Why has Cod become what it is?

[Gameguy20100]

I always say that game quality is 100% subjective (with a few expectations)

but I can not think of any game series that sparks either so much love or so much hate than the Call of duty franchise.

so yea why do people hate or love these games so much?

Its just an average shooter franchise yes some of the fans are annoying but that's hardly unique to cod, every series has its dipshit fans.

so help me out here people why has this series become almost a bad word in the gaming community?

 

[Nihilm]

Well it inspires so much love/hate because it is popular and it is popular because it is geared towards the largest player base a shooter like cod can be geared towards. Since the fanbase of those types of shooters are big, rival fanbases in the saim demographic hate the game as well and then there are the people who hate it on somekind of principle sicne it is so big and they think it has no right to be that big.

A similar reason why so many people love/hate LoL or any other giant game. The hate really comes from the "my game is better than yours" mentality or the "these games are ruining games for me so I need to oppose them somehow" mentality.

And the love comes from the fact that it is geared towards a larger playerbase than other games and the games themselves are decently enough made and people have grown to trust the franchise since they usually get what they expect, which is also the reason why cod games don't change much.

 

[Evonisia]

Because CoD is the definition of mediocre. It contributes nothing to gaming, everything it does has been done better and any innovation in it is just aspects of other games added to it, yet it is the most popular game series currently.

It attracts so much love because it's the easiest game outside of Nintendo franchises for 'casuals' to get into, and it attracts so much hate because the aforementioned casuals play it, act like it's good and show it off while games like BioShock, Dead Rising and Oblivion* cover their faces and try not to overshadow it because clearly Quantity beats Quality.

*Why I didn't say Skyrim? Well, Skyrim became immensely popular and everyone got it, that's why.

 

[TelHybrid]

Simple. Its success lead to a high saturation of CoD clones in the market, replacing what could have potentially been interesting new game ideas in place of just making a generic "well whatever sells" brown/grey shooter.

Call of Duty is a poison in the games industry in terms of creativity.

 

[porous_shield]

One of the reason it generates hate is because it made popular mechanics (regenerating health and iron sights amongst others) that are a big departure from older fps games. With that departure people feel the fps genre was dumbed down and also aimed at a console audience when once fps were the realm of the PC.

 

[Adam Jensen_v1legacy]

People don't love CoD because it's a good game. They love CoD because it's easy to get into and it's a brand name. The advertizement team behind it knows what they're doing. And it's not designed with love as a piece of art. It's designed using a checklist of features with the intention of squeezing as much money as humanly possible out of the widest possible audience. It's an empty, soulless, generic piece of shit.

 

[Weaver]

One of the reason it generates hate is because it made popular mechanics (regenerating health and iron sights amongst others) that are a big departure from older fps games. With that departure people feel the fps genre was dumbed down and also aimed at a console audience when once fps were the realm of the PC.

This is really my take on it as well. It was more or less responsible, along with Halo, for the dramatic shift of PC FPS games that were actually fun to play, to slow corridor shooters with "cinematic setpieces". At least Rise of the Traid releases at the end of the month.

 

[Esotera]

It's easy to pick up, is fun to play, and has great multiplayer if you're with friends. I seriously don't get all the hate behind franchises like COD or Halo - if you don't enjoy it, just don't play it and buy something else.

 

[porous_shield]

It's easy to pick up, is fun to play, and has great multiplayer if you're with friends. I seriously don't get all the hate behind franchises like COD or Halo - if you don't enjoy it, just don't play it and buy something else.

It becomes a lot harder to buy something else when other games and series you've enjoyed start imitating COD or Halo. Just take Bioshock Infinite and compare it to System Shock 2 or original Bioshock. COD and Halo were huge influences on the industry and started a massive wave of me-too games. Games with two weapons systems, regenerating health, and iron sights and, like AC10 mentions, slow corridor shooters with cinematic setpieces. The industry also started adding multiplayer to everything in a desperate bid to have the huge sales and community surrounding COD games.

 

[aguspal]

It's easy to pick up, is fun to play, and has great multiplayer if you're with friends. I seriously don't get all the hate behind franchises like COD or Halo - if you don't enjoy it, just don't play it and buy something else.

It becomes a lot harder to buy something else when other games and series you've enjoyed start imitating COD or Halo. Just take Bioshock Infinite and compare it to System Shock 2 or original Bioshock. COD and Halo were huge influences on the industry and started a massive wave of me-too games. Games with two weapons systems, regenerating health, and iron sights and, like AC10 mentions, slow corridor shooters with cinematic setpieces. The industry also started adding multiplayer to everything in a desperate bid to have the huge sales and community surrounding COD games.

So its COD´s fault that the game devolopers are ignorant and wont stay into what made their own game good in the first place, and instead copy COD.


Seems legit.

 

[daveman247]

I'm personally indifferent to it these days and just let it be. I can see why loads of people like it, easy to pick up and the game stuffs rewards into your hands all the time. What IS annoying is how too many games are wanting to break into the "COD audience" and so crowbar in/ remove features to fit with their tastes. Constant hand holding and waypoints every few steps is one example Just look at what happened to medal of honour. That series used to be great not too long ago, now its bollocks.

Its too bad what happened to COD. The 2nd game is still one of my favourite shooters.

So basically many hate it because it became super-popular and of course every other game wants to be super-popular too

 

[ShinyCharizard]

Yeah I don't like COD because it's too much of a clusterfuck. It's like the game was designed for people with ADHD. The multiplayer is just constant glitches along with crazy bullshit killstreak rewards every second and people spawning behind you all the time. It has no consistency and really is no fun at all to play.

 

[pandorum]

Simple. Its success lead to a high saturation of CoD clones in the market, replacing what could have potentially been interesting new game ideas in place of just making a generic "well whatever sells" brown/grey shooter.

Call of Duty is a poison in the games industry in terms of creativity.

Thats not for blame on cod, thats short sighted publishers, who think making cod brings in cod money. I am a cod player and I love it but I do not want to buy or keep seeing clones of the game I already have.

 

[Morsomk_v1legacy]

There are actually more reasons for people hating Cod other then opinions and such.

One of these is the background story of the original studio behind Cod, Infinity Ward. Now I'm not going to fully explain the details behind what actually happened(because I didn't fully get into and I don't know all the details myself) but needless to say most of the original team left the company because of issues.

The other problem(which is the one I have) is the effect it has had on the industry. Ohh...my...freakin...gawd the effect it has had on the industry. It is like what WoW did to the mmo industry in the original years but worse. We got over saturation of games that were only made to beat CoD that were either just pure clones, or brilliant games that no one cared about and lead to the destruction or trouble for the studio that made it.
Just take a look at the F.E.A.R franchise for a second. Actually go and look up how the first two games looked like and then, THEN look at the abomination that is F.3.A.R.

Not to mention, that there was also the case of many other developers making their own, NON FPS GAME, totally different from what it had been in the past just so they could get the Cod crowd. Which never worked might I tell you!
Just recently, we got one of the developers of the new Dead Rising game, which looks nothing like the original games, come out and say that their key demographic for the game was the Call of Duty market. Which is just....eegh, MINDBOOGLING!

It just sometimes feels like the only ones that don't learn the most terrible mistakes of the game industry, is the game industry.

/Rant

 

[Palademon]

Because it propelled itself to high success by relying on people separate form the core gamer demographic, who buy only that series.

This wouldn't bother me except for the fact that it's an example of the industry of an interest being directly affected by people who don't care about it, rather than those who do.
It's like a movie buff complaining about a masterpiece going unnoticed and disappearing because it didn't make enough money, when an Adam Sandler movie beats it in the opening weekend.

 

[TelHybrid]

Simple. Its success lead to a high saturation of CoD clones in the market, replacing what could have potentially been interesting new game ideas in place of just making a generic "well whatever sells" brown/grey shooter.

Call of Duty is a poison in the games industry in terms of creativity.

Thats not for blame on cod, thats short sighted publishers, who think making cod brings in cod money. I am a cod player and I love it but I do not want to buy or keep seeing clones of the game I already have.

Making CoD DOES bring in money. It's not the fault of Activision at all. It's the fault of every person who support the monotony of the grey scale shooter. They are at fault and are ruining video games.

 

[Windcaler]

I wouldnt say I hate the games but I certainly dislike them for a variety of reasons. Way back when before I discovered battlefield I was a cod player in CoD 4 modern warfare. It was the very first one in the modern warfare setting and it was well done, had an interesting if a bit cliche story, and for the time the gameplay was superb. From a gameplay perspective the problems really set in with Modern warfare 2. The story was pretty offensive to me, in the sense that Im ex-military and the general gave several unlawful orders which soldiers followed without question, it was also criminally short IMO at just under 4 hours to complete for me. I expect a AAA game to have 8-10 hours of solid content. Indie games give me more then that for often less money so AAA studios have no excuse for their lack of content. The multiplayer component of MW2 was also a mess with certain builds, abusive weaponry, and frankly idiotic killstreaks/deathstreaks. I got fed up with the game because it was no longer an enjoyable experience but luckily I discovered battlefield bad company 2 soon after and Ive been playing battlefield ever since (I enjoy the more slow paced and tactical approach then the run and gun style of CoD)

I never bought any CoD after MW2 but I did watch them from afar and from my point of view it looked like they were releasing the same games with very little changes that were for the better. I dont blame them for keeping what works I blame them for not fixing clear problems in their games. The only CoD thats caught my actual interest was Black Ops 2 and thats only because they kranked the near future theme up to 11 but even that didnt get me to buy the games because there are just more enjoyable FPS games on PC like battlefield and blacklight retribution

However the part I really really really dislike about CoD is the amount of control it has over the market. Many companies are trying to appeal to the CoD players by making games grittier, browner, less complex, and frankly easier. I dont blame them for wanting more sales but when they alienate old players by changing fundemenal aspects of their game it shows they have no loyalty or interest in their own fan base. As a gamer, I like complex games that you can play in a variety of ways and CoD's influence takes away the ability to have these kinds of games because it requires little skill and has a very low skill cap with little to no complexity. I recognize that CoD isnt for me and Im fine with that, if I can say that Dark souls isnt for everyone I can certainly accept that there arent games for me, however when CoDs influence bleeds into games and franchises that I like (i.e. Dead rising 3) then I think we have a real problem

 

[Signa]

Well I for one hate it mostly on the basis that a game that popular should hold up to scrutiny, and it doesn't even come close. It's very "main stream" and doesn't bring anything to the table that other games haven't already done in the past. Does it make CoD deserve the hate for doing it's own thing? Probably not, but I'd be more forgiving of it if it didn't have yearly iterations to get everyone frothing about.

 

[frobalt]

Because CoD is the definition of mediocre. It contributes nothing to gaming, everything it does has been done better and any innovation in it is just aspects of other games added to it, yet it is the most popular game series currently.

Care to elaborate on this?

One thing I have to disagree on is the 'it contributes nothing to gaming' part of that, as that's just completely wrong. For a start, gaming is massive.

For instance, there's how a game is played: 1st person, 3rd person, top down, point and click etc, there's also the genre of game, such as role playing, strategy, adventure, shooter etc.

Call of Duty is a first person shooter, and 1 of the biggest (if not the biggest) franchise of multiplayer FPS games out there. People are able to join a game quickly and play for as long as they fancy, and because it's played against humans, it doesn't feel as repetitive. You could say it's like sports played in real life in that it pits people against each other in a game which is straight forward about its' goal.

So whether you like COD or not, you can't say that it doesn't contribute anything to gaming as that is completely false.

There are probably many reasons people don't like COD, as you can't have a 100% satisfaction rate, but COD seems to be hated quite devoutly by some people, and I suspect it's because they don't see people that only play COD as 'proper gamers' due to the fact that the game play doesn't require much thought at all and is quite repetitive really.



Personally, I'm indifferent to the series; I bought MW3 on steam as I often played it with a friend on his xbox whenever we pre-drank before a night out. This got me into it a bit and gave us something to do when pre-drinking around my place.
But for me, the fun in this sort of game comes from getting good at it. Having a simple game to play once in a while isn't a bad thing.

 

[masticina]

Because it is an success

Millions of people buy it when another mappack, I am sorry another version is out. And yes I mean it with mappack, because lets be fair sometimes they do add some new game mechanics and go another route but many times it is just all recycled.
Hell sometimes they even removed things out of a CoD title so they could claim it was "new"

Yet it still sells like some really illegal matters, I am not taking that back. It seems CoD games scratch an itch and it just keeps selling. This Ghost thing we get a Dog, and slightly better graphics then on the xbox 360/PS3. Thats it! You know what happens the first two years of a console launch it takes time to adjust for things. So games never look that much better in the time. So CoD will have to deal with the same it will be allot like what it was already.. with a few small changes. A few "new" modes [that are really old modes that we're removed past version] and some better graphics.

It will run smoother that is something.

Look I personally don't care much about CoD. But if I was into shooters, sure.. I would buy it to. It is a good shooter, it does what it does well. And as long as people keep buying it, it will be made.

I do expect though that many people will begin to notice that they are paying $60 for kinda a kind of mappack. You cannot go around this point that little changes! The reason why people buy the last game is.. because their friends do and they want to play online. and they want 20th prestige and they want.

Personally CoD utterly bores me, the story is straight out of a bad action movie. The guns always change names in iterations but are all the same basicly.

It is like nothing much changes. Apathy really.. and I agree with some here it doesn't pushes the envelope because it doesn't has to. And sadly many other shooters try to be like CoD. But you only make yourself more boring!

It would be like a JRPG maker bringing out a number of not so bright games. Oh yeah.. I belief that happens to Square Enix.

In the end it just is going to be mud. CoD as we know it today I hope will be replaced by a new wave of shooters. Bring us some fresh ideas...