Why Female ‘Call of Duty’ Players Aren’t a Tech Breakthrough

[Guest]

Customizable multiplayer characters is about tech. Female characters — that's another question.

Why Female ‘Call of Duty’ Players Aren’t a Tech Breakthrough : Read more

 

[fulle]

If they wanted to be representative of the "diversity of the US military", they'd keep the dominantly male character models.
- Statistically, still around 98-99% of casualties of war are male, precisely because the more dangerous roles, like you'd see in Call of Duty, are performed almost exclusively by males. Is that discrimination? Well, against whom, exactly? The male gender, who's lives are considered more expendable? Or the females who want to be treated as true equals, but have difficulty advancing due to lack of combat experience?

Anyway, though, despite the irritating PR spin, I'm glad that gaming is becoming more inclusive.

 

[kin3000]

Putting 'Call of Duty' and 'Tech Breakthrough' in the same sentence made me throw up in my mouth a bit. I think including the word "Aren't" (though it should be "Isn't") kept it from spilling out. The need to create an article to explain that the ability to create a playable female character isn't a tech breakthrough baffles me. I don't think anyone would've thought it was.

 

[gggplaya]

Nothing breakthrough here. Other games like APB reloaded center around character customization, male and female.

 

[gm0n3y]

The COD games haven't been any good since COD4. Customization character models are good though.

 

[MajinCry]

Well gee, haven't games been doing this for the past decade or two? Baldur's Gate 1 had customization for both genders, for crying out loud. An aged 2D game made for the days of Win95.

 

[StarBound]

The problem facing the female gender in a game like call of duty is that should this have happened during CoD4 we might have seen violence against women rights groups using CoD as a scape goat. It's silly but sadly we live in such a world.

I'm not defending activision in anyway. I would have liked to see this happen much earlier rather than now with my interest in CoD on its deathbed. I'm sure the cod gender split is about 30-50% for both so should such an outcry have been against women it would easily have been countered with "We are women and we will **** you up!".

 

[dragonfang18]

1) it is call of duty, i dont take their crap seriously. If you can play as a dog go ahead.
2) Just play ARMA if you prefer something more "real" than CoD.

 

[bison88]

Many games, especially FPS titles, in recent years have went through extraordinary lengths to appease women gamers by adding unnecessary female characters that never fit the storyline. This is just another example. I'm sure people will just chalk this up to chauvinism, sexism, or being misogynistic though and they'd be wrong.

 

[firefoxx04]

is this a lash out at IW because they decided to add it into the game? It is not a side effect of them allowing player customization. you say it was as side effect like the didnt even want to add female support.

They didnt gloat about the fact that you can be a female. When they announced it live, it was not something he really pushed. He simply stated that you can be a female. Who cares. Sounds like someone is butt hurt.


The amount of females in an infantry unit is very very small.

 

[firefoxx04]

is this a lash out at IW because they decided to add it into the game? It is not a side effect of them allowing player customization. you say it was as side effect like the didnt even want to add female support.

They didnt gloat about the fact that you can be a female. When they announced it live, it was not something he really pushed. He simply stated that you can be a female. Who cares. Sounds like someone is butt hurt.


The amount of females in an infantry unit is very very small.

 

[kinggraves]

Who cares? When do I get to play as Dog in multiplayer?

 

[ojas]

Excellent, i like that on Tom's Hardware (for a change) i'm reading an article that recognizes the fact that women have been missing from shooters for a long, long while.

And the truth is, devs are just lazy, and publishers are f***ing ignorant.

Now, waiting for Arma 3 to follow suit.

 

[10hellfire01]

Actually what caught my eye in the article was not playable women character models, but the engine. Many games already have female character models playable, so Activision/the developers are simply late to the game on that one. The one thing they need to pay attention to are the hit boxes due to the varying size difference between male/female models.

That meant rebuilding the engine from scratch, which meant a lot of work. Infinity Ward announced in May that it was rehauling the IW engine for its upcoming game, the engine's first major rehaul since its creation.

I thought they were building upon the already cluttered engine from each game in the past? They said they had no intention of rebuilding that much of any kind in the PSMag interview on Youtube. Sort of confused about what they are actually doing now...

 

[Jill Scharr]

@10helfire01 you're right! The engine was NOT built from scratch--while Infinity Ward significantly modified the IW engine, they did not rebuild it from scratch. The article has been edited to reflect that. Thanks for catching that!

 

[Spooderman]

Who the hell cares? No, seriously. Who actually cares? It's a low-tier game with low tier players.

 

[IQ11110002]

Hmmm forgive me but I just have the urge to say it,

Tea bagging will have a whole new meaning!

 

[melvis72]

Nothing COD does is a breakthrough, so many games have done what they claim. All the mindless sheep will eat it up and think its the best thing since sliced bread and run their mouths about how great the game is. The COD train needs to derail, enough of the wash rinse repeat. Its sad that most FPS games get compared to COD now to see if they are worth playing when in fact COD is making FPS stale because other companies think they need to make games like it, they need to take chances and evolve the genre to make it grow or it will die off.

 

[24oz]

I remember MOHAA had a female character Manon but it might have been a modified pk3 file.this was in 2003.

 

[yapchagi]

they should change the title of this article to "Why all Call of Duty games Aren’t a Tech Breakthrough?