Publishers said 'You can't have a female character,' says Remember Me dev

Remember Me developer Dontnod Entertainment has revealed that while trying to secure funding for the action game, some publishers were wary to sign on because of its female lead character named Nilin.

"We had some that said, 'Well, we don't want to publish it because that's not going to succeed. You can't have a female character in games. It has to be a male character, simple as that,'" creative director Jean-Max Morris told The Penny Arcade Report.

"We wanted to be able to tease on Nilin's private life, and that means for instance, at one point, we wanted a scene where she was kissing a guy," Morris added. "We had people tell us, 'You can't make a dude like the player kiss another dude in the game, that's going to feel awkward.'"

Morris said this kind of thinking is holding the medium back in terms of maturity.

"There's a level of immersion that you need to be at, but it's not like your sexual orientation is being questioned by playing a game," he said. "I don't know, that's extremely weird to me."

Earlier this month, Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag game director Ashraf Ismail said a female Assassin's Creed protagonist "wouldn't be surprising," despite all previous core entries featuring male leads.

Before that, Epic Games art director Chris Perna said in February that female lead characters for the Gears of War series could negatively impact a game's sales potential. "If you look at what sells, it's tough to justify something like that," he said at the time.

Remember Me launches June 4 for the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and PC and is published by Capcom. For more, check out GameSpot's previous coverage.