Microsoft Rejected Fable Dev's Idea to Put Black Woman on Fable 3 Cover - Report

Another article brought me back to this one, I know its pretty old...BUT

McCormack sounds like an idiot. He may be fighting for the right reasons, but he's fucking stupid. Firstly, the target audience is not black women. It's mostly white males - especially since its a game with British appeal. ****, the region is named Albion - fashioned after traditional England. People are white there. Not saying nonwhite women wouldn't be interested in a game like this, but they're not the main demographic. And Marketing always needs to appeal to the main demographics. And I expect most african americans wouldn't give a shit.

Secondly, can you even be black in this game? From my memory, no. So not only is it a fucking stupid idea but its one that promotes false advertising and could've resulted in a sueing. Making the cover hero a black woman for the sake of being a black woman is the kind of idea that a no-brains SJW would drum up, not a professional video game designer.

Microsoft made the right call.

This sounds like bullshit, Mccormack is just being a little baby and trying to spin Microsoft turning the idea down into a race issue, if its even true to begin with.

Here's why the cover character shouldn't be a black woman. First of all the character you play has is directly related to the hero from fable 2 who was white, and then there's the issue of not even being able to play as black person so having that on the cover would be wildly misleading to the potential buyer.

Fable 3 was the most restricted in the sense that you can be whatever you want, so this seems like a weird issue to me.

Ignoring the obvious exaggeration in what he's saying, as I doubt everyone would be screaming **** you at each other. Target demographics are a thing and games are a business at the end of the day so they have to maximise sale potential and that means tailoring the game to the demographic that is most likely to buy it. Basing a decision on that principle isn't in any way shape or form wrong.

I imagine this was one conversation he had with marketing and they turned his idea down because of obvious reasons. now he's blowing it out of proportion so he can score some brownie points with the progressive movement in games in an attempt to stay relevant.

Might have picked the wrong side there buddy.

The author of this article failed to include this information in the paragraph before the excerpt he chose to copy and paste. "The marketing was shit," he says. "It was terrible. They just didn't get it. But it wasn't Microsoft's marketing. Marketing was like its own department."

I expect there will have to be some loud retractions after this Microsoft-smearing cock-up.

thats so raciest. but hey thats industry for you today.

As if this conversation would have went any different at any Company lol. Is this some type of bullshit MS slander article. Try getting Sony or Nintendo to put a Black woman on the cover of one of their games and see what happens lol.

And why would they want a black woman when 90% of the players of this game will be white males lol.

They guy wanted MS to lose sales and piss off fans in the name of What?His White guilt lol, Not like any black people would have gave a crap about what color the cover person is.

What if say we change the branding on Uncle Ben's rice, to oh maybe a 40 year old white soccer mum grinning at you from the shelves?

You know, for the sake of diversity.

Will it sell you think? And what if someone gets upset cos you cant change it?

Packaging matters, it's simple marketing

(It's also just common sense)

This is not surprising in the least. Ad execs are all about selling to the culture, regardless of it's morality. Look how long it took commercials in America to start using multi-racial families or dark skinned black people (as opposed to the Halle Berry complexion). The representation is still way below actual population.

I mean, the Microsoft guy isn't wrong. Gamers and society at large are still pretty racist and sexist. That much is apparent just by reading some of the comments on this article. But that's not to say it should be that way.

Sounds like this guy has bitter beans in his head.

I don't buy it... I believe there was a push to have a white male on the cover but I highly doubt most of these statements and quotes were actually true.

Perhaps inside their heads it happened...

All in all, BS.

Is anyone really shocked by this?

I call bullshit, sounds like a butthurt person that cries racism because she didnt got the job

@lonesamurai1: is that supposed to be a bad thing (being white)? I am not understanding this seemingly racist notion that anything "white" is not diverse and inherently bad. I would think from a business, or any other standpoint, diversity should be valued by the notion of thought, not skin color.

I'm not trying to defend them here but Lionhead just wanted to jump on that diversity hype train thats still going on lol.

Diversity is just an underhanded way of saying that there should be less white people.

I wonder how many people reading this will be like 'Microsoft is crap' or what have you. Heck, they may still think this, but Microsoft is in a different place now than it was when Fable 2 and three were made. As for the topic, I can't speak by generalizing, only for myself, but I can say that I think it's stupid, and putting a woman (or in this case, a black woman) on a cover wouldn't make me think one way or another about getting the game. If the game is good, I want to get it, if it's not, I won't. That said, when it comes to Fable, if it's about choose your own hero, don't put a character on there at all. I hear putting a character on the front will sell more copies, but that's ridiculous. Just put Albion on the front.

This shit doesn't surprise me at all and, then they wonder why the Xbox is nonexistent in countries like japan. while the ps4 is selling in droves worldwide. their business standards are going to leave them last place.

Marketing wise, it's a fact that white males sale more product, and yes, that is true among females as well, females are more likely to buy a product if it has a white male on it.

This is business, not racism, I don't get offended when I don't get an acting part as black girl.

This just doesn't happen in video game development. This also happens in the hiring process with most businesses as well : p On a lighter note we finally got a black Disney Prince this year... Black Panther.. rofl