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

[DarkArk]

There have been some developed by chemicalalia that look fairly good, although it's pretty unlikely they ever get added. Some have cited the addition of extra silhouettes to distinguish between as a major factor, others have warned that hitboxs may be different sizes or not match up with the visible models, both serious problems for a class based competitive game.

Personally I just think it would break the game. When they added a second Misc item slot (for cosmetic badges and whatnot) the whole game went buggy as hell, and servers were crashing left and right. It was never intended to have as much extra crap (see: hats) added to it as has been, and I think it just can't take no more.

The silhouettes have been borked ever since they started adding in tons of hats and other misc items, so I really don't take that as an excuse. Also there have been some damn good female models made that don't screw with the hotboxes at all. No, Valve just doesn't want to do it for a hundred different reasons I can think of.

OT: nifty. I like playing female characters more than male ones, so I guess this will be the first CoD I'll pay attention to since the MW2 server fiasco.

 

[ShinyCharizard]

Yeah same. Until they make the multiplayer less of a clusterfuck designed for people with ADHD I won't be getting it.

so they have to adapt their game towards people with an illness who has more fake cases than real ones reported now? how about we make all games playable with one hand because you know there are people without one?
My point is: ADHD is your problem, not theirs.

What the fuck are you on about? That made no sense and I think you are taking my comment more seriously than intended.

 

[HellbirdIV]

I guess having a female playable character in the Singleplayer would be kind of pointless anyway, since the PC in most Call of Duty games has no character to speak of and their gender is only reflected in the pitch of their grunts when they get hit.

Imagine if they give the female soldiers skimpy armor outfits like we see in fantasy games!

Oh dear god I hope not.

 

[generals3]

Imagine if they give the female soldiers skimpy armor outfits like we see in fantasy games!

Would be the best troll of 2013. I think the reactions would be totally worth it.

 

[EvilRoy]

Snip

I'm not saying it would be easy but since they can make robot versions of every class and add a horde gametype, it seems pretty doable, especially with how much money valve makes of tf2 alone, not even counting steam and all their other content.

Snip

The silhouettes have been borked ever since they started adding in tons of hats and other misc items, so I really don't take that as an excuse. Also there have been some damn good female models made that don't screw with the hotboxes at all. No, Valve just doesn't want to do it for a hundred different reasons I can think of.

OT: nifty. I like playing female characters more than male ones, so I guess this will be the first CoD I'll pay attention to since the MW2 server fiasco.

I've gotta maintain my belief that the program just can't take it. Like if adding a second misc slot actually caused player and server wide stability issues, I really think this is a source code limitation. It would be one thing if you were just throwing skins on the player model, modding can do that no problem (although I find my fps drops a bit more than my liking), but actually doubling the number of unique player models that can be in game at once was almost certainly never envisioned when the original code was written.

Also, come on. They would have to redo half the hats to make sure there would be no clipping issues.

 

[Strazdas]

Yea, I don't believe that for a second. Not ever. How much can it cost to design a few base models, and record some female sounds and voice snippets? You don't need anything else.

(...)
A lot.
Voice acting is very expensive. Well, good voice acting anyway.

No. All you really need is one single female voice actor shouting a few dozen lines. And those lines don't exactly have to convey the same emotional depth as they do in games like Bioshock, Last of Us or Mass Effect. I'm not claiming it doesn't cost anything, but the costs are so low that the cost/benefit ratio should be off the charts.

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.

 

[CloudAtlas]

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.

 

[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.

 

[CloudAtlas]

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.

 

[Geo Da Sponge]

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.

Yes, especially when this is the franchise that got 50 Cent to do voice acting for them at one point, and he probably insisted on being paid in golden-laminated peacocks or something.

 

[BlackMageBob]

Good for CoD. Really. And I don't even like CoD.
Hopefully other FPS games *cough* Battlefield *cough* will pick up on this, since they're already trying to copy CoD anyway.

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.


I'm kinda disappointed that the USMC assault model isn't a black guy anymore. I'll miss his voice when I'm begging support for ammo.

 

[KarmaTheAlligator]

The part I don't get is why this actually needed to be specified, or used as a sell point (because that's what it is). It's obviously not going to change anything gameplay-wise, so why bother mentioning it? Are they really so short on any possible real innovation that this is seen as one? Pretty sure no other game with a multiplayer mode has ever needed to say there will be female characters before.

 

[CloudAtlas]

The part I don't get is why this actually needed to be specified, or used as a sell point (because that's what it is). It's obviously not going to change anything gameplay-wise, so why bother mentioning it? Are they really so short on any possible real innovation that this is seen as one? Pretty sure no other game with a multiplayer mode has ever needed to say there will be female characters before.

Now I really don't know, perhaps they didn't emphasize it, the press just noticed it when the devs showed of the CoD multiplayer to them, and thought it was worth reporting? Especially since, as some would say, little else is.

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.

 

[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.

 

[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.