Activision doesn't believe female leads can sell games, and has even gone so far as to change characters to avoid a lady protagonist, according to former employees. Gamasutra reports that focus testing has led to a serious lack of females in games, and since 2005 only girl-focused licensed games like Dora or Barbie have featured female leads at all.
According to the report, a 2007 game from Treyarch was tentatively titled Black Lotus. It featured an Asian female assassin lead character based on Lucy Liu, and the development team was excited about the project. But seeing testosterone-heavy hits like Halo 3 and Modern Warfare, Activision decided that players don't want a lady at the helm. One former employee claims Activision "said they don't do female characters because they don't sell." Another, more bluntly, says they were "given specific direction to lose the chick." Black Lotus lives on now as True Crime: Hong Kong, having changed developers and, apparently, lead characters.
The former employees say this is endemic of a larger problem at Activision: the culture of development built on focus testing. Sources claim the publisher takes the feedback it gets to extremes, stifling innovation and sometimes even sacrificing quality by making time-intensive demands to change projects quickly. As a result, the focus test groups tend to want more of what they've already seen and enjoyed, rather than innovation, and the publisher is said to follow their lead.
"Activision has no room for 'we are making an open-world game with a Hong Kong action movie feel with a female lead,' because that game doesn't exist right now," said one source. "What they do have room for is, 'we are making an open-world game with a gangster main character who can steal cars and shoot people, but it will be in Hong Kong instead of Liberty City.'" As a result, sales dictate development. "If Activision does not see a female lead in the top five games that year, they will not have a female lead," says another source. The publisher will use games like Wet and Bayonetta to prove its point. The report even includes accusations from sources of skewed focus testing to achieve a desired result.
Activision, in response to the article, denied the claims. "Activision respects the creative vision of its development teams," said a company statement. "The company does not have a policy of telling its studios what game content they can develop, nor has the company told any of its studios that they cannot develop games with female lead characters. ... With respect to True Crime: Hong Kong, Activision did not mandate the gender of the lead character. Like all other game and media companies, Activision uses market research in order to better understand [what] gamers are looking for."
The full report is long, but well worth reading if you're curious for more information about Activision's practices. As the publishing giant already fights perceptual problems from its public falling out with West and Zampella, this kind of attention isn't going to do it any favors.
