According to a former DICE coder, female soldiers don’t appear in Battlefield 1 multiplayer because boys find it unbelievable.

Battlefield 1 doesn’t have female soldiers because ‘boys wouldn’t find it believable’

Battlefield 1 is primed to shake up the online shooter genre with a surprisingly vibrant and colorful look at the First World War. Yet there’s one area Battlefield 1 still resembles its previous games: no female soldiers.

One might think this is because women didn’t serve combat roles – which isn’t true – but according to former DICE coder Amandine Coget, it’s because the project leads thought boys wouldn’t find it believable.

“The original BF1 pitch given onstage was WW1, with one caveat: ‘screw realism, we’re adding female soldiers, because we’re way overdue’,” Coget wrote on Twitter. “Turns out BF1 was going for realism after all! Female [characters] matter but ‘it’s just not the game we’re making’.”

Coget adds that DICE made several decisions for Battlefield 1 which have nothing to do with historical realism – including how tanks function or the lethality rates of early parachutes – but female soldiers still wouldn’t appear in multiplayer.

“I did eventually get them to spit out the real reasons,” said Coget. “All that is believable but female soldiers are not, to the core audience of boys.”

It’s worth mentioning that Battlefield 1’s story campaign features a female lead character, so DICE isn’t ignoring the gender entirely.

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Even so, the lack of playable female characters in multiplayer is pretty noticeable compared to 2016’s other shooters, including Overwatch and Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare.

Then you have the historical fact that women played a huge role in World War 1, even serving as combatants in nations like Russia. While it won’t impact gameplay itself, we shouldn’t be surprised if DICE changes its mind on this decision before Battlefield 1’s October 21 launch date.