Microsoft Publishes New Inclusion Guide For Video Game Devs, Recommends Against Creating Female Characters With “Exaggerated Body Proportions”

Cortana (Jen Taylor) bids farewell to Master Chief (Steve Downes) in Halo 4 (2012), Microsoft Studios

Cortana (Jen Taylor) bids farewell to Master Chief (Steve Downes) in Halo 4 (2012), Microsoft Studios

In doing their part to push the entire medium ever further towards a final form as a pile of boring and uninspired mush, Microsoft has released a new “Product Inclusion Guide” for video game developers which, in addition to a number of other such recommendations aimed at appeasing the terminally online, notably suggests that creators completely abstain from depicting any sexualized or ‘unrealistic’ female characters within their works.

Shionne (Shino Shimoji) sets out to carve her own path in Tales of Arise (2021), Bandai Namco

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Made public on March 20th as part of the company’s appearance at the recent 2024 Game Developers Conference, Microsoft’s new ‘Gaming for Every Product Inclusion Framework‘ calls on developers to actively consider four specific areas when creating a new title, those being (as per the Framework’s official website):

The Siren Queen (Amelia Tyler) rises from the depths in Sea of Thieves (2020), Rare Ltd

In service of promoting these values, Microsoft also released a ‘Product Inclusion Action‘ guide for developers to follow in order to keep their titles sufficiently ‘progressive’ and unoffensive.

“Having your story told is a universal human need, but for many in marginalized communities or in markets outside of the US, it’s rare to be represented in media, let alone games, and as a result, some people could feel like a secondary consumer for our content,” writes the Xbox parent company. “80% of media consumed by the world is created in the US and yet most media, including video games, don’t contain characters and content that align to that broad consumer.”

Layla Ellison (Queen Noveen) studies up in Redfall (2023), Microsoft

To this end, Microsoft then presents developers with a set of ten “questions to consider” when it came to their projects in order to ensure they were properly ‘inclusive’:

Hadrian (Cynthia Kaye McWilliams) is revealed to be a gender-swapped clone in Starfield (2023), Bethesda Game Studios
Kait (Laura Bailey) awakes from a nightmare in Gears 5 (2019), Microsoft

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In expanding on this last question, Microsoft presented three additional ‘sub-questions’ for devs to consider, particularly in regards to their female character designs:

Kasane (Asami Seto) unleashes her power in Scarlet Nexus (2021), Bandai Namco Entertainment

It should be noted that while Microsoft did cite four studies regarding representation in support of their arguments, all of them are extremely flawed in their methodologies.

Though the Diamond Lobby study claims that there is a stark lack of diversity in the overall gaming sphere, its findings are based solely on a surface level look at the “the 10 highest selling games” between 2017-2021.

Further, not only does the report fail to specify by which metric they determined the ‘highest selling’ games – amount of money pulled in? amount of units sold? – but it also does not name any of the specific titles (outside of Apex Legends, which it put forth as the “most diverse video game”) that were looked at.

Loba (Fryda Wolff) takes aim in Apex Legends (2019), Electronic Arts

Then there’s the Geena Davis Study.

Published in 2021, the study not only takes particular issue with the long-disproven idea that video games can directly inspire an individual to real-world violence, but it’s also extremely disingenuous in making its arguments.

For example, in support of the study’s claim that gaming communities are “rife with identity-based prejudice, harassment, and bullying that are ultimately harmful to boys and young men,” the Geena Davis Institute cites such facts as “Streamers used some variation of the ableist language ‘crazy’ in one-in-five gameplay segments” and “Nearly one-in-four (23.7%) male characters express anger.”

Indiana Jones (Troy Baker) explains the adventure’s titular subject to Gina Lombardi (Alessandra Mastronardi) in Indiana Jones and the Great Circle (2024), MachineGames

As for the two News Zoo studies, their results are called in to the question by the fact that not only is its information based entirely on self-responses, but the conclusions they extrapolate from this data are completely out of pocket.

Look no further than the fact that in their 2022 report, as produced in partnership with the Anti-Defamation League, the organization claims that roughly 12% of respondents reported that they had been on the receiving end of a ‘swatting’ call.

In the report, the ADL and NewsZoo assert that their information is based on “a nationally representative sample of nearly 100 million American adult gamers” (and that’s not even counting their teenage respondents), meaning should one follow their information to its presented conclusion, means that at least 19,400,000 players in the US had experienced this phenomena.

However, as they admitted at the end of their report, their information truly only represents the “2,134 Americans who play games across PC, console, and mobile platforms” that they actually sampled.

Cortana (Jen Taylor) stumbles upon a firewall in Halo 4 (2012), Microsoft Studios

As of writing, which devs will inevitably use Microsoft’s guide as an actual reference document remains to be seen.

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