Call of Duty: Black Ops 3 giving players the choice to either play through the campaign as a man or woman, the first time a female protagonist has featured in the series, was a welcome move. While the developer’s introduction of a female player-character may have been awkward – the script of the game was clearly written with a male hero in mind, with an NPC referring to the protagonist as “him” in the first 10 minutes even if you’ve opted to play as a woman – Treyarch were praised for their decision before we came to the realization that the ability to assume the role of a female protagonist had been shoehorned in.
However, while criticisms can certainly be leveled at Treyarch for their seemingly opportunistic move to introduce a female hero without actually altering the game’s script, to suggest that doing so is somehow “encouraging young women to be violent” isn’t an accusation that could be lobbed in the developer’s direction by any reasonably minded individual. However, that’s exactly what UK tabloid newspaper the Daily Mail has claimed that Black Ops 3 is doing, suggesting that Call of Duty is “targeting girls” by giving players the option to play as a woman.
This ludicrous claim was made in the Scottish version of the newspaper, with the tabloid including the opinions of two “experts” in order to tell us how a video game is aiming to turn women into depraved, violent, warmongers.
Also See: Call of Duty: Black Ops 3 Multiplayer Review – The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
Sue Palmer, a “child development expert” who therefore has a valuable opinion on an 18-rated game for some reason, said: “It will have the same impact on girls as it will have in any child. The evidence is that it will make them more cold and reckless or more withdrawn and fearful.” Let me stop you right there, Sue. “The evidence” that you’re referring to is non-existent, unless by evidence you mean worthless rhetoric spouted by right-wing politicians looking to curry favor with old people who want to blame young people for everything.
Her dim-witted comments were echoed by Vivienne Pattison, director of Mediawatch UK, who added: “I think it’s incredibly worrying when we start to use killing other people – and it’s much more realistic because you are the one doing it – as a form of entertainment.” Ah, yes, the realism of Black Ops 3. The first thing I thought after wall-running across the side of a building, before jet-packing into a crowd of enemies, shooting them down and then unleashing my R.A.P.S. rolling drone bomb scorestreak was “this would be so much easy to do in real life.”
It’s not as though the Daily Mail has ever adopted a stance on video games that hasn’t been batshit insane – this was the media outlet that once claimed terrorists were using Call of Duty for training purposes, after all – but the notion that young women are now going to become killing machines due to female characters being depicted in Black Ops 3 is a stretch even for them. With that being said, maybe the Daily Mail’s comments will eventually ring true, and we’ll have a Fallout-esque apocalypse on our hands in the near future brought upon by an army of wall-running female soldiers. Only time will tell.
