Has COD Become A Casual Franchise?

The Call of Duty (COD) franchise is no doubt extremely successful and popular, particularly since the release of Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare. The quick paced, plug in and play style multiplayer was a huge success for online first person shooters, most notably on consoles. This led to record breaking revenue and sales for the industry with Modern Warfare 2 (MW2) accumulating 4.7 million sales within the first 24 hours. This record was subsequently smashed by the following year’s entrance to the franchise, Call of Duty: Black Ops by obtaining 5.6 million sales in the UK/US markets within 24 hours. 

The name is synonymous with FPS games and gaming as a whole, but is the time of duty over?

Despite the incredible sales, there is no denying that the franchise has lost support from some of it’s traditional hardcore gamer fanbase. Reviews for Black Ops were comparatively lower compared to MW2. Black Ops gained a score of 87% from Metacritic, whereas Modern Warfare 2 received a stronger, 94%.

Broken Ops?

Black Ops was a game plagued by bugs and glitches which led to anger across various forums after release. Also, who can forget the neglect felt by PC gamers prior to the release of MW2 after Activision’s exclusion of dedicated servers.

The lack of innovation seen from the COD franchise in recent years is no real surprise from a business perspective. Its following a “ain’t broke, don’t fix it” approach. No massive engine changes are apparent with the recent showings of Modern Warfare 3 (MW3), this can’t be said about the competition with Battlefield 3’s Frostbite 2.0 engine bringing something new to the table. However, it will be likely that COD will sell more than its competition.

The ‘casual’ gamer who doesn’t read blogs like this, doesn’t check reviews or doesn’t follow the gaming industry has no real problems with the lack of innovation or the frame rate drops. COD’s USP is it’s playability, not its graphical splendor or game changing mechanics. They would however, have a problem if COD’s formula changed, and they’re in luck, because it hasn’t.

I’m not saying COD games are bad, I played the hell out of MW2. I’m merely picking up on the fact that the changes of games from year to year are minuscule, yet sales are still rising. This alone shows that the mass market is having a greater say than the hardcore gamers. The COD franchise has managed to capture the mass market quite cleverly, but in the process making the games casual. The games are casual with their core mechanics, but possess a hardcore skin.

Time will tell how the sales will be for MW3, expect them to potentially smash more records. Or maybe, we’ll be surprised to see the first sign of decay in this gaming gold mine.