--- description: Insiders say creating female characters wouldn't take a ton of effort title: Why Assassin's Creed Killed Off All Its Women image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltde093bcdab65f2d0/6988d9b9bc6cfc69913e2a3c/time-logo.jpg?branch=production --- * [Living](/tag/time-section-living/) ## Living Update your preferences in [Account Settings](/account/preferences/) Close # Why _Assassin's Creed_ Killed Off All Its Women  by [Eliana Dockterman](/author/eliana-dockterman/)  ## Eliana Dockterman Update your preferences in [Account Settings](/account/preferences/) Close Correspondent Jun 12, 2014 4:30 PM CUT  by [Eliana Dockterman](/author/eliana-dockterman/)  ## Eliana Dockterman Update your preferences in [Account Settings](/account/preferences/) Close Correspondent Jun 12, 2014 4:30 PM CUT More bad news for women gamers—or anyone who wants to play a female avatar in the uber-popular _Assassin’s Creed_ series: [_Assassin’s Creed: Unity_](http://time.com/2848800/assassins-creed-unity-co-op/ "undefined") will not have any playable female characters in cooperative mode. That’s right, none. How come, you ask? Ubisoft creative director Alex Amancio [told Polygon](http://www.polygon.com/e3-2014/2014/6/10/5798592/assassins-creed-unity-female-assassins "undefined") in a recent interview that the team ran into “the reality of production.” “It’s double the animations, it’s double the voices, all that stuff and double the visual assets,” Amancio said. “Especially because we have customizable assassins. It was really a lot of extra production work.” He went on to explain they started the process of creating female avatars but had to stop because it would require 8,000 extra animations. Women gamers are no stranger to discrimination in the industry: even though 45% of all gamers are women, too few games feature playable female characters. And those games that do have women are often misogynistic (see: [sexism in _Grand Theft Auto_](http://www.forbes.com/sites/insertcoin/2013/09/26/on-gender-and-gta-5/ "undefined")) or objectify women (see: [Lara Croft’s measurements](http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2012/04/03/tomb-raider-grows-up-and-lara-croft-finally-gets-a-pair-of-real-pants/ "undefined")). There was even a recent controversy over a sexual assault scene in the new [_Castlevina_ game.](http://www.usgamer.net/articles/yes-castlevania-lords-of-shadow-2-did-make-me-feel-uncomfortable- "undefined") The lack of playable women characters is particularly disappointing in this instance considering that previous _Assassins_ games did include female avatars. _Assassin’s Creed III: Liberation_ featured the series’ first female protagonist, Aveline de Grandpré, an African-French assassin in 18th century New Orleans. Which may explain why Jonathan Cooper, who was the animation director on _Assassin’s Creed III_, took to Twitter to explain that adding female characters would not have been as labor-intensive as Amancio says. In my educated opinion, I would estimate this to be a day or two's work. Not a replacement of 8000 animations. — Jonathan Cooper (@GameAnim) [June 11, 2014](https://twitter.com/GameAnim/status/476638349097058304?ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw "undefined") Man, if I had a dollar for every time someone at Ubisoft tried to bullshit me on animation tech ;-) — Jonathan Cooper (@GameAnim) [June 11, 2014](https://twitter.com/GameAnim/status/476731764929343488?ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw "undefined") Ubisoft responded with the following statement: --- > “” --- ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/2864372/assassins-creed-female-characters/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/2864372/assassins-creed-female-characters/"},"headline":"Why Assassin's Creed Killed Off All Its Women","datePublished":"2014-06-12T16:30:18.000Z","dateModified":"2026-04-13T08:55:27.673Z","description":"Insiders say creating female characters wouldn't take a ton of effort","url":"https://time.com/2864372/assassins-creed-female-characters/","keywords":["Living","Video Games","Culture"],"thumbnailUrl":"","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Eliana Dockterman","jobTitle":"Correspondent","url":"https://time.com/author/eliana-dockterman/"}],"articleSection":"","image":[],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/tag/time-section-living/","name":"Living"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/2864372/assassins-creed-female-characters/","name":"Why Assassin's Creed Killed Off All Its Women"}}]}] ```