Total War: Rome II Developers Issue Statement on Criticisms of Female Generals Feature

[M76]

It seems to me, that the bad reviews started because they told off their customers "don't like it don't play it" The game was like this for months, yet the bad reviews only started after the offending statement by one CA representative. So the outrage is not about women being in the game, it's about CA telling their customers to not play the game outright.

Again the sjw media tries to push this as sexism, then where were the bad reviews before? And why are they releasing these articles now, and not when female generals were introduced to the game?

Now everyone suddenly acts as if the entire gaming community is up in arms about female generals. No, they're up in arms because of a company (yet again) treating them as disposable garbage.

Oh and the term alt-sjw makes about as much sense as the entire sjw movement itself. You tried to co-opt the label SJW as your own, it didn't work. We're still using it as derogatory. And now you try to co-opt it by somehow reversing it against the opponents of pc culture. And again it doesn't work. How could it? Calling people opposed to social justice alternative social justice warriors?
You don't understand the objections to social justice if you think being for or against it is two sides of the same coin.

 

[Laowai]

This content was rolled out back in March. This only blew up on the internet a few days ago. The developers themselves already stated they've reviewed the code and there isn't a bug; people modded the game to overrepresent women and then used that as evidence to spur controversy.

Can you support that claim?

 

[DeathFromBelow]

Can you support that claim?

The patch was working as designed. Were any additional patches posted outside the ancestry patch beta?

Now everyone suddenly acts as if the entire gaming community is up in arms about female generals. No, they're up in arms because of a company (yet again) treating them as disposable garbage.

When was anyone treated like disposable garbage? They explained the likelyhood of female generals appearing for different culture groups and gave players the option to mod it. When the alt-sjw crowd continued to make false claims in a forum thread they told them they could stop playing if women actually scare them so badly.

Suddenly we have people posting walls of text of concern trolling about how this has ruined the game for them. It's just like the people endlessly bitching about Star Wars and pretending they prefer the Phantom Menace over the new films because women. It's alt-sjw nonsense.

 

[Laowai]

people modded the game to overrepresent women and then used that as evidence to spur controversy.

The patch was working as designed. Were any additional patches posted outside the ancestry patch beta?

Uh, that does not support his claim that people were modding it to have MORE women and then complaining about it because reasons.

And alt-sjw isn't a thing.

 

[opfreak]

Just another bullshit alt-right conspiracy theory being pushed by neo-nazis and russian bots. Are you all so insecure in your own masculinity that a video game character being female triggers you?

Two sides of the same coin. Why do SJW like you feel the need to always re-write history to fit you current liberal agenda? Does everything need to fit your perfect liberal quota?

 

[Laowai]

Just another bullshit alt-right conspiracy theory being pushed by neo-nazis and russian bots. Are you all so insecure in your own masculinity that a video game character being female triggers you?

You're talking about conspiracy theories and bring up neo-nazis and russian bots and the alt-right....none of which have anything to do with this.
I bet the irony is lost on you.

 

[Draax]

You're talking about conspiracy theories and bring up neo-nazis and russian bots and the alt-right....none of which have anything to do with this.
I bet the irony is lost on you.

You are correct they have nothing to do with this ... just as the bullshit far-right nonsense which started this entire situation. Not so pretty when the mirror is turned around on you ... is it.

 

[M76]

The patch was working as designed. Were any additional patches posted outside the ancestry patch beta?



When was anyone treated like disposable garbage? They explained the likelyhood of female generals appearing for different culture groups and gave players the option to mod it. When the alt-sjw crowd continued to make false claims in a forum thread they told them they could stop playing if women actually scare them so badly.

Suddenly we have people posting walls of text of concern trolling about how this has ruined the game for them. It's just like the people endlessly bitching about Star Wars and pretending they prefer the Phantom Menace over the new films because women. It's alt-sjw nonsense.

That's the exact problem that they told their players to stop playing. The female generals were in the game for months before that. Yet there were no bogus reviews popping up and no articles were made about the supposedly sexist players. Until someone lost their shit and attacked the players and they pushed back.

No, people aren't bitching about star wars because of women, that's what they want you to believe so they can dismiss actual complaints without addressing them. Why even bring that up? And I told you calling anyone alt-sjw is nonsense even if you act like a wall against all arguments. No offense to the wall.

It's so disgusting that you (meaning all sjws) would use women as shields.
What, they criticized a movie?
Are there any women leads in it, or was it directed by a woman?
Then they're sexist that's why they don't like it!

Curiously or rather typically this rule doesn't apply to them, because they can happily shittalk about movies that were directed and/or produced by women that it contains "toxic masculinity".

That's SJW culture for you. No principles, no honor, no ability to reason, and 100% hypocritical.

 

[Jagger100]

Is there any way to know 100% for sure, the spawn rates weren't reverted after the backlash. The new statement feels inconsistent with their original statements. At a minimum their original statements were a troll.

 

[Siersoren]

If you are a white male who favors a relationship with a woman, SJWs typically come off as wanting you to feel guilty for existing in such a manner. In fact - SJW's are the reason we have our current president as they created such a push back, so thanks for that.

I do not feel guilty whatsoever for wanting male generals in what should be and what is being sold as a somewhat accurate game of history. If I wanted female generals, I would pay Total War: Warhammer. There is a game for that, and I have enjoyed it in like-manner in the past.

 

[Laowai]

You are correct they have nothing to do with this ... just as the bullshit far-right nonsense which started this entire situation. Not so pretty when the mirror is turned around on you ... is it.

I don't even know what you're going on about. You speak with a lot of passion but little clarity.
What 'bullshit far-right nonsense' are you supposing started this?

EDIT:
This is what started the drama.

"If having female units upsets you that much you can either mod them out or just not play," McConnell said. "People saying they won't buy the game because there are too many women in it is fine with us--if that's their reason, we'd rather they didn't anyway."

There never was any evidence that CA upped the chances for females to appear in any patch. The whole thing would have blown over as a non-issue pretty quickly were it not for the quote above. Telling people to not play a game they purchased from your company is pretty terrible.

Before you hop on a tall steed of righteousness, consider what the backlash would have been were the words 'women' and 'female' replaced with 'men' and 'male'.

"If having male units upsets you that much you can either mod them out or just not play," McConnell said. "People saying they won't buy the game because there are too many men in it is fine with us--if that's their reason, we'd rather they didn't anyway."

Leftists and the media would go insane at that, the story would be national news, CA would be apologizing left and right, they'd be boycotted, there would be demonstrations, and the company would likely cease to exist. Contrast that with what is happening now, which is that a bunch of children are making incoherent noises on online product reviews. Hmmm... Something seems off-kilter here but I just can't put my finger on it....what could it be?

For the record, I don't agree with the review bombing bullshit but I can tell you I won't purchase a game from that company again and I really do not give half a shit how many or how often female generals appear.

 

[Draax]

If you are a white male who favors a relationship with a woman, SJWs typically come off as wanting you to feel guilty for existing in such a manner. In fact - SJW's are the reason we have our current president as they created such a push back, so thanks for that.

Wait wait wait ... you are blaming the American public electing Trump ... on SJWs. Holy shit I need a Tylenol.

 

[Draax]

I don't even know what you're going on about. You speak with a lot of passion but little clarity.
What 'bullshit far-right nonsense' are you supposing started this?

The game was modded to make female generals appear more often then they naturally do. This was then turned into an outrage by a far-right neo nazi website called the daily stormer. Have you even been reading this thread?

 

[DeathFromBelow]

You're talking about conspiracy theories and bring up neo-nazis and russian bots and the alt-right...

Pointing out that the Daily Stormer was openly pushing this story is a conspiracy theory? The faked images/review bombing/forum trolling certainly aren't the first time they've done stuff like this with their 'Troll Army.'

 

[Laowai]

The game was modded to make female generals appear more often then they naturally do.

Support that claim!
It's not the first time that claim has appeared, but you MAY BE the first one to actually support it if you can!

As to your Daily Stormer comment, I think you're giving them and their readership far too much credit.

 

[Laowai]

Pointing out that the Daily Stormer was openly pushing this story is a conspiracy theory? The faked images/review bombing/forum trolling certainly aren't the first time they've done stuff like this with their 'Troll Army.'

Do you have evidence or just feelings? I guess they posted something about it, I don't know, I don't frequent that sight. I'd imagine few do. Way to ignore the fact that I called shennanigans on the guy for bringing russian bots, neo-nazis, and the alt-right into this as well. Now we can add the Daily Stormer 'troll army' too I guess.

Seriously, who gives a shit what is written in the Daily Stormer?

 

[DeathFromBelow]

Do you have evidence or just feelings?

I'm not the one posting videos of animal noises.

I think it's on you to explain how the fake pictures and review bombing and concern trolling after the Daily Stormer got involved is all just a big coincidence.

 

[DNMock]

Wait wait wait ... you are blaming the American public electing Trump ... on SJWs. Holy shit I need a Tylenol.

Well, they are...

The general theme of the SJW are in line with the Democratic parties big platforms (and should be with all humans IMO of racism, sexism, etc. etc. being bad). Problem is the SJW types are so militant and in-your-face screaming crazies being the vocal minorities that the independents and centrists (those who elections sway on) just got tired of hearing that crap all the time so when even a moderate democrat mentions something like racism or sexism it just becomes a massive turn off.

Combine that with Trumps charisma to motivate his base, and there you go. SJW movement leads to Trump.

How is this related to the topic? Well, The big pile of poo left by the SJW types everywhere is basically rocket fuel for trolls. They love it, and Trump is in fact a troll. Both these trolls and Trump spawned in the wake of the one of the dumbest grass roots movements in the history of history...

Edit: And if you think about it, it's really not that far fetched either. The opposite side of the coin already happened and to far greater extremes with unregulated capitalism running amok spawning Lenin and the rise of communism leading to Stalin and Mao. If it didn't happen, no one would ever expect a loud vocal minority of capitalists being assholes leading to the the murderous totalittarian dictators of Stalin and Mao...

 

[Laowai]

Is there any way to know 100% for sure, the spawn rates weren't reverted after the backlash. The new statement feels inconsistent with their original statements. At a minimum their original statements were a troll.

To the first part, no, there is no way to know for sure without digging into code I'd imagine. Many patches by many games were not documented in changelogs or patch notes released to the public.
Personally, I am inclined to side with them on that score and say nothing was changed.
Without evidence showing something was actually changed in game, I see no reason to believe otherwise.
One or two or three hundred and twenty screenshots are not proof of anything.

 

[Bigdady92]

Uh, no, I mean literally they are pushing this agenda as "news" on their website: https://dailystormer.name/total-war...eplace-white-soldiers-with-women-and-darkies/

And Polygon, Kotaku, Eurogamer, PCGamer are taking the SJW route to push their agenda.


The hot take: Company says "Don't like it, don't buy it." Internet agrees and demands refunds. Company Blinks.

 

[PantherBlitz]

the publisher shot themselves in the foot the moment they decided to get all fuck you to their customer base

Then instead of explaining it away, they told everyone to fuck off if they didn't buy into their social justice changes

That's a bold strategy - They must have former employees from the cable industry in management.

 

[Bigdady92]

That's a bold strategy - They must have former employees from the cable industry in management.

Nahh they hired retreads from EA, Bioware, Riot Games to run their Customer Service department.

 

[Laowai]

I'm not the one posting videos of animal noises.

I think it's on you to explain how the fake pictures and review bombing and concern trolling after the Daily Stormer got involved is all just a big coincidence.

You guys are getting more than a little boring.
It is not 'on me' to defend the Daily Stormer as I have nothing to do with it, I have not quoted from any of its material, and have never even visited the site based on its reputation alone. There are many stories of this now online and none I found even link to or mention the Daily Stormer that you guys keep harping on about.
I am also not the one making fact claims. Others here are, of which you are one. YOU guys have to support YOUR claims! Draax, Rizen, damicatz, and you have made claims with zero evidence. I have not. Making claims without evidence is exactly what you guys believe started this btw. I disagree, and have expressed as such in an earlier post. IMO, you guys are getting worked up about the wrong things.

people modded the game to overrepresent women and then used that as evidence to spur controversy.

The game was modded to make female generals appear more often then they naturally do.

Just another bullshit alt-right conspiracy theory being pushed by neo-nazis and russian bots.

The faked images...... aren't the first time they've done stuff like this with their 'Troll Army.'

I'm not the one posting videos of animal noises.

I did not post animal noises either, but I will now. This is so you understand what your posts sound like when read by adults.

 

[Poseidons Kiss]

Much ado about nothing, this outrage culture is tiring.

 

[DeathFromBelow]

[Angry Monkey Sounds]

So it's just a big coincidence that the fake images, concern troll posts, and review bombing all coincide with the Daily Stormer getting involved. Right.

Thankfully people are catching on and recognizing this alt-SJW garbage.

 

[Laowai]

So it's just a big coincidence that the fake images, concern troll posts, and review bombing all coincide with the Daily Stormer getting involved. Right.

Thankfully people are catching on and recognizing this alt-SJW garbage.

Alt-SJW is still not a thing no matter how often you repeat it.
Your claims do not become fact no matter how often you repeat them.

You still have no evidence of fake images and have ignored numerous requests for you to support your claims.

Have a nice day.

 

[Draax]

You guys are getting more than a little boring.
It is not 'on me' to defend the Daily Stormer as I have nothing to do with it, I have not quoted from any of its material, and have never even visited the site based on its reputation alone. There are many stories of this now online and none I found even link to or mention the Daily Stormer that you guys keep harping on about.
I am also not the one making fact claims. Others here are, of which you are one. YOU guys have to support YOUR claims! Draax, Rizen, damicatz, and you have made claims with zero evidence. I have not. Making claims without evidence is exactly what you guys believe started this btw. I disagree, and have expressed as such in an earlier post. IMO, you guys are getting worked up about the wrong things.


I did not post animal noises either, but I will now. This is so you understand what your posts sound like when read by adults.

Are you sure you aren't the one making the "angry monkey sounds" as it is you who is resorting to ad hominem attacks.

 

[Laowai]

Are you sure you aren't the one making the "angry monkey sounds" as it is you who is resorting to ad hominem attacks.

/sigh
So besides failing once again to support your claim that people modded the game to add more females, just to complain there are too many females......you clearly don't even understand what an ad hominum attack is.

I'm done with all of you. I'm going to go have conversation with my 2 year old about why we can't have a penguin as a pet even though she agreed to keep him in the fridge. It will likely be a more intelligent and rational conversation than the one with you guys.

 

[Draax]

/sigh
So besides failing once again to support your claim that people modded the game to add more females, just to complain there are too many females......you clearly don't even understand what an ad hominum attack is.

I'm done with all of you. I'm going to go have conversation with my 2 year old about why we can't have a penguin as a pet even though she agreed to keep him in the fridge. It will likely be a more intelligent and rational conversation than the one with you guys.

Again with the ad hominems ... lol why u so mad bro?

The developers clearly stated the frequency of female generals spawning and mentioned that certain cultures have zero chance of a female general spawning. But hey ... you go right ahead and take the word of a neo-nazi website known for such shenanigans.

 

[Rizen]

This was the photo in question that the offended gamers were sharing around to highlight the supposedly unrealistically high % of women generals in the game (below).

I've seen some people say it was doctored, enhanced with mods, etc. I looked again and I can't find any concrete evidence to support that, so I'll retract that statement. I should have done more due diligence before repeating that claim, and I apologize.

However, a few things to note:

- There are 8 generals in the pool, this person scrolled over to highlight 5 female generals
- Given how probability works, it's inevitable that someone, somewhere is going to get screens like this.

The probability to get 5 out of 8 generals to be female, with a 10% spawn rate, would be 8C5 * (0.1)5 * (0.9)3 = 0.04%. That means if 10,000 players were to boot up the game right now, and spawn 8 generals from Egypt, you’d expect exactly 4 of them to get the outcome “5 female, 3 male generals.” Then consider that we have tens of thousands of active players, a few thousand of whole are extremely active, and so we can expect hundreds of thousands of different combinations of generals to be spawned every month or so, we’d expect a lot of occurrences of the 5F 3M outcome. So it’s very likely it’s just not a bug. One could argue that the spawn rate should be adjusted to make it more “accurate” but the thing is that on “average” it is coming out as accurate, and the outliers who feel it to be inaccurate should be told to mod it.

This is still a whole bunch of nothing.

 

[rflcptr]

Much ado about nothing, this outrage culture is tiring.

It's a sad state where people choose recreational outrage over actual recreation.

 

[Laowai]

This was the photo in question that the offended gamers were sharing around to highlight the supposedly unrealistically high % of women generals in the game (below).

I've seen some people say it was doctored, enhanced with mods, etc. I looked again and I can't find any concrete evidence to support that, so I'll retract that statement. I should have done more due diligence before repeating that claim, and I apologize.

However, a few things to note:

- There are 8 generals in the pool, this person scrolled over to highlight 5 female generals
- Given how probability works, it's inevitable that someone, somewhere is going to get screens like this.

This is still a whole bunch of nothing.

Rizen, thank you.
You're 100% correct that the screenshot does not show everything and you're also 100% correct in that if you give RNG enough chances at it, a result like this is inevitable.

The issue to me and some others was never the number of females, it was in how CA handled it. Telling people who already bought your game not to play is pretty f'd up imo.
If you disagree with that, that's fine. This is opinion territory and we don't have to agree.
/handshake

 

[M76]

This was the photo in question that the offended gamers were sharing around to highlight the supposedly unrealistically high % of women generals in the game (below).

I've seen some people say it was doctored, enhanced with mods, etc. I looked again and I can't find any concrete evidence to support that, so I'll retract that statement. I should have done more due diligence before repeating that claim, and I apologize.

However, a few things to note:

- There are 8 generals in the pool, this person scrolled over to highlight 5 female generals
- Given how probability works, it's inevitable that someone, somewhere is going to get screens like this.

This is still a whole bunch of nothing.

And still the outrage is not about women in the game, if that was the case it would've blown up months ago, not now. It is about a developer insulting their customers by telling them "don't like it don't play it".

This should've been handled better. Especially such a short time after the BFV thing.

Isn't it curious that kotaku and the other sjw outlets masquerading as gaming sites decided to run this story now, and not before the dev insulted the gamers?

If I believed they have the brains to pull something like that off I'd say it was coordinated.

1. Female generals patched into the game
   
2. a few months later inside person insults the fans who question the rate of women generals popping up in the game
   
3. the fans are outraged start shitposting and fake reviews
4. kotaku&co puts out articles almost simultaneously how the gaming community is toxic and misogynist and sexist again, completely ignoring the timeline

 

[Rizen]

Maybe it's just because I've worked in customer service for 11 years and I hear a lot of ridiculous outrage all the time, but her response:

This thread is a mess so I'm locking it (and bans have been issued for those who repeatedly violated Steam community guidelines). As has been said previously: Total War games are historically authentic, not historically accurate - if having female units upsets you that much you can either mod them out or just not play.

Doesn't strike me as especially harsh or unwarranted given the context of the thread she was posting in. Sometimes people need to be told things they don't want to hear. Just because there was backlash doesn't mean she was wrong. Nothing in that response was a personal insult.

 

[Siersoren]

Maybe it's just because I've worked in customer service for 11 years and I hear a lot of ridiculous outrage all the time, but her response:



Doesn't strike me as especially harsh or unwarranted given the context of the thread she was posting in. Sometimes people need to be told things they don't want to hear. Just because there was backlash doesn't mean she was wrong. Nothing in that response was a personal insult.

Legally, sure, she didn't do something wrong. And sure, sometimes people need to be told what to here.

I worked in a call center in a warranty support role for a few years. If I said: "If you have a problem with our product, just don't buy it", things would not have went well for me. She did screw up, and she shouldn't have said that. If she is unrepentant of this statement, then her statement is also backed by her hiring company, which is CA.

I don't feel as though she insulted people, but she definitely told them to go "Screw themselves".

 

[Jagger100]

Support that claim!
It's not the first time that claim has appeared, but you MAY BE the first one to actually support it if you can!

As to your Daily Stormer comment, I think you're giving them and their readership far too much credit.

It's dishonest dismissal of the argument via guilt by association. I would not be surprised if they advocated complaining but I doubt they openly advocated for faking screenshots. Should be easy enough to disprove. And just because they may have mentioned it on a 'new sight' looking to fill itself with articles.

So it's just a big coincidence that the fake images, concern troll posts, and review bombing all coincide with the Daily Stormer getting involved. Right.

Thankfully people are catching on and recognizing this alt-SJW garbage.

So when an issue blows up, a 'news website' may just want to jump on it. No other possible explanation other than they instigated it? Couldn't be they're looking to get traffic to their site or anything by being topical.