Aligning with the upcoming release of Call of Duty: Ghosts and its widely publicized multiplayer mode, Infinity Ward executive producer Mark Rubin explained to Joystiq the reason for including female playable characters into the game; it’s not to attract new fans, but to appreciate the fans they already have.

According to Rubin, technological limitations has been an additional previous problem that prevented Infinity Ward from creating female character models in previous Call of Duty entries.

“It wasn’t until we rewrote the way character memory is handled – that we could do ‘Create-a-Soldier,’ that we could do customized characters – that the possibility of having female soldiers really came to fruition,” Rubin said.

Rubin went on to tell Joystiq that when the aforementioned technology was finally developed for Call of Duty: Ghosts, “the ability to select a gender ‘was an obvious choice.'”

“There’s a huge portion of our fans that are female gamers,'” Rubin added. “It was less about getting more people and more about appreciating the people we already have.”

Call of Duty: Ghosts will be released on November 5, 2013 for the current generation of consoles and PC, and at an unspecified later date on the next generation consoles.