So Has the New COD Unintentionally Shifted the Medium Forward?

[marcooos]

So just been pondering this... Has Activision just accidentally paved the way for more gender equality in games?

I mean the current AAA industry practice is to homogenise and rip off COD as the publishers are convinced y'know that they will then make COD levels of money. So by introducing female avatars in multiplayer will everyone else start adding them in to try and compete with Activision? Yeah a load of it may be a straight cash grab but I think this could genuinely be a step forward

 

[Miss G.]

I guess, maybe if its used enough to be seen as a positive then other publishers who don't already have this addition might see it as an untapped gold mine or something. They do like to try to mimic the franchise's success, after all. There is the downside in that if the female avatars don't get used as much or if something negative happens, they'll just use it as exemplary ammo for not including the option in their games, because if CoD fails to popularize it, why bother?

 

[yungr3zzyson]

There have been other games that have female characters in the multiplayer. I don't think it will be solely Activision's move that changes all of this because it's already happened quite a bit.

 

[Eclectic Dreck]

Not in the slightest. Female Avatars are fairly common in video games. I know for certain they were present in Quake 3, I'm nearly certain they existed in the base version of Quake 2, have been found in Tribes and Planetside and exist in virtually any other genre you want to look at.

Their relative lack of presence in the modern military shooter is simply a function of the vague attempt at simulation: in most western nations, women are not intentionally allowed to participate in direct combat roles. The US military, for example, will not let a female serve in the cavalry (save as a pilot or other support role) armor, infantry, or artillery segments. A close inspection proves that to be relatively arbitrary of course: they are allowed to serve as pilots of armed aircraft, as military police (who are often responsible for maintaing security of a base and often serve as added security for convoys), as human intelligence collectors (Who move about outside the wire attempting to recruit intelligence sources) and a dozen other roles where they have a fair chance of seeing combat. Even now, decades after women were first allowed into the military in roles where the potential for combat was fairly high, there is still an endless argument about their suitability for the job - an argument that we certainly should not have in this thread.

 

[Hazy992]

Maybe? I mean as others have rightly pointed out COD won't be the first game to do this, not even close, but COD is definitely a series that can popularise an idea.

Was COD 4 the first game to have custom loadouts? No. Did it make that system popular in the mainstream? Absolutely. So if any series can make an idea stick it's Call of Duty.

Then again COD's community is terrible, so it wouldn't surprise me that anyone who uses a female avatar in multiplayer gets a bunch of misogynist bile hurled their way and the whole thing just backfires.

 

[endtherapture]

No not really. You've been able to play females in games like Dota, Quake 2, World of Warcraft, Unreal Tournament etc for many many years.

 

[Maximum Bert]

huh COD has female avatars now? you know its funny before you mentioned this I realised I hadnt assigned a gender to any COD avatars I just saw them as enemies and allies.

Its not like Timesplitters where I actually liked the avatars. In COD they are merely targets with no personality whatsoever so really cant see how being able to select no name woman is any better or worse than a no name man they may as well all be stick figures for all I care.

I really dont think it will advance the medium in any special way I suspect most people wont care either way about women avatars being in COD I mean its hardly a niche thing to be honest. Will dogs become popular companions in more games because COD features one even though plenty of games have done it already? I doubt it.

Not sure what the obsession is with trying to conform everything to some unwritten code of gender equality its so crippling games should be about what you want (if you make it) but then I dislike politics anyway.

 

[SilkySkyKitten]

I'd say it possibly has.

I mean, yes, like others have pointed it out CoD isn't the first to have playable females in the multiplayer at all. But nothing else is really as popular as CoD at all these days, so if these guys pull it off you're damn well sure someone's gonna look at it and try to mimic it. Especially considering how much people try to mimic CoD as it is these days...

 

[Tallim]

Last Of Us randomly assigns your gender each match. You customise clothing rather than features.

But as others have said this isn't a new thing to the genre but it will be interesting to see how COD diehards react to its inclusion. I suppose it depends on how it is handled.

 

[abebly]

Activision was quite intentional, and they're not exactly pioneers with the female avatar, so no.

 

[Legion]

No, they are merely catching up with the rest of the industry. When it comes to multiplayer, getting to play as both genders is hardly ground breaking.

Others have mentioned that seeing as it is COD, and COD is so popular it will make it more common. It is an interesting idea, but a lot of other very well known games already have it anyway.

Halo 3
Halo Reach
Halo 4
Gears of War 3
Gears of War Judgement
Assassins Creed Brotherhood
Assassins Creed Revelations
Assassins Creed 3
Bioshock 2
Tomb Raider
The Last of Us
Left 4 Dead
Left 4 Dead 2
Time Splitters
Time Splitters 2
Time Splitters Future Perfect
Mass Effect 3
Grand Theft Auto 4
Tenchu Z

Being just the games I have played with it in. I only counted ones with multiplayer versus, not co-op.

Not forgetting almost every MMO.

 

[Yopaz]

Activision was quite intentional, and they're not exactly pioneers with the female avatar, so no.

Basically this. You can bet your sweet ass that it wasn't unintentional and it can hardly be said to shift the medium forward in any way.

Female avatars is hardly doing anything. They exist in other games. If they had a well written female character who didn't talk with her tits then maybe that would be a step forward in its own little genre. All they have done is that they have added pixels that look like a female. No big deal.

 

[VodkaKnight]

Not really.
All they've really done is make modern war shooters crawl an inch further forward.
Playable female characters are common in most games.

 

[WashAran]

I think they did, and hope more games like WoW, LoL, DotA, Planetside 2, Gears of War and Halo, will now implement female character models in to their game.

 

[ZZoMBiE13]

So just been pondering this... Has Activision just accidentally paved the way for more gender equality in games?

I mean the current AAA industry practice is to homogenise and rip off COD as the publishers are convinced y'know that they will then make COD levels of money. So by introducing female avatars in multiplayer will everyone else start adding them in to try and compete with Activision? Yeah a load of it may be a straight cash grab but I think this could genuinely be a step forward

I'd praise them more if Halo didn't already add female body types in 2010. But I get what you're saying. The pack follows the alpha dog, and sadly CoD is still the shooter alpha dog.

 

[Ticklefist]

Hopefully I'm not the first person who understands there was nothing accidental about it.

 

[Thyunda]

At this stage, Call of Duty could revolutionise gaming as a whole and garner mainstream acceptance of the medium and you would STILL treat it like shit. It's a modern military first person shooter. Nobody criticises Forza Motorsport for its lack of plot depth or its hard-on for cars.

Ghosts is perfectly capable of being innovative, whether or not this thing in particular has been done before.

 

[Andy Shandy]

They might well do. Like people have already mentioned a fair amount of games already have the option of female avatars in multi-player, but since Call Of Duty, love it or hate it, is the biggest game series at the moment, this may become much more widespread.

 

[BrotherRool]

I think there are just way too many popular developers who include female character's without even thinking. I mean half the tacked on waste-of-space multiplayers have female character models.

CoD was lagging way behind the trend. The most innovative thing is that CoD is an MMS whereas a lot of the other big name multiplayer shooters with female models are sci-fi or action-adventure. And even now we tend to ignore culturally the idea of women in the army (for example, I can only say with maybe 80% confidence that Britain has front-line women soldiers through what I've picked up in cultural osmosis EDIT: It looks like we don't?) and it's in that the CoD is setting a good and interesting precedent. But the idea of women in multiplayers, is not only not unique, but pretty much default for the other genre's of game

I think they did, and hope more games like WoW, LoL, DotA, Planetside 2, Gears of War and Halo, will now implement female character models in to their game.

This is sarcasm right? I'm sorry to ask, but the 'I think they did' actually comes off as quite sincere and if it wasn't for WoW, LoL and DotA it might be quite easy to believe that someone hadn't realised those games have female characters (I mean you could be forgiven for not realising the models in Halo are feminine, it's all chunks of armour)

 

[Nadia Castle]

A best selling videogame has acknowledged that females exist? Why that's 'Political Correctness'!

http://thebooksmugglers.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/16539.png

In all seriousness it's kind of a sad indictment of gaming that this is a news worthy story...