 After 12 years of development, Kingdom Hearts 3 has finally arrived, and it is, as far as everyone is concerned, phenomenal. It's hard to find any genuine criticism with the game, and its sublime mash-up of Final Fantasy characters with the many wondrous worlds that are under the control of the House of Mouse. Some very difficult, deliberate decisions were made over the course of Kingdom Hearts 3's development. We are currently working on a full video game story time episode about why the game took so long to be finished, but with so much to research, it might take a little while longer. One of the big challenges that developer Square Enix had in creating the game was deciding which Disney properties to include. For example, Kingdom Hearts Legacy director Tetsuya Nomura has said that he was initially very hesitant to include characters from Frozen, most notably Elsa, because her popularity is so vast that he worried about living up to people's expectations. Conversely, the decision was made to include Pirates of the Caribbean characters yet again because of the excitement regarding new engine technology and the gameplay opportunities that these provided. And of course, because the game's 12-year development cycle meant that developers couldn't foresee Johnny Depp's eventual decline in popularity a decade in advance. So ultimately, the choices that were made with this game and which characters get the most screen time has involved a lot of debate over a long period of time. We've ended up with a version of Kingdom Hearts 3 that heavily focuses on CGI Disney characters, princesses from Tangled and Frozen, as well as Pixar heroes from Toy Story and Monsters Inc. But within the Venn diagram of princesses and Pixar, there is one character that is sorely lacking from Kingdom Hearts 3. Merida, first born of Clan Dunbrok, seems like a perfect fit for this game. If the team at Square Enix are interested in unique gameplay opportunities, Merida would be ideal. Her proficiency in horseback archery and in waterfall rock climbing would make for a phenomenal gaming experience that would make a Kingdom Hearts game shine. And yet, Merida is notably absent from the new game. Her only inclusion in the Kingdom Hearts series at all is a tangential side reference in the Wii U spin-off title, Kingdom Hearts Eclipse. Now, every Disney fan is going to have their own personal preferences and their own favourite characters that they would like to see included in a prominent role in the Kingdom Hearts series. We are not going to pretend that we're unbiased. In fact, our fondness for Merida stems directly from our three-year-old daughter's deep, abiding love of the character. This morning, our little girl fished her Merida dress-up dress off her clothes rail and requested that we dress her up in it. This has been a regular occurrence since we took her to Disneyland last year and she wore the dress for two days solid. The happiest moment of her life was when Merida came running down from a stage during a parade to give her a hug. And yet, our daughter has never seen Disney Pixar's Brave all the way through. She loves the character, but doesn't like the film itself. So why is Merida left out of Kingdom Hearts 3 when Rapunzel, Elsa, Buzz, Woody and Mike Wazowski get top billing? Simply put, it's because Brave isn't actually a very good film. Sure, it's got its good moments. It managed to win an Oscar for Best Animated Feature, although that award should really be renamed Most Commercially Successful Disney Movie by this point. But Brave is fundamentally flawed. It's not a particularly engrossing watch, the payoff to its narrative arc feels rushed and it fails to deliver a satisfying experience. Merida is a fantastic character in her own right, but she really deserves a better movie. And it's no surprise that Tetsuya Nomura and his team passed on opportunity to give her a role in Kingdom Hearts 3. So, case closed, right? Brave isn't a good movie, and that's all there is to say on the matter? Well, not really. Because the success of Monsters Inc and Toy Story are directly connected to the failure of Brave. In order to unpack why Merida is not a more beloved princess, we need to look at the environment in which her film was developed. Perhaps this feels tangential to the story of video game development, but don't worry, we're going to tie this all together at the end. Brenda Chapman is an incredibly talented animated filmmaker. She co-directed Prince of Egypt, the film which kickstarted Dreamworks. Were it not for Shrek, that studio would have likely gone in a far more sincere, heartfelt direction with its early movies. Brenda also worked on most of your favourite Disney films. She was a story supervisor on The Lion King and Beauty and the Beast. We happen to spot her name in the credits as a storyboard artist on The Little Mermaid when we watched that film yesterday as a family. Well, we watched parts of The Little Mermaid. That film is terrifying, even for grown-ups. The point is, Brenda Chapman is one of the unsung heroes of the Disney renaissance. It was only logical, after all this success, that she was eventually given the opportunity to direct her own Disney Princess movie. Seriously, we know this isn't about gaming, but we're getting there, trust us. In her work on Cars, in which she was brought in to fix the movie's one-dimensional female character, Brenda was given the opportunity to direct her own Pixar film. Brenda based her initial concept for Brave on her own relationship with her daughter. It's no coincidence that Merida has fiery red hair, just like the Chapman women. Artists and animators were looking at their director and her family for inspiration surrounding what Merida should look like. This was a personal story of parenthood and family ties. Logically then, it ought to fit perfectly with Pixar's primary studio theme. Toy Story, Monsters Inc., The Incredibles, Finding Nemo. The most enduring Pixar films are always built around parenthood, whether this means real parents or surrogates. Pixar films are family movies in that they are literally about families. Brave then perfectly fit the bill. But then, Brenda hit an unexpected roadblock. Simply put, her team of creators weren't getting the support and resources they needed. With several projects in development at once within Pixar, Brave was often given less attention from the higher-ups within the company. Brenda began to butt heads with John Lasseter, the head of the studio. She found herself really pushing to get the attention she needed for Brave and to make sure that other women at the studio weren't trampled underfoot. Former Pixar employee Emma Coats has said that it wasn't unusual for her to be talked over during meetings. Then, in her own words, Brenda would quiet the room and be like, Emma, you started to say something? Brenda had to openly fight to allow her voice and the voice of other women within the studio to be heard. Cassandra Smolkic, another artist who worked at Pixar at around this time, explained the climate thusly in an article for Variety. A female lead in my department once begged her male bosses to support her with a team to complete a challenging production project. Her male superiors repeatedly ignored her requests until the stress of the job led her into a state of psychological and physical breakdown. When she went into sabbatical to recover, her male replacement was given a team of half a dozen artists to help him complete the same task. When I received a perplexing performance review after finishing my fourth production, it felt I'd never be equally recognised as a valuable asset by the company. The lengthy negative column listed things like, designs too many options, seems like she's trying too hard, asks too many questions. When I shared the document with my candid male mentor, who openly acknowledged the culture of sexism at Pixar, he said, If you were a man, every one of those negatives would be in the positive column. Physically and mentally burnt out after years of bumping up against the glass ceiling, I left Pixar at age 30, hoping to find a workplace where I could genuinely thrive. Brenda found herself caught up in a battle for equality within Pixar, when John Lasseter had finally had enough of her pushing back against this treatment. He fired her. According to Emma Coates, To me, Brenda could have behaved exactly the way any of the male directors behaved, but it would have been taken differently, which is frustrating. Realising that, it made me realise, there's nobody without Brenda to look up to, there's nobody I can look up to. Imitating the guys isn't going to give me the same results as it gives them. When she was removed from the project, I felt kind of lost. I can't see why what happened to her wouldn't happen to me. Emma wasn't the only artist at Pixar who was struggling after Brenda was removed from Brave. The entire team that was working on the film was now forced to adapt and shift gears as the replacement director, Mark Andrews, attempted to rework the film. They made some... interesting decisions. For a time, Pixar's heads attempted to strip away the mother-daughter relationship aspect of the film entirely, and instead turn the piece into a film about fatherhood. Let me restate that, because it's important. Pixar tried to change a film about a mother who turns into a bear so that it was about fatherhood. Needless to say, this change didn't last, and, according to Brenda, much of her ideas that were axed were ultimately added back in, albeit filtered through a different lens. So if Pixar's Brave seems a little disjointed, there's a good reason for that. The film is a Frankenstein's monster, a confused mess that was made by cobbling together half-developed ideas that didn't entirely mesh. As a result, while Merida is a fantastic character and very important to us in this house, Brave is hardly a popular Disney film. It's no surprise that it didn't get included in Kingdom Hearts 3. So why have we taken your time by lecturing you about cartoon development in the middle of a video game storytime essay? Alas, the games industry is not entirely unlike Pixar when it comes to the Boys Club mentality. The majority of game studios still struggle to take female creators seriously. A frankly depressing example of this is the experience of Delaney King, a seasoned video game developer who is into sex, and who recently posted on Twitter about her experience transitioning from presenting as male to female and how it affected her job prospects, said Delaney. Having over 20-plus years' experience and several games of the year under my belt, transitioning from presenting male to female goes like this. As male, head-hunted by studios, flown to interviews overseas. As female, email response to CV. We don't think you would be happy here. Applications 10, interviews 8, offers 7. As female, applications 10, interviews 2, offers 2, one as junior. Salary presenting male, 100,000 plus Australian dollars. Highest salary presenting female, 45,000 on contract. I cannot stress this enough. If you are a woman in games, you are being screwed over. Oh, and one of the companies that head-hunted me for a lead cinematics modeler as a male turned me down instantly as a female for a junior art director role. I had eight years' experience as art director. Delaney later returned to the Twitter thread with this comment. Already getting abusive messages from dudes. Thanks. That's really helping prove my point. The games industry is not a level playing field, and this leads to brave-style situations. There's a common complaint within games journalism at the moment that modern titles are too homogeneous. They're all variations on the same idea, the same gameplay modes, the same story themes and character tropes. This is partly because the industry is increasingly targeting a single, predominantly male audience, but it also comes from the decision-makers behind the scenes. Without a diverse variety of perspectives involved in making the games, the result is a series of big-budget titles that all feel very, very familiar. But the good news is that things are slowly changing. The indie gaming scene levels the playing field somewhat, and incredible game developers like Jane Inge, Laura Shigahara and Rebecca Cordingly are making truly spectacular work at studios both big and small. And Disney is changing too. John Lasseter was forced to depart Disney following sustained allegations of some rather nasty behaviour towards women. His replacement, Jennifer Lee, was the director of Frozen, a film that did get a prominent role in Kingdom Hearts 3. Who knows, maybe our daughter's favourite hero will turn up in a subsequent Kingdom Hearts game. In the meantime, if anyone needs us, we'll be trying to track down a Merida Disney Infinity toy on eBay. The nice thing about Merida's relative unpopularity is that her merchandise is always really cheap.