADE RAYMOND
#22 by Atrocia on November 24th, 2007
Ubisoft should have let it slide. I mean, really, who cares? Chugworth Academy is a repulsive wet turd of a comic, ordinarily beneath the notice of intelligent people. Aside from being well-drawn (depending on your standards, I suppose), CA’s only conceivable value is its ability to piss people off. Cheung knows he isn’t a good or funny writer, so this is how he gets his attention. Ignore him — he may not go away, but at least he’d be stuck in the wind tunnel he deserves.
Meanwhile, I’m disappointed in Lowtax for bowing to Ubisoft’s pressure about this. That’s not the belligerent SA that I used to know and love, particularly since Ubisoft is completely in the wrong. Where’s Leonard Crabs when you need him?
#23 by gitan on November 27th, 2007
OMG ! jade =>
http://img106.imageshack.us/my.php?image=duoubipetitye9.jpg
#24 by mcclaud on November 29th, 2007
LOL
Lotax did not bow to Ubisoft – his proclamation was satire and totally false.
Later on in another thread about the same topic, he “accidentally” posts the link to the Chugworth comic. Again.
#25 by taiki on December 10th, 2007
It still doesn’t matter whether or not Assassin’s Creed is a good game, it’s Ubisoft that’s keeping me from buying it. Never mind the fact that Splinter Cell is almost entirely ripped off from Metal Gear Solid whenever it can(Snake gets CQC… now Fisher gets CQC! Snake’s old… now Fisher’s old! Fuck you Ubi).
It’s the fact that Ubisoft’s had a history of trotting out hot female gamers to try to get fanboys to buy their products. FragDolls. This was in oh, 2003? 2004ish?
Now, fast forward to now. Jade Raymond is brought out as the producer for Assassin’s Creed and now the video game fan boy press can’t keep from dry humping Jade Raymond’s leg. Instead of stopping nonsense articles titled similarly to “Jade Raymond smells pretty” Ubisoft sits by and lets it boil over until some one on the Something Awful forums gets the impression that she’s just being brought out like meat for fan boys to fap it to and draws a comic expressing that opinion. While Jade should’ve stood up in the first place and said something about it, if Ubi’s going to get upset at this stage in the game, they should’ve gotten upset at the drooling, fan boy dry leg humping phase to make sure it didn’t go that far. Instead, Ubi, with it’s history of chosing to pander to fanboys rather than what’s right for the community at large, let the press run free with it and then it got too far.
Fuck you Ubisoft.
#26 by Rapewaffle on December 14th, 2007
While Jade should’ve stood up in the first place and said something about it, if Ubi’s going to get upset at this stage in the game, they should’ve gotten upset at the drooling, fan boy dry leg humping phase to make sure it didn’t go that far.
And this is what makes Cheung’s comic, unfunny and crass as it is, such a masterful troll: Ubisoft couldn’t simply ignore it with a nod and a wink as they had the rest of the unseemly drooling.
Yet by responding to it, they revealed the extent to which they had been tacitly enjoying hype and publicity focused on the person rather than the game while stroking their white cats and muttering ‘eeeexcellent’ under their collective breath.
Maybe they’ll have learned something from all this, I’m not holding my breath though.
#27 by Demexii on March 16th, 2008
She is hot though. Roar.
#28 by Chris Kruger on March 17th, 2008
I wonder how wide eyed Jade went into all this. It would be truely sad if she has been purely and simply exploited. I haven’t really read any lude comics about this issue, but from the teaser on this site, is it at all a commentry on the phenomena itself dealt via sarcasm or is it purely just a lude partriacial reminder than things have not really changed?