Call of Duty: Sexism or Audience Appeal?

Call of Duty, with it's 8th installment (out of 10 at the moment) being the fastest selling game of all time, had sold more than 8.8 million copies during it's first month. The CoD franchise has some very incredible statistics. It is estimated that 2,000 YEARS worth of CoD is played DAILY, with more than 25 billion hours estimated to have been played, there must be a lot of people who have played. That number of people is an astounding 100,000,000 people. With this many people playing the game, the events and storyline of the games (although primarily multiplayer games) have a massive impact on idealogy. 

With the lack of women characters within CoD, this could lead many to believe that warfighting and special-operations are jobs for men only. Realistically speaking, movies and video games are as close to war "experience" most people have gotten. From the release of the original CoD, all the way up to the current CoD, Ghosts, women have never been involved in the storyline in any major way. If at all, they appear as minor characters, who are usually introduced and forgotten about within a period of 5 minutes. In CoD: Modern Warfare 3 (2011) there are no appearances by women except for civilians, who are shown in cut-scenes. Women are more involved in Black Ops II (2012), where the terrorist trying to destroy humanity as we know it began his mission after his sister was accidentally killed by a vengeful Navy SEAL. Although women did enjoy slightly larger involvement within the game, this unnamed women never actually appeared within the game. Women, yet again, gain minor steps towards greater involvement in Ghosts (2013). While women actually appear within the game this time, they are yet again minor characters. Women appear from time to time on various side-missions, but again, not even important enough characters to be named. While the lack of female characters could be a result of the developers own preconceptions that women do not fight in wars, this could also be a way of appealing more to male players, considering the vast majority of gamers are male. Either way, with over 100 million people around the world having been exposed to Call of Duty games at some point in their lives, the lack of female characters may lead many into false conceptions that warfighting is for men, and men only. 

Whilst an overwhelmingly large percentage of CoD players prefer playing multiplayer, with such a sexually imbalanced character roster, women have yet to be featured as a main character in Call of Duty. 

This website was used to obtain a few facts: http://arcadesushi.com/call-of-duty-facts-that-will-blow-your-mind/

Modern Warfare 3 Trailer (no women characters): http://www.callofduty.com/mw3/videos/launch_trailer

Black Ops II Trailer (no women characters): http://www.callofduty.com/blackops2/videos/bts_review