There are hosts of reasons why games can suffer bad reviews on Steam, from poor game design to lame stories, a poor fighting system was why I marked down the last game I played. However, this is the first time I’ve seen a game marked down due to possessing too many women characters.
In the last 24 hours, Total War: Rome II managed to gain over 350 new negative reviews. All of which seemed to be based on the fact that the game possesses too many ‘women generals’ and individuals don’t seem to agree with that.
To get a full understanding of this, one has to rewind the clock almost a month back. To the last big update to Total War: Rome II, after which gamers claimed that the frequency of gaining women generals had shot up through the roof. In fact, some even claimed that their armies were made up of more than 50 percent of women, and offered a nice little screenshot as his proof.
These constant claims finally caused Ella McConnel, the community content editor, to step forward and make a comment. A comment that apparently was being repeated from up high in the establishment, that being that if people weren’t ok with the number of women they got in their game they were free to mod the game – or stop playing entirely. According to McConnel, the character system is completely random in terms of what troops you get, and that no political agenda is being pushed – which is what many comments on steam seem to imply.
One such comment read that the company had “Ruined a totally fine game by bringing modern politics into a B.C. era game,” and more than a few people seem to agree if the number of upvotes at last count – 213 – are anything to go by. Another comment stated that the game was “Ideological-driven historical revisionism that isn’t worth supporting”.
To be honest, the reasoning sounds silly. I’m not a fan of the Total War games in general, but if the reason you’re hating the game is that you don’t like pixelated women being apart of it – then I’m inclined to agree with McConnel. Who cares what gender your characters are if you’re having fun?