"Call of Duty: Ghosts Features Female Soldiers in Multiplayer"

[CloudAtlas]

DICE bases the teams on actual specwar groups. In BF4, the PLA team models are based on the PLASOF, the Russians are Spetznaz, and the Americans are...Force Recon again? In any case, none of those three groups field female soldiers. Technically, the US COULD, but we can't even find women capable of passing Infantry Officer training yet.

While that may be true, would this nice move towards greater inclusiveness really hurt anyone's immersion that much? After all it's not like that's the only thing in the game that isn't quite hundred percent realistic.

I don't see it as a question of immersion as much as a question of the developers personal desire to be 'correct'.

Like, nobody builds a perfect scale model of their hometown to increase the immersion of their train set, they do it because having a set reality to work towards is an attainable and satisfying goal. DICE just want their model military to look as much like the real thing as possible, even if the gameplay could never match real military life.

Perhaps you're right, but I'd call this desire for correctness to be misguided. You're trading off realism for greater enjoyment in countless of other ways, and this trade-off is often much worse, so why stop here.

As a Battlefield veteran and potential buyer of BF4, I'd find this move really nice. It seems to be too late for the vanilla game, but why not add female player models with DLC?

Oh, and DICE excuse for not doing that, which basically is "we have better things to do"... lame. Because it's so much work to add even just one female player model...

 

[BlackMageBob]

DICE bases the teams on actual specwar groups. In BF4, the PLA team models are based on the PLASOF, the Russians are Spetznaz, and the Americans are...Force Recon again? In any case, none of those three groups field female soldiers. Technically, the US COULD, but we can't even find women capable of passing Infantry Officer training yet.

While that may be true, would this nice move towards greater inclusiveness really hurt anyone's immersion that much? After all it's not like that's the only thing in the game that isn't quite hundred percent realistic.

I don't see it as a question of immersion as much as a question of the developers personal desire to be 'correct'.

Like, nobody builds a perfect scale model of their hometown to increase the immersion of their train set, they do it because having a set reality to work towards is an attainable and satisfying goal. DICE just want their model military to look as much like the real thing as possible, even if the gameplay could never match real military life.

Perhaps you're right, but I'd call this desire for correctness to be misguided. You're trading off realism for greater enjoyment in countless of other ways, and this trade-off is often much worse, so why stop here.

As a Battlefield veteran and potential buyer of BF4, I'd find this move really nice. It seems to be too late for the vanilla game, but why not add female player models with DLC?

Oh, and DICE excuse for not doing that, which basically is "we have better things to do"... lame. Because it's so much work to add even just one female player model...

I'd really prefer that DICE puts more effort into gameplay, balance, and some attempt at realism. DICE doesn't even use customizable characters, really. Choose your class, your camo color, and go. It'll never be ARMA, but I can always they'll try and make the better game, rather than try to pander.

And I keep seeing this bit at the end about "its not much work to add a female model." Yes, yes it is. A female model would have be built differently, it would have to move differently, it would have to be tested differently, and it would present a different profile in gameplay. That is a lot of work, and if they do bother to put a female model in the game, I'd hope they would put the appropriate amount of effort into it.

 

[EvilRoy]

DICE bases the teams on actual specwar groups. In BF4, the PLA team models are based on the PLASOF, the Russians are Spetznaz, and the Americans are...Force Recon again? In any case, none of those three groups field female soldiers. Technically, the US COULD, but we can't even find women capable of passing Infantry Officer training yet.

While that may be true, would this nice move towards greater inclusiveness really hurt anyone's immersion that much? After all it's not like that's the only thing in the game that isn't quite hundred percent realistic.

I don't see it as a question of immersion as much as a question of the developers personal desire to be 'correct'.

Like, nobody builds a perfect scale model of their hometown to increase the immersion of their train set, they do it because having a set reality to work towards is an attainable and satisfying goal. DICE just want their model military to look as much like the real thing as possible, even if the gameplay could never match real military life.

Perhaps you're right, but I'd call this desire for correctness to be misguided. You're trading off realism for greater enjoyment in countless of other ways, and this trade-off is often much worse, so why stop here.

As a Battlefield veteran and potential buyer of BF4, I'd find this move really nice. It seems to be too late for the vanilla game, but why not add female player models with DLC?

Oh, and DICE excuse for not doing that, which basically is "we have better things to do"... lame. Because it's so much work to add even just one female player model...

Fair, but you have to remember that its only a tradeoff from where you stand. Fans of military history/technology/tactics tend to really enjoy seeing that kind of thing represented properly even if the accuracy does not actually help them get more immersed or improve the gameplay in any tangible way. DICE just decided what group they want to impress early on.

As far as adding a female model, unless you expect them to just reskin a male model, then yea it is quite a bit of work. Essentially the same amount of work as producing one male model, since you have to do everything you did for the male model, barring some of the re-usable textures, again, since women are generally sized differently and move differently than men.

Based on advice I found through a wuivk google search it looks like for a single character with a simple movement animation (15 seconds long) (no reloading/fancy grapevining footwork ect.) it can take about 6.5 weeks, plus another week-ish for ever single additional animation you add. So reloading 4 kinds of weapons is another months effort.

 

[CloudAtlas]

Based on advice I found through a wuivk google search it looks like for a single character with a simple movement animation (15 seconds long) (no reloading/fancy grapevining footwork ect.) it can take about 6.5 weeks, plus another week-ish for ever single additional animation you add. So reloading 4 kinds of weapons is another months effort.

I'm not sure though if you really need all that work. Many games of that kind I remember didn't use different skeletons and animations for the two genders, I think - although I didn't really pay attention to that, so I might be mistaken here. Not even many (most?) of Mass Effect's Shepard's animations, that I definitely noticed.
I mean, if the female model is as tall es the male one, with roughly the same arm and leg length, not sure how big of a discernible difference gender makes in movement. In the context of such a online shooter game, anyway, where the female soldiers aren't supposed to behave very "feminine". Might not be the first best solution, but I guess it would be better than nothing.

But since I'm in no way an expert on this subject, I've nothing more to offer than (barely) educated guesses, so I'll leave it at that. In any case, I won't be buying Call of Duty: Ghosts just for their female player models, and I won't be boycotting BF4 just because it thwarts my gender-bending ambitions.

 

[runic knight]

except thats not really true. That one single female voice actor shouting a few dozen lines is expensive. It is no longer the days of silent hill 2 that you can find a random guy on the street and make him do your voice acting.

Maybe you draw the line between cheap and expensive at a different place then I do.

they added female models? Yay?

I guess for the sake of more options, it is always a good thing, supposing they are balanced in terms of hit box and everything else. So good for that.
As for it being a move in the right direction towards female representation and everything else some people tout this as... I'll be less optimistic. Bare bones, it seems a "ok, shut up already" sort of move.

So, in the end, I guess it is good, though really sort of "meh" to me.

I don't really know what else you could do towards greater inclusiveness in an online shooter, apart from addressing player behavior. But if you have some ideas here, I'm always willing to learn.

Genderlessness? I can't think of how to be completely inclusive then by not playing any favorites at all. Also solves the balance issue right out the door. The games are taking place in the future anyways, why not just say "every fighter is a robot" or some such nonsense, remove gender from the equation entirely.
The main issue would have to be behavior to address to help inclusion. The problem being, anonymity makes that hard to monitor. I think player behavior does infinitely more harm to inclusion then the character model choices ever would, as I have not meet a woman who is upset that they can't play a female sprite in the games they love. I know they are out there, but it seems player behavior and moderation(or lack there of) is what turns people away from multiplayer games. I wont touch LoL or DOTA simple because of that myself.

 

[Strazdas]

except thats not really true. That one single female voice actor shouting a few dozen lines is expensive. It is no longer the days of silent hill 2 that you can find a random guy on the street and make him do your voice acting.

Maybe you draw the line between cheap and expensive at a different place then I do.

Or maybe you underestimate the expenses of quality voice acting.

Do tell me how many million dollars more it costs to cast one more voice actor and maybe rent the studio a little bit longer to record a few dozen lines more and put it all into the game. You know, in addition to all the voice actors you already have who have a lot more dialogue that you already have to implement anyway.

COD is often praised for keeping a very tight budget compared to other shooters. Hundreds of thousands is A LOT to them. COD budget often does not reach 50 million, compared to, say, 300million games we get sometimes.

 

[CloudAtlas]

(...) I don't really know what else you could do towards greater inclusiveness in an online shooter, apart from addressing player behavior. But if you have some ideas here, I'm always willing to learn.

Genderlessness? I can't think of how to be completely inclusive then by not playing any favorites at all. Also solves the balance issue right out the door. The games are taking place in the future anyways, why not just say "every fighter is a robot" or some such nonsense, remove gender from the equation entirely.
The main issue would have to be behavior to address to help inclusion. The problem being, anonymity makes that hard to monitor. I think player behavior does infinitely more harm to inclusion then the character model choices ever would, as I have not meet a woman who is upset that they can't play a female sprite in the games they love. I know they are out there, but it seems player behavior and moderation(or lack there of) is what turns people away from multiplayer games. I wont touch LoL or DOTA simple because of that myself.

As removing genders means removing humans, it would lead to a very different game though, and that's not what I meant. I'm not sure if removing gender entirely is always the best way to signal women that their gender is just as welcome as the other.
I agree with you, though, that player behavior is probably the main issue. Much more could, and should, be done in this department. You won't be able to eliminate the problem, sure, but you have to attempt it anyway, and you have to be willing to spend enough money for it.
Don't the next gen consoles both come with some kind of recording feature? This should make recording offensive behavior ingame pretty easy, shouldn't it? And if consoles can do that, so could the PC. And stuff outside of the actual games, like sending people clearly insulting or threatening messages on Xbox live should always lead to a temporary ban already for the first time you do it, and it should take only very few additional violations for a permanent ban.
Altough I'm certainly not envying the poor folks from customer support who have to read all these insults all day to make judgements...

 

[GiantRaven]

COD is often praised for keeping a very tight budget compared to other shooters. Hundreds of thousands is A LOT to them. COD budget often does not reach 50 million, compared to, say, 300million games we get sometimes.

Which games cost $300 million to make? I'm drawing a blank on finding anything over The Old Republic's $200 million and GTA V's $137 million.

 

[Strazdas]

COD is often praised for keeping a very tight budget compared to other shooters. Hundreds of thousands is A LOT to them. COD budget often does not reach 50 million, compared to, say, 300million games we get sometimes.

Which games cost $300 million to make? I'm drawing a blank on finding anything over The Old Republic's $200 million and GTA V's $137 million.

You are correct. that shouldhave been 200 million. I was thinking of the Old Republic. Also notice how the most expensive game is said to be the most voice-acted game mind you.

 

[Gethsemani_v1legacy]

You are correct. that shouldhave been 200 million. I was thinking of the Old Republic. Also notice how the most expensive game is said to be the most voice-acted game mind you.

In this particular case you probably don't need a new voice actor though. Just take the voice actor of whatever token female character is in there (usually an announcer or communications officer) and have her do those 50 or so extra lines required for MP voices. It'd take maybe half a day extra in the studio and additional expenses can probably be counted in the hundreds of dollars at the most.

It is also worth pointing out that TOR is a bloated mess of a game that tries to tell 8 different, unique stories with unique NPCs within an MMO, all of these stories roughly of the same length as KOTOR. Comparing the voice acting in an ordinary RPG to TOR is like comparing a hill to Mount Everest.

 

[glider4]

I don't think much of it. Halo has had female characters since 3 at least (I never played 2) and more female's play video games now than ever before (though most tend to play casual games more). So yea I suppose it's good. Not really a big thing though in my opinion