Europeans and Call of Duty: Is CoD a "thing" in your country?

[The White Hunter]

CoD is huge in the UK, it's dropped off a bit in the last couple years though. Ghosts is regarded by most as shite (because it is), but up until Blops 2 it remained pretty solid, though I always prefered MW and MW2 for multiplayer and the rest for co-op and dumb campaigns.

 

[FinalDream]

UK here, COD used to be massive in my circle of friends but Black Ops 2 killed it. Now no one plays and no one bought Ghosts. Battlefield is in, but Titanfall more, by a long way. Guess where part of the new problem

 

[Amaror]

CoD is just as huge in Germany as well.
The only game I know of that has radically different popularity is FIFA and MADDEN, but I guess that kinda makes sense.

Really? I mean Cod is here, obviously, but i never found it particular huge. GTA 5 has been talked about by everyone everywhere here so has skyrim, but aside from the buttload of advertisements, which also happens with AC, Fifa and co, there isn't much Cod going around.
Maybe i am just living in a non Cod area? Hamburg here.

 

[SanguiniusMagnificum]

Yes, Call of Duty is part of the "triumvirate of gaming" over here in Belgium and the Netherlands, together with GTA and FIFA. Almost every "gamer" that I have known owns and plays those three on a regular basis.

The ones that play Battlefield are the "too cool and adult for COD" crowd (and I shamefully admit that I was one of those, I'd like to forget that part of my life) while Halo is seen as "colourful kiddie stuff".

 

[Someone Depressing]

It's a pretty big thing here in Scotland. Well, not that big. But it's a thing. Like deep fat fried shit and man skirts.

So is GTA, Angry Birds, Flappy Bird, FIFA (they are playing football, mind. Fucking everyone in Scotland loves football) and stuff like that.

 

[O maestre]

I can't throw a rock without hitting someone who plays COD in Denmark... but I actually think older players play Battlefield more.

 

[Zac Jovanovic]

Serbia. COD's had its peak with MW2 and has been in a decline since. Pretty much dead here now.

LoL is the big thing atm, some of the other big games are Fifa, FM, CS and on a lesser scale Dota2, WoT, Diablo and BF.

5-7 years ago everyone and their dog was playing World of Warcraft, now it's pretty much dead too.

 

[shootthebandit]

CoD "was" a thing. I dont know if its still as big here in the UK. COD 4 was good. It had a good story line and some really fantastic set pieces. The SAS guys were great and the dialogue was authentically british. I think It was a refreshing change to be part of a british special forces team rather than some gun-ho murican Tactical Weapons Attack Team. The multiplayer was really fun with a good map layout

The following CODs just got exponentially worse and im surprised people still lap up these games with 2 hour uninteresting campaigns and a lack luster multiplayer with dreadful map layouts

Battlefield is getting more popular with "casuals" because the multiplayer is a lot more engaging and relies more on strategy and has a hell of a lot more variety

 

[Tuesday Night Fever]

2nd question: Americans, is the Call of Duty series actually more famous than stuff I'd consider relevant games (GTA, Assassin's Creed, NHL or maybe NFL there, Counter Strike, Saint's Row, DOTA and LoL, Starcraft 2)?

The last GTA game I played was Grand Theft Auto: Vice City (and only played it because I love 80's humor), I have no interest in Assassin's Creed, I have no interest in sports games just as a general thing, I haven't played Counter-Strike in probably six or seven years, I've never played any of the Saint's Row games (though I admit the latest one looks like a hell of a lot of fun; maybe I'll pick it up on Steam since I think it's on sale right now), I have no interest in DOTA or LoL, and I haven't played StarCraft 2 since I beat the Heart of the Swarm campaign and got all of its achievements (maybe a month or so after it was released).

I played Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 last night. Got my first ever MOAB too using the bolt-action MSR sniper rifle on Terminal. 32/2, woot!

That said, I wouldn't call the CoD games "famous" for anything other than being a decent time waster. I look at CoD (the multiplayer, anyway) the same way that some people look at games like Angry Birds or Candy Crush Saga. If I'm bored and don't have anything in particular that I want to do, I'll play a couple rounds of Team Deathmatch since they're usually only like 7 to 10 minutes each.

Honestly, the way I look at CoD multiplayer isn't all that different from how I used to look at Counter-Strike back when I was in high school. Though I haven't played StarCraft 2 in a while, I'm still a hell of a lot more excited for SC2: Legacy of the Void than I am for the next CoD.

 

[uncle_yuri]

United States. It's a generally accepted fact among everybody I know, at least, that CoD is the single most popular thing since the automobile. I'm not a fan but many people I know who play CoD literally bought an XBone for the sole purpose of playing CoD: Ghosts. That ought to pretty much sum it up.

Obviously gaming in general is massive here but most anyone would agree that CoD is the biggest name.

 

[Hieronymusgoa]

Hm, I guess it is big in Germany. At least my pupils played it a lot when I was a teacher, but I know a lot of gamers and none of them enjoy FPS a lot. Except for the half-FPSs like Bioshock which I dig a lot, too. My gaming friends mostly play LoL and other competitive MOBAs, Dark Souls and roleplaying stuff and a lot of indie games.



Theres a guy in my gym with a "COD" tattoo on his back but since the letters all have the same size I guess thats not bc of the game he got it.

 

[Bestival]

Netherlands here, and yeah I know quite a few people that buy every new COD on launch day. My cousin and his group of friends all bought Black Ops 2 on launch, and then played it through the night.
We worked together at the time, and he was pretty dead on his feet that next day. Doesn't help if you have to start at 5.30 AM either of course.

Personally I have 4 COD games, but have never played even a second online. I stopped buying them when they started costing 60 euros on steam, and even 2 years later don't go down in price at all. That kind of money just isn't worth it to me, for a 5 hour story campaign that's getting more and more mediocre lately.

So, erm, yeah, COD's pretty much a thing around here.

 

[verdant monkai]

Sadly a lot of chavs spend a lot of time playing the COD games.

Now it's filtered into the households of people who work for a living, and into main stream game libraries. Then those people who work for a living, are all too tired from working too see what their 5-10 year olds are playing on that xbox 3something that they bought for them one Christmas.

So now we have a lot of Chavs, bored teenagers and primary school children playing a game which is usually based around slaughtering Russian people and preventing America from being nuked. But to be fair it is mostly known for its online swearing matches, the Russian murder isn't what the chavs, teens and toddlers buy it for. Some of the chavs will actually be willing to kill people for a copy of the game or so I am told! also other classy games like GTA are often considered worth ending a life for, here in glorious great Britain.

In the UK COD is alive and well and its not quite finished shitting on gaming as a medium!

 

[laggyteabag]

In the UK Call of Duty is the thing, it usually tops charts whenever it is released. When Black Ops 2 came out, almost everybody that I knew on consoles picked it up on launch day and was playing it, and the same is true for every game after 4, but with Ghosts, I know maybe one or two people that own it. On my PC however, Call of Duty is seriously not a thing (with the exception of Call of Duty WaW as is has some pretty cool modded maps for zombies) as it is rarely, if ever, played outside of the free weekend.

 

[Mojo]

CoD is just as huge in Germany as well.
The only game I know of that has radically different popularity is FIFA and MADDEN, but I guess that kinda makes sense.

Really? I mean Cod is here, obviously, but i never found it particular huge. GTA 5 has been talked about by everyone everywhere here so has skyrim, but aside from the buttload of advertisements, which also happens with AC, Fifa and co, there isn't much Cod going around.
Maybe i am just living in a non Cod area? Hamburg here.

Huh. I'm from Köln and I do know quite a few people who get the newest CoD installment day one, or wondered which next gen. console to get for the sole reason of playing CoD. (well and FIFA) But when I think about it GTA, AC and FIFA are probably just as big. If I recall correctly I think there are more AC and Battlefield advertisements around then CoD ones.
Maybe I'm underestimating how big of a thing CoD is in the USA, because its definitely a "thing" here, but maybe not THAT huge.

 

[Me55enger]

As folk have already said, Cod is massive in the UK. Most folk have it with chips with salt n vinga- oh... THAT Cod?

I'm not a fan and I don't play it. But the FPS genre as a whole over here is unabashedly the biggest thing. I once saw a late-twenties father threathen his 5-year-old with no Xbox for a week to stop him misbehaving in the shopping centre.

When I was a kid, if I started misbehaving in a shopping centre, my parents left me to finish and carried on shopping.

I also was forced to queue in GAME (Metro: Last Light for £9.99 is my excuse and it's a damn good one) and listen to an 11-year-old explain to a teen what Titanfall was and how awesome it was. I nearly cried in shame.

But i'm like that. A dick, I mean.

EDIT: DOTA2 is massive in Eastern Europe. Anyone playing on the EU West servers will tell you that.

 

[blackdwarf]

Netherlands like its online games. Cod is extremely popular, although the average age of the costumers are below 16 years (exluding the mothers who have to be there, when the game is purchased.) Fifa, GTA, AC and more like those are popular and the Dutch communities in online games are pretty big. Lots of LOL/DOTA/WOW and more are played.

 

[Traviltar]

I'm actually surprised to say this, but I actually took time to do some research (that is surprising!) and called up a friend at a local GameStop and he took up the sales of the Ghosts games, and apparently the sales have been decreasing ever since Black Ops II, whilst games like Battlefield 4 and Grand Theft Auto V stand at the top.
A thing that she found really odd was the fact that Titanfall hadn't sold as much as they thought. Must be because Xbox One sales in Scandinavia aren't that promising. It was only released in 2014.

 

[Danial]

CoD Dropped off here in the UK after it stopped having main Single player protagonists that were not Team America World Police sans the Irony, Im not saying its not played, it it still sells like half price heroin, but now its considered more of a guilty pleasure than a game people are proud of saying they play it.

Also bar the single player, it has to do with the fact that the stereotypical view of most CoD players (Not all) is that of the 13 year old rage monster who threatens do do horrible things to your mother because you are apparently homosexual and to him that is a bad thing. Noone really wants to deal with that level of Toxic when even the single player is an insulting Chaney like Wet dream of Pro American us vs them power fantasy, As much as Price and Co were terrible people, they were at least Portrayed as bad people doing Bad things for what they considered the greater good (well, not in 3, they were pretty much just 90's Superheros without the black spikes) they stood in the grey area, not like... um... who is it that's in Black Ops and Ghosts again? anyway, Random 'Mericans number 1 and 2 who do terrible things and have it painted like they are all that is good and moral.

Boo. Not even Americans think that that anymore (and the ones that do want the bloody games banned anyway)

 

[Inferneaux]

Australia here (because not everything outside of the US falls under the category of "European"). Yeah, CoD is pretty big here amongst the masses.