Hating Call of Duty Properly

Autumn is on the horizon, which can only mean one thing for gamers: an avalanche of fall releases. It's that magical time of year when we gather around Gamestop or any other retail colossus and make our yearly sacrifices of dollars and cents and hours of time to the almighty gods of the gaming industry to receive blessings of discs and pixels and badass games. But for a large number of people who follow the industry closely, the fall season signals the arrival of something else entirely: another opportunity to hate on the unstoppable juggernaut that is the Call of Duty franchise. What began as a solid franchise in the World War II shooter-saturated early 2000s has transformed into an inevitable annual money-making machine. Yet the reviews of each game have been consistently good. The latest release, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 boasts a Metacritic score of 88, but that score exists alongside the obnoxiously low user score of 3.2. So why the discrepancy? The simplest answer, I suppose is that it's fashionable to hate the game because of its popularity. But simple answers aren't fun, so I want to dig a little deeper. There are some legitimate reasons to dislike Call of Duty, to be sure--they just happen to be buried under hollow rants and raves.

I don't hate Call of Duty. In fact, I think the first-person shooter controls are superb, and the multiplayer can be addictive. The Modern Warfare series contains some standout moments. I still think that the nuclear detonation in the first Modern Warfare is one of the greatest moments of this gaming generation:

The scene strips the player of the power fantasy so commonly associated with a gaming genre dominated my hyper-masculine stereotypes, and it does so by forcing the player to control his/her character during his death even though the player knows there is nothing to be done. It calls into question the meaning of control and its relationship with futility, touting the game and its narrative as the true players in a game of modern warfare instead of the person holding the controller; the player is just someone playing soldier. Modern Warfare 2 has a similar moment with the notorious airport scene, but it never reaches the impact of the nuclear explosion. The mission "No Russian" brought significant press to the franchise, and pundits and critics debated its inclusion in terms of its exploitation of and desensitization to violence. I think it's a fairly brave--but problematic--attempt to dare the player to enact the apotheosis of power fantasy in the darkest way possible, but the character's death at the end of the mission does not provide enough punishment to make the war crimes he (and the player) committed (or didn't commit, as the player can choose to play it or not) matter. There's trauma, but no exploration of its implication in a meaningful way, putting the scenario in a weird place between exploitation and attempted insight.

But I digress. In my years of playing video games, I've never seen a game franchise that is simultaneously grossly successful and violently reviled. The logical conclusion, then, is that the two are intrinsically linked, but that still doesn't satisfy. After all, other franchises like FIFA, Madden, and NBA 2K don't catch nearly as much hell as Call of Duty even though new versions crop up every year. Would it be a stretch, then, to think of Call of Duty as a sports franchise? The standards are there. Minimal story (except for Black Ops, of course) that could be completely bypassed, a strong multiplayer community, and tense competition all play into the game's success. Since one of the complaints leveled against the game is that each entry is just a re-skinned version of the previous game with some tweaks here and there, thinking of the series as a sports franchise could help gamers understand its marketing appeal. You need new teams to play against and new equipment to play with.

Even if we think of the game as a sports-type, so what? Call of Duty is still a cash-grab machine. The publisher is still an evil powerhouse representing everything that is wrong with the gaming industry. The gameplay is shallow. Online multiplayer is filled with douchebag teenagers who have all apparently had some nasty sex with my mom while calling me racist slurs.

My mother is a saint, you ass captains.

At least that's what the message boards would have me believe. The truth of the matter is the simplest to state but the most complex to understand: the franchise is hated because of its popularity, but that doesn't mean that the flak is unwarranted. Gamers love to think of themselves as vanguards for their favorite pastime. Gaming should be protected; furthered, yet preserved. We demonize big corporations because, for the longest time, gaming was such a marginal hobby. The early console wars raged only among a smaller group of individuals who debated on campuses whether the Sega Genesis could outstrip the Super Nintendo. Most kids could give a damn, but for those who cared it was private, important. It was ours. Since gaming has become the defining entertainment medium of this generation, our community has grown, and, for the faithful, this is terrifying. Gamers, it seems, always need a machine to rage against. The people who play Call of Duty are often not those who appreciated gaming in its infancy, and as such, should not fund a game that threatens to undo the culture we all worked to create and value. For many of us, Call of Duty doesn't just represent a huge corporate evil; it represents stagnation, a genre-defining experience that has gotten too comfortable in its own skin. Shooters, for many of us, are getting stale, and we blame Call of Duty.

I'm uncertain, though, that such over-saturation will create the FPS wasteland so many people predict. It's hard to deny that few shooters can step outside of the long shadow of Call of Duty. A fun, self-aware shooter like Bulletstorm sold next to nil when Black Ops was still breaking records. Still, players looking for something different in the FPS category may owe Call of Duty more than they realize. Colin Campbell's recent article "How First-Person Shooters Are Growing Up" gives players hope that the genre is evolving despite much assertions of the contrary by showing that games like Borderlands 2 and Far Cry 3 offer a heavy dose of character alongside gunplay. I cannot help but think this is step in the right direction specifically because of Call of Duty's popularity--not in spite of it. Franchise fatigue can encourage developers to step beyond the genre's fixed paradigms, and, if people are genuine in their desire for something different, the risk could pay off for all of us. Hating Call of Duty really isn't preservinganything if risks are still being taken and great games are still cropping up.

The industry needs a juggernaut like Call of Duty, and, to be honest, it's not a bad game. I don't really enjoy the franchise (because I suck at multiplayer), but I can see why people do. Sure the games are largely shallow, despite a few standout moments, but the mechanics work, the visuals are impressive, and there's a lot of replay value online. It will continue to be hated because it's popular. It will be hated because of its developer's business practice. It will be hated because it's fashionable right now. And it will be hated because we're just plain tired of it. But it will also sell--we just can't be sure of how long it will keep it up. Maybe the best way to hate Call of Duty is to not hate it all but to rather see it for its underlying complexity of reactions. If gamers really wanted it to end, it would end. We could stop buying them, stop supporting multiplayer and DLC. If they're really just releasing the same product in a new box, people should stop buying the damn things. Screaming in impotent rage on message boards or spamming Metacritic is almost as useful as getting into an argument with a 14 year-old, Mountain Dew-fueled online trash-talker about your mother's sexual exploits.

I don't think the franchise has held back the first-person shooter, or any other genre, to the extent that warrants such outrage. This generation has seen some excellent games--some of the best ever made if we're willing to remove our nostalgia goggles. If we must hate Call of Duty, let's do it in a way that helps the industry. Let's hate it by supporting alternate products. Let's hate it by just letting the people who enjoy the game play with each other while we look someplace else for entertainment. That way, we can all support the games we like--with or without mom insults.

Cheers,

--David