Jezzascmezza said:
It certainly has, mainly because it causes most of my shallow friends to believe there's no other alternative.
It's all they play- COD.
I used the "other" option.
You pretty much define the problem yourself when you call your friends shallow. That's the thing with games like "Call Of Duty", they are aimed at the shallow, lower human denominator who would otherwise not play games. While we're not a tiny group of people objectively, serious gamers are outnumbered, and thus companies who want the highest amount of sales and the largest possible profits as opposed to being content to seriously develop the medium and content themselves with a decent profit, are going to churn out games like this franchise. "Call Of Duty" and "Halo" simply being two of the most successful franchises aimed at that sort of massive, purely-low brow appeal.
See right now you have the casual gamers who play very simple, colorful games, and have made things like "Farmville" successful. Then you have the other kind of casual gamers who THINK they are hardcore gamers because they are involved in "extreme" experiences with games with violence and explosions. It's sort of like the differance between someone's senile grandmother or stuck with a childlike mentality, and the quinteseential frat boy who doesn't have two brain cells to rub together. They are differant versions of the same basic thing, and are marketed to a bit differantly. Things like "Call Of Duty" are aimed at the lower human denominator that doesn't play things like Farmville, as opposed to nerds who are looked down on for appreciating things that are deeper than that.
The simple fact that when watching TV you nowadays see relatively normal people, "cool dudez", or even criminals like drug dealers playing FPS video games and such says a lot about how gaming has penetrated the mainstream, however the very fact that people like that can now be accepted as playing video games of this sort means that they are no longer the stuff of a higher, differant level of humanity. There might be a lot of nerds overall, but we ARE outnumbered, and whatever we're interested in tends to be just a bit "too much" for the mainstream to appreciate.
Now this isn't to say that there aren't nerds and serious gamers who appreciate CoD-like FPS games, or even simplified face book fare. There definatly are, just as there are literature and film students who can doubtlessly get into the WWE and it's antics once in a while. It's referred to as "Intellectual Slumming", it can be quite enjoyable for some, but there is a differance between the people who dip into that level a bit for some cheap thrills, and those who exist there. It's sort of like how liking NASCAR or Pro-Wrestling doesn't make you on the level of a quintessential Hillbilly or Redneck, but if that kind of thing is your primary entertainment of choice? Well, we all know what Jeff Foxworthy says.
Nowadays you see a lot of industry writers talking about how we need to get away from distinctions between "Casual" and "Hardcore" gamers and so on. From the industry's perspective I can see why they want that. After all it's easier to market to one group of people than to try and target specific groups. Overall though, while that might make money in the short term, it won't move the industry forward either in terms of it becoming a more serious artistic medium, an evolving form of entertainment, or even a major avenue of competition. Like it or not it's the substantial fringe elements, and the things that cater to us that move society and innovation forward. On some levels it can be said that the mainstream being where we were a couple decades ago (back in the 1990s) with the FPS games being "hawt stuff" (even if they are pretty now) is pretty impressive. Like it or not nerds and gaming "uplifted" society just a bit, however stopping here is a bad thing.
I said "other" in the poll because as "nasty" as I am, I don't think gaming reaching the masses is really a bad thing overall. My problem is when those masses become the major focus of development. The problem isn't "Call Of Duty" but EVERY company wanting to stay in the same rut, making their own version, to try and tap into that cash flow, and even the constant recycling of "Call Of Duty" itself as a major development focus.
I mean by all means, I have no objection to the industry crapping out a generic shooter or two to help pay the bills once in a while, but when you have hundreds of millions of dollars being invested in this kind of thing, typically just to make it an even prettier shade of dingy brown and concrete grey. That money could be better spent in other generes, and moving the medium forward, and honestly while it's a slow process the mainstream WILL move forward even then they are always going to remain a few steps short of where the majority of development should be.
That's my thoughts at any rate. In short I don't think the problem is Call Of Duty, but the realities behind it.
