Publishers Passed on Remember Me Because of Female Lead: “It Has to be a Male Character”

In case you don’t remember Remember Me, it is a third person action game from developer DONTNOD and publisher Capcom, scheduled to release on June 4th in North America and June 7th in Europe. Placing you in the shoes of female lead, Nilin, a memory hunter who lost her memories, your adventure sees you trying to remember your past.
-PSLS

[Myst]

Thankfully that mentality doesn't work for everyone.

[TrendyGamers]

Exactly.

[moegooner88]

Agreed, for instance Beyond Good and Evil had a female lead, and the game was a blast, look how many people enjoyed it and are asking for a sequel.

[Relientk77]

I am, cannot wait for Beyond Good and Evil 2

[Myst]

I'm still waiting on a sequel as well :(

[N4GDgAPc]

I'm looking forward to it to, but I can see some what the developers are thinking. I say most of the time a female lead doesn't do very good.

Beyond Good and Evil was well recieved by everyone, but sales were horrible. Be thankfull that ubisoft listens to the fans because if they did it to make money the game wouldn't even be made.

One question though does anyone know how well Beyond Good and Evil hd remastered did in sales? Better, same, or worse?

[Mounce]

Same for Heavenly Sword. I want a sequel.

[Simon_Brezhnev]

I guess if you get killed some brutal way Adam Sessler will bitch about it.

[kostchtchie_]

no that's only if you are Male lead character

[Relientk77]

Seriously? it does not need to male main character

Atleast the game is still coming, hopefully its good

[TongkatAli]

I'm going to start getting everything with female main characters, dummies making gaming look bad. If game companies tried to lure in females to game, gaming would be much bigger.

[Rivitur]

Better start with dead or alive then ; )

[cyclindk]

So if the main character were an, er.. um, a shemale it would work, right?

[doctorstrange]

I would play it

[DwightOwen]

That's kinky.

[WeAreLegion]

You guys have clearly never played Final Fantasy X.

[cyclindk]

What happened in Final Fantasy X??

[cyclindk]

Oh yeah, also, Jill Valentine from RE5 was bada$$, that whole jumping on the shoulders neck-break move and tight jumpsuit with revealing bust-line... Whoow..

Much rather look at that than Chris' brawny-self all game long.

[aliengmr]

I'm a bit skeptical that it was solely because of a female lead that an unnamed publisher didn't want to fund the game. It may have played a part, as in the entire concept may have been hard to grasp and the female lead was one in a long list of concerns.

Which from a marketing perspective is the harsh reality. Doesn't make it right, but its the reality.

This sounds like sympathy marketing. Play the victim and people want to buy on principle.

[TrendyGamers]

I think publishers saw it as a risky new IP and a female lead might hurt the chances of success.

I see it the other way though, I'm more interested in Remember Me because there's a female lead and not just some generic male soldier.

[porkChop]

It IS sympathy marketing. They think we're stupid. I'm not gonna fall for this shit. I already lost all interest after the interview where the games director/producer ragged on the industry for stereotypes and sexism, even though this game is full of it. They're a bunch of hypocrites and they won't get a penny from me.

[DOMination-]

It couldn't possibly be because they saw the game and thought it wasn't very good. Weren't Sony publishing this originally? What happened to that partnership?

[Max-Zorin]

what's wrong with a female being the lead character? This planet is screwed up.

[Number-Nine]

tomb raider says hello

[NateCole]

I had no problem slicing up people with Nariko.

[kostchtchie_]

aww well

[BuffMordecai]

Well that's stupid, I always find it to be a refreshing change of pace to have a female protagonist.

[snowman2149]

I was planning on buying this game before this but now I'm preordering and buying day 1 just to prove these assholes wrong.

[aLiEnViSiToR]

I'm sorry but i cant see anything wrong with female lead character in games (or anywhere else for that matter), this game gone great with few innovations too.

[Blacklash93]

I'm not going to exactly blame these publishers, here. A new IP with a female protagonist is a big risk and can easily cause fairly lower sales. The consumer base's inabillity to empathize or look past a female lead is the big reason. These companies just are't willing to take that risk, it doesn't mean they're the ones who are prejudiced.

Capcom did something right creatively, for once. The industry won't evolve if it doesn't take risks.

[kostchtchie_]

they will never take risk at that level because all they care about is MAXIMUM profit, not games and certainly not gamers

[DragonKnight]

*facedesk* Great, juuuuuuust great. You know we're never going to hear the end of this right? There's already someone in the comments above trying to make this game appear sexist and misogynistic. *sigh* What happened to this world?

[knifefight]

I ask this every day.

[My_Name_BTW_Is_Dante]

No, they passed on it because it's garbage and completely different than when it was first revealed. They're not going to pass on a game just because of a female character. They may have used that excuse but only because they didn't want to say the game just outright sucked.

[Blacklash93]

They said they were outright told she needed to be male. It was at least a factor.

I'm going to trust that over fabricated, conjectured theories and time-machine people who can tell the game sucks.

[WeAreLegion]

I agree. The game, when first shown, looked like crap. Many great publishers passed on it when the game was in this phase.

[ShaunCameron]

Meh. Maybe publishers rejected the game more because the lead character lacked market appeal than it being a female. And despite some novel ideas, the game wouldn't have fared any better with a male lead character.

@ Blacklash93

The industry BEEN evolving and taking risks. This particular developer is just making excuses looking to score some brownie points with feminists and white knights.

<The industry won't evolve if it doesn't take risks.>

[Blacklash93]

The industry outside of the indie market hasn't been taking enough risks and I can say that with full confidnece.

We're at the upteenth installment of the CoD franchise. We're seeing tons of threequels and for series like Resident Evil and Halo it's going even further. We have once-innovative franchises like Assassin's Creed getting annualized. Tons of generic new IP's that only run in the tracks of popular long-running franchises. We have developers being ruined by big publishers forcing them to conform to tired gameplay traditions and tack features like multiplayer on so they can say they have them on the box.

Only a very select few, notable games per year really try anything truly new that breaks away from the mold. Desire for profits beat out innovation and originality any day.

[aliengmr]

Desire to pay for expensive shiny visuals gamers expect, more like.

[Wedge19]

Always looking at "what makes the money". It's a bit sickening.

[Dagobert]

Well no shit, errbody knows women can't fight shit. Real talk.

[Hicken]

Gotta be the weakest excuse EVER.