14 DAY TRIAL // Tired of reading news about company mergers and Christmas events for MMORPGs? Very well then, here's something more catchy, so to speak. According to a piece up on Evil Avatar, Jane Pickard of the GameGirlAdvance blog had a small chat with blokes over at Game MTV, touching a bunch of topics among which, women in the video games industry. Jane reckons that Ubisoft's Assassin's Creed Producer, Jade Raymond, was "exploited" by a company that seemingly only cares "about their bottom dollar."
"I don't know exactly how it happened, but I think Ubisoft noticed the amount of press that she was getting, and they did what most companies would do, which is they exploited that. I like Ubisoft and all, but they don't care about Jade as much as they care about their bottom dollar, and they're going to do what they think works. And if the GameTrailers interviews that have Jade on them get like 20 times the hits as any other product that they put out, what are they going to do? They're going to put her in front of the camera. I think they created a lot of resentment though, both internally and maybe externally. I think a lot of men were resentful of her stature, and maybe some of them thought she didn't deserve it, and they deserved it more or whatever. It's difficult. It's complicated."
No doubt, it is very complicated but it's not something to blame really, since every company out there does everything in its power to promote a product and make people buy what they're offering. Jade not only is a beautiful woman, but she's smart and delightful too. Had they used her in a TV spot, wouldn't that be the same thing?
However, the reality is that Ubisoft did not use Jade in a commercial and so, they were bound to some criticism since the way they were using her to make people relate to Assassin's Creed is more subtle. One more question for you: does anyone honestly think that Jade herself isn't getting anything out of this whole exploitation thing...?