Call of Duty X: 10 games later, why fans still care
We talked to a number of Call of Duty fans about why they're still interested in COD a decade in, and what Activision can do to keep them playing for years to come.
The game that started it all
Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare thrust the series into the modern era
Call of Duty's zombie modes have earned their own following
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replyAndrew Yoon posted a new article, Call of Duty X: 10 games later, why fans still care.
We talked to a number of Call of Duty fans about why they're still interested in COD a decade in, and what Activision can do to keep them playing for years to come.-
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You are not alone.
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It was most certainly after the first Modern Warfare. That game was fresh, original, had good multiplayer with dedicated servers...it was damn awesome.
After that one...I just stopped giving a shit about CoD. It's a gamer for non-gamers/wannabes/poser-nerds.
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I stopped at Black Ops. It was pretty good
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I'll think of CoD having the same effect on PC keyboard and mouse FPSes as adventure gamers felt that Myst had on their genre.
- MW2 killed off mods and dedicated servers, and most other devs followed suit.
- Publishers started "chasing Call of Duty", leading to things like the modern-era Medal of Honor games (which decimated EA LA, or Danger Close, as it was renamed), as well as Homefront (which killed off Kaos).
- It also led to far higher concentration on ultra-cinematic railshooter campaigns (as illustrated here: http://refugeinaudacity.files.wordpress.com/2011/06/leveldesignclassic.jpg ) Two-weapon systems, perks and persistent stats, and quick-time events.
Building a PC FPS game isn't cheap, unless you go the ultra-minimalistic route, like Wolfire's "Receiver". And there are very few studios that "get it", in terms of FPS control design, but most of them are falling off:
- Epic Games: they don't make PC FPS games anymore (not counting Bulletstorm, a console-rific shooter), and most of their legacy FPS-centric studio talent left in the past year. They're going to fart out Fortnite at some point as a UE4 showcase, but you can already see in most of the UE3 games how PC-hostile the input code has become.
- Id Software fumbled with Rage in 2011, and has to go find itself again. Maybe they have some announcement at E3 or QuakeCon, but it's been so hectic over there the past year, I'm not optimistic.
- Valve has been concentrating heavily on DOTA 2, which isn't even released, but has been flogged for 2 solid years.
There are some signs of life, like Dishonored, but most are still multiplatform-focused, and others are MMOFPSes. It's sad for a campaign-and-non-persistent-deathmatch-centric PC FPS player like me, who has to take refuge in the classics. It's a bitter viewpoint, but I feel like a bunch of douchebags ran off with the entire genre.-
+1 I can't disagree on any one point.
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That picture always makes me sad, the left is the original Dark Forces, isn't it? I loved the complex map overlay in those games, a definite reminder that levels are smaller and less intricate now.
Dishonored is absolutely hands down a shining light in the darkness IMO, utterly adored the choice and area design in that game.
I'm not sure Epic/id/Valve are overly influenced by CoD. Valve do what the hell they want and polish it to death, be it linear-but-amazing FPS or MOBA. id have definitely lost their way, it feels like their design team is stuck in the past and doesn't know how to take exciting risks. Epic just go where the money is, which for a while was console but now digital has made PC sexy again. -
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You can blame CoD for a lot, but killing mods isn't in that category.
Mods just take too much effort to make and gain such little exposure that they just aren't viable in any sort of meaningful time frame. CoD did not cause this, it's the high quality graphic and art style (which requires huge effort to build) demanded by essentially all players these days that killed mods.-
I partly agree, but also very few games have mod tools now because it's so hard to make user friendly ones, given modern game complexity, instead of just throwing together tools that work well enough for professionals. I think Crysis was the last big one? And that has a fairly healthy mod community it seems.
Now it's all about indy games, Unity etc, but that's still harder than just jumping into UnrealEd and carving out a multiplayer arena to get you started with modding.
We're definitely along way from the Half Life goldern era, that was such an amazing game for lots of crazy and awesome mods. AHL, CS, they hunger, firearms, frontline force, science and industry...-
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I'm going to just assume this was an intentional character modelling - http://chattypics.com/viewer.php?file=CODBO2_Palmienteri_pvl19gyakt.jpg
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The first Modern Warfare was a blast, SP and MP, and a definite advancement on the previous titles, not just in era. They've just been rehashing that formula ever since though and it's pretty sad that plenty of people still lap it up. Most of the CoD players are the kind of people who buy maybe one or two other titles a year, usually madden/fifa or gta.
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It seems like the CoD series, at this point, has been kept alive and sustained by the Wal-mart aka "casual" crowd of gamers who don't care about the details that harder-core gamers do. If they cared more about their games, they'd stop blithely accepting the same game being produced over and over for the past few years.
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I too have fond memories of playing MW and Black Ops 1, but, the games have changed so little, at least IMO, that it does not have enough newness to grab me. Until the next gen of games I was basically exhausted after black ops 1.
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