The Depressing Decline of Call of Duty

it's not a controversial statement to say that Call of Duty has seen better days despite being relatively popular at least if you categorize its success by sheer numbers it doesn't seem to be doing that bad war zone is fairly popular right now and it looks like the most recent entry in the franchise Modern Warfare 3 has been enough to prevent the downward spiral it was caught in with Modern Warfare 2 just last year but why did it ever end up on the ropes to begin with well aside from the infernal attachment to our mortal coils and the finality of the passage of time which is a roundabout way of saying things get old and less popular the game is probably the most polarizing firstperson shooter on the market right now on one hand everybody who plays firstperson shooter games has probably played it at some point and probably really enjoyed playing it too but then Call of Duty kind of stopped being cool at least unless you were really into its Esports scene and even then that's still a relatively Niche Esports scene how did Call of Duty go from universally loved to universally hate it we just uploaded a video about hell divers 2 and feel like that game's ability to commit to a certain Creative Vision and stick to it was hugely instrumental in its success but that game had a relatively small team and a relatively small budget compared to the Call of Duty Studios and of course Activision Blizzard hopefully this video provides a cautionary tale of the Icarus of firstperson Shooters a franchise that soared to Great Heights But ultimately got got too close to the Sun this is the story of Call of Duty's decline Call of Duty was unique in the sense that it was able to take multiplayer arcade FPS mechanics and sell them at a widespread scale everybody could get behind the game was well regarded for its immersive storytelling its singleplayer component what a lot of people don't know about this franchise is that it at one point tried to make a play for cinematic immersion with famous depictions of events like the battle of fingr wherein the player had to pick up a rifle off the ground of a fallen soldier armed only with a clip of ammunition in their hand the games also featured the Normandy invasion with the vicious rain of mg42 fire from entrenched positions right in front of you it actually wasn't until Call of Duty 4 Modern Warfare when it took a decisive setting difference putting you in the shoes of a thrilling Action Movie Ride incorporating political gambles from Middle Eastern Warlords to Eastern block crime syndicates artistic depth and scope from the sound effects to the environments and the voice acting all played a role in making creative interactive narratives right what the hell kind of name is soap eh how a Muppet like you past selection and this is sort of where the culture of the game solidified it solidified itself with a pretty robust single player level design Theory showcase Call of Duty 4 was well known for a couple of missions one of which put you in the hands of the guns on a titanically destructive ac130 gunship the distance from the Carnage and the laws of physics taken into account the time it takes for the shells to reach their target while you wait silently you see explosions gunfire and the Casual nature of the crew members as they command something that seems akin to an ominous Dragon just looming above in the sky w we going to Commander civilian transport on the main highway cover us ground units are requiring alternate transport at this time but that guy's pissed that's a nice truck n he scared shitless you also had a mission that featured crawling on your stomach Behind Enemy Lines in a ghilly suit to stop an illegal arms deal between bitter actors on behalf of the Soviet Union's old quite literal Fallout it was not Irrelevant in popularizing the radioactive Mythos of the Ukrainian city of prat to an entire generation of young men and boys Prat an almost supernaturally Eerie feeling ghost town that acts as a sort of Time Capsule into the Soviet culture of the 8S just Captain McMillan your lead on this op ended up becoming a notable character in just one Mission out of the entire game He's [Music] Mine the sequel offered dramatic visuals like the White House of flame from Russian invasion Call of Duty Black Ops would Trek around the globe evoking the mood of old school Cold War spy Thrillers even taking nods from a previous installment in the timeline that took a crack at World War II once more unique that time around for offering a focus on the Pacific front as US Marines are face to face with Japanese soldiers running straight towards you from a concealed jungle landscape the sweltering heat gleaming through dense thick tree lines screaming in Rage with bayonets attached to their rifles then the next minute you would be sniping and scurrying your way through torn Stalingrad again with a Soviet Sergeant played by none other than Gary Oldman who would go on to win an Academy Award for his portrayal of Winston Churchill in the film darkest hour for three days I have hunted him for three days luck alone has saved his wretched life my name is Victor rner and I will have my revenge you cannot re with a tiger when your head is in its mouth over time Call of Duty developed a shared and loved culture and cast of characters but you came for the campaign and stayed for the multiplayer while one of these things was what made Call of Duty a cultural staple the other was what made it an exercise in multiplayer FPS design Call of Duty was responsible for create a class and that longevity has ramifications through throughout the industry to this day just about any shooter game made in 2024 will have some kind of modularity involved in terms of what stuff you want to bring into the battlefield but Crea a class has almost created an FPS ocean that we've been swimming in for many years and we're more or less fish who forgotten were in water Call of Duty was a victim of its own success in some ways it developed a framework for which many FPS games were built on but it couldn't really tack one way or the other without a huge amount of push back it was a fish that could grow wings but couldn't breathe [Music] air Call of Duty was responsible for innovating arcade multiplayer FPS quick time to kill fast-paced movement and personalization was the name of the game but the game certainly looks feels and plays very differently now to then obviously we can have a full separate conversation about the artistic side of things and that will certainly be elaborated on but before we do that it's important to contextualize that this was still FPS game design in its childhood not quite its infancy but we were still kind of coming to grips with what we could make an FPS game do at scale and at Mass Market the point is the game had large scale and breadth in terms of the sandbox and space it constructed what it had a harder time figuring out was the nuts and bolts the game went through tons of different iterations with Crea a class and that's usually what made it distinct among each individual title and from game to game each Call of Duty sort of had a unique identity due to this but at a certain point a new game coming out every year started to get a little bit old at a certain point you needed to do new things one example they tried to do was lean more into the movement this is where the sub genre of so-called movement Shooters began to emerge Now Call of Duty was not responsible for the Genesis of movement shooters that had been happening in the background for a while but Call of Duty was so big that it couldn't just ignore this part of the FPS space anymore however the game's grappling with this topic did a lot of damage to the brand cuz it had a hard time trying to find the right way to do it before they finally just gave up Call of Duty runs on a yearly release cycle to offload the labor intensity and make sure there's a reasonable timeline of development different development companies were allocated to individual titles another element was introduced to the Call of Duty Carousel with the release of advanced warfare in 2014 developed by a third player sledg games the only point at which the public was familiar with Sledgehammer was their involvement with the production of Modern Warfare 3 alongside Infinity Ward Advanced Warfare was Sledgehammer first solo project and a concerted deliberate effort to lean into the game's potential as a movement shooter in fact it would be massive for demarcating a hugely controversial Rubicon the exoskeleton in advanced Warfare brings a ton to the table you got speed and strength and verticality New Movement sets like boost and Dodge and slam the ability to use technology like the augmented reality system and the mag gloves for new ways to climb I mean it it it really we call it the heart and soul of the advanced soldier and everything it brings is really a a pretty radical new way to play Call of Duty the jetpack Cod era now here's the thing the jetpack shooter era didn't start here because Titanfall had just released earlier in the spring Titanfall was unique in the offering of a new spin on the arcade shooter formula this time throwing in high-speed jet packing wall running and fast paced Gunplay what Savvy people are surely thinking of is the lineage of Titanfall it is shared in Call of Duty developed by respawn its Genesis enshrined by former Call of Duty devs now Advanced Warfare featured the EXO suit it was designed to wink and nudge in the direction of popular Sci-Fi movies and TV at the time from alysium to Oblivion to Edge of Tomorrow the opening kick of the World Cup this year was a paraplegic wearing an exoskeleton I mean it's it's really a remarkable invention of technology today and as the Cornerstone to Call of Duty it's it's given us a ton of potential okay so when you think of a jetpack in a video game what do you usually think of the first time I played with the jet jet pack in a shooter game was Star Wars Battlefront no not not this one go back a little bit more sister yeah okay so the Dark Trooper basically got launched way up into the air really quickly which was really useful for traversal you could get up to high elevation or go across chasms in a way that other characters couldn't but your Mobility Advantage was offset by only being able to fight at close range with a shotgun this is not like the last jetpack cod in the series Black Ops 3 which was much more floaty kind of like a and fly hovering around this movement is deliberate Punchy it has weight to it there are Stakes for making the wrong movement Tech at the wrong time momentum is involved and that's essentially what Advanced Warfare was too you can jump up then go to the side or go down for a little slam a little slide slide to the left and it looks simple but when you watch the movement lobbies of Advanced Warfare that are apparently still around in 2024 you'll find that there's still a community that plays the game to this day because they just they just vibed with the movement we ran a poll on the couch to see what you guys felt and it seems to be the consensus that Black Ops 3 was the most beloved jetpack Cod probably to nobody's surprise Infinity Wards entry the year after did not rank very high at all still boasting one of the worst like to dislike ratios in YouTube video history with its launch trailer this threeyear stint of movement Cod probably set the groundwork for more frustrating decisions later down the line as the developers had a tough time trying to ascertain what was going to work and what wasn't going to work Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2019 leaned heavily into a very particular kind of vibe A vibe that emphasized raw gritty operator tactical sorts of stuff the game got a fresh new paint job with a new engine and in particular much more cinematic presentation reloading animations were poppy Snappy you could feel every click clack patty whack with camera shakes it was in your face and very upfront about what it was a return to form it was also more importantly than anything else not a jetpack Cod which meant that the movement was slower sorry hold something's which meant that the movement was slower which look I'm not mad I just I don't I don't know what's happening which meant that movement is incredibly important in this game if you want to be a good player to be completely transparent the person creating this video is not knocking any of the content creators that were just reference but it shows an example of how art style doesn't translate to gameplay mechanics especially when you're trying to get away from a jetpack kind of sci-fi setting these guys have jetpacks of course they'll slide around these guys don't who played these kinds of games everybody your dad your uncle the manager at your gym every dude every dude played Call of Duty and then dudes kind of stop playing it gaming in general became a much more mainstream hobby but the only kinds of people who still play COD are probably just really dedicated FPS nerds it's popular yeah but it's not really popular in the same way it used to be now there's a Time investment kind of like 40K people want to be good at the video game and they want to feel rewarded when they make a good play the greatest Twist of irony then was how Call of Duty tried to establish itself in this new shift by putting a certain Cod of paint on the game a certain kind of art style but still making it very clear this is a video game not real life and remember single player campaigns used to be a pretty important component of the experience the culture was you played the single player you had fun then the multiplayer was the side product that sustained itself over time you throw out some map packs for a little more dough and then on to the next one but Call of Duty despite changing up the mechanics a little the basic gameplay Loop domination search Etc create a class that was still the same MLG trickshotters and hypers sweats were a thing back in the day but it wasn't really cool yet it was just kind of a thing some kids did if they were really into it now everybody consumes content online and what looks cool in a YouTube video is what people are going to try and emulate so we started dropping terms like slide cancelling what the heck is a slide cancel Y how do I slide cancel in this game can you slide cancel on this I don't even know no you can't slide cancel on this one a slide cancel is exactly what it sounds like you go into the slide animation then quickly reset it so you can get your gun up and shoot in the context of a shooter game a fun little mixup to throw your opponent's aim off now when we talk about this stuff we don't sound like we're talking about a shooter game anymore when I think of shooter game I think of skullking around in a bush my positioning my relation to the opponent my Aim Shoot and then the kill bada bing bada boom now I got to do this and this at the same time I got to shoot and move you Esports sweats are ruining my fun the biggest component of the disconnect for the series started here because on one hand you had a kick it and relax kind of gamer on the couch Call of Duty the every guy shooter for let's face it people who didn't play shooter games all the time it was supposed to be the one shooter game everybody had then the shooter game nerd who's played everything Titanfall Battlefield Halo Gears of War Rainbow Six who knows what else comes into The Fray and then suddenly you get this casual versus Esports war and this is happening across the entire industry we just spent 3 years trying not to make the game too inaccessible with Advanced movement to make more games where the most involved player could slip and slide all over the place and make this look a lot more like this the immersion was broken and we sat there growing up during the Call of Duty beta overnight our childlike fascination with the virtual world gone manipulated and twisted so that you could slide and not slide look what you did well nearly every industry took a financial hit this past year the gaming World saw massive growth NPD reports that 33% increase in overall [Music] spending but War Zone in 2019 was what set the stage for Call of Duty's popular Fame moving forward we had Call of Duty Vanguard oh sorry Black Ops cold board does something a little different hey let's have the new style of cod but let's make the time to kill just a little bit longer like it was way back in the day so instead of three bullets it's more like four or five tracking the target means you got to have better accuracy and follow through throughout the course of the engagement which means that if somebody can do the cool little slip and slide there's a little more dueling there's a little bit more combat that feels back and forth and then Modern Warfare 2 comes out again and slows everything down super slow basically Call of Duty if it was tarov tar of Duty fast time to kill slower deliberate movement is and then it almost kills the franchise round and round it goes where Cod goes Nobody Knows Call of Duty was so big that it couldn't become anything specific and it did the cardinal sin of AAA gaming trying to please everyone and pleasing no one one talking point that permeates extensively throughout the industry is just how multiplayer games look whether people like it or not fortnite made everybody fall in line with the world of multiplayer microtransactions and if you can cut a deal with a corporation to represent Warhammer 40K you're going to do it but fortnite didn't really have a particularly specific art theme Direction Call of Duty did multiplayer matches of Call of Duty were pretty simply laid out here's a map what are the two appropriate factions here it's the Russians versus the Germans each faction even had a unique track that would play before you rolled in a battle and unique uniforms to each of those factions capture the objectives nowadays Call of Duty may play up the Cinematic Vibe a little bit it does so in the single player campaigns but it tends to be this way only at the beginning of the new release as the game ages people buy the new anime skin the new Esports skin and all sorts of flashy and shiny colors shiny colorful bullets assassination animations entire cosmetic kits that are designed around a certain design theme it's not to say that they're not creative they certainly are one creative nod to FPS gaming history features the game's double barrel shotgun operated and animated like the one from the classic '90s FPS game Doom complete with the sounds jerky frame rate animations and everything else in between but most of the Skins usually just consist of taking XYZ gun and making it pink or blue or red or based off a famous superhero or something Cosmetics have taken a decidedly strong seat in front of the vibe the Tactical Oscar Mike over and out Vibe it doesn't affect gameplay it just feels weird and that weird disconnected feeling is just kind of icky that's all there is to it there's no particularly empirical metric about it something's just kind of off it feels like the identity the heart of the game just isn't really there anymore and sure the game is fun if you really really do like the game playay it's bizarre to consider how we got here in the first place Modern Warfare 3 doubled down on the demand for faster pce flashy movement and longer time to kill after the series spent several years deciding whether or not it wanted flashy movement Modern Warfare 3 ended up releasing on a year and a half long turnaround so it begs a better question how come Activision Blizzard was so disconnected from the ground game of its uction Call of Duty is a massive license and as many problems show in terms of size attribution of games if the game is too big you can end up with too many cooks in the kitchen and a lack of a Clear Vision and lack of a creative approach comparatively hell divers 2 is killing just about every shooter game on the market at least for now with a modest Dev team for a $40 release and the finals a relatively new free-to-play game has attracted a modest following for a fraction of the development costs of your typical Blockbuster Call of Duty game it seems that nowadays Call of Duty is a lot like Marvel movies there were some beloved Marvel movies and some of the ones in the formula later on down the road still did really well and were universally praised and respected cultural Staples but when's the last time you've heard someone talk about a Marvel license recently Dune part 2 was made with a little under $200 million with a smaller budget than Ant-Man and the WASP Call of Duty represents more than just aspects of the gaming industry that need critical attention it represents just what not to do to remain sustainable in the entertainment industry it's emblematic of what happens when talented passionate devs are stuck at the beck and call of a large conglomerate decision-making process that is disconnected from what's going on inside the building what's happening in the day today is possible for Call of Duty to get back to where it sort of was is it possible for that passion to return we're just going to have to wait and see forward area clear coast is clear

Channel: Couch Co-Op

Views: 382,317

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Id: LjzXP8pWdwM

Length: 22min 37sec (1357 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 21 2024