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

[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