Are Call Of Duty Players Real Gamers?

                                        

 In my experience of playing with and/or alongside other Call Of Duty players since the first online COD was released I found that almost all gamers who play COD almost never play anything else. Most hardcore Call Of Duty players only own COD games and spend all their time playing this single franchise. This leads us, of course, to the question of the day....... Are Call Of Duty players really gamers? The answer to that is a profound "NO". Now, I understand that this will make many a COD player mad at me and I can already see the disgust on their faces while they read this article, however, before you get high blood pressure allow me to explain in detail and defend my case.
 I'm a popular guy on PSN and have quite a few friends most of which play COD religiously. I have tried in vein to get some of my closest COD friends to buy or check out a great new game many times to no avail. Simply put, they will not purchase another game and even if they do after only 2 hours of playing it will put it away and get right back on Call Of Duty again. The only exception to this rule was GTA5 and even after its release everyone was right back on Call Of Duty soon thereafter. Mind blowing I know.
 Now, in my defense I will bring up Infinity Ward's Mark Rubin who in an interview with OXM LINK  said that

"The majority of people who play Call Of Duty games aren't really hardcore gamers or even gamers for that matter."    Mark Rubin Of Infinity Ward

 Wow, now that's some harsh words coming from somebody who actually brought you Call Of Duty. They even go farther with this buy saying in the same article as the link above :

"They aren't hardcore gamers, or even gamers, but they play Call Of Duty every night. And those guys are going to continue to play regardless of the platform. So I think not only will we continue to engage with that existing player base, but we'll take next gen and see how far we can go with it."

 What this guy who actually makes COD games is saying here is that no matter what they create or do these COD fans will buy the game regardless and mindlessly. I don't think most people understand  the depth of this here. For example..... there are a lot of COD fans who buy game consoles and expensive audio headsets just to play one game. In other words a Call Of Duty fan will buy a $420 PS4 along with the $60 copy of COD, $50 in Playstation plus( which is needed to play online) for a year and maybe even a $150 pair of gaming headsets all to ever only play a single game and nothing more. That's a grand total of around (on average) $680 just to play COD. That's a lot of money to drop to play a single game or even three really.
 In order to be called a true gamer or a so called hardcore gamer ..... one must be fluent in regards to most games and genres and spend equal time with different games including understanding the video game market and keeping up with video game news..... then you are a true hardcore gamer, otherwise, your just a another person who just spent $680.00 dollars to play a single game.

Call Of Duty The End Of A Era.

 When the first online multiplayer Call Of Duty 4 Modern Warfare was released on November 5, 2007(North America) gaming was changed at that very instant. Who can forget the feeling of overwhelming fun while playing with your friends online to see who could get the most kills or simply win against your opponents? The solid gameplay, great maps and mesmerizing background music (MW still has the best music) sucked gamers in from all over the world and created something of a digital subculture.
 By the time Call Of Duty World At War was released on November 11, 2008(North America)millions of gamers were flocking to stores trying to get their hands on a copy at midnight or even trying to get a copy before the official release date for an advantage over others. A new Era had begun .... one which would dominate first person shooters for the next 6 years.  Those who played the game well and placed high on the old traditional leaderboards were met with fame from the Call Of Duty community and some even became rather wealthy. It was the all American youthful dream..... to become a pro or semi pro COD player and make money doing what you loved to do.
  Around this time (2008-2009) Youtube began to explode with countless channels filled with fresh and original Call Of Duty gameplays and/or commentaries, which in turn , led to many Youtube partnerships, money and online fame. This success went on for years with Call Of Duty video's getting countless views  and copies of the games flying out of the stores faster than they could keep them stocked. These were in fact the "golden years" for Call Of Duty and verily the gamers who played them. Like all "golden years" in history they always come to an end sooner or later and COD is no different.
 The Call Of Duty franchise began to make drastic changes to their successful formula starting in 2011 with the release of Call Of Duty Black Ops on November 9th of that same year. COD Black Ops was a huge success selling millions of copies world wide and shooting Call Of Duty into superstar status. However, something strange began to happen after the release of COD Black Ops 2 on November 13, 2012. Gamers began to slowly realize that the COD brand was somehow becoming stale and repetitive. Youtube began to fill up with so many channels dedicated to Call Of Duty gameplays and/or commentaries that the system was flooded with content making it impossible to compete because to compete with millions of other channels uploading the same material is like a needle being found in a haystack.
 Then on November 5, 2013 the death blow came about with the release of Call Of Duty Ghosts. Ghosts was not received well at all outside the hardest of core COD fans and received bad reviews from all angles. Old Call Of Duty players who have been stomping on COD since COD4 or WAW found themselves trading in their copies of Ghosts for other games or simply quitting gaming altogether ( Most hardcore COD fans only play COD). Youtube gaming channels began to sit there dormant and inactive. There is no denying the facts and even the developers admit that the series has become rather stale with yearly new releases and few new upgrades to boot. The developers began to complain that a single year was hardly enough time to create a top tier COD game and it was beginning to show in Ghosts.
 Now its 2014 and there is already talk and video previews of the next Call Of Duty "Advanced Warfare" ( sounds familiar doesn't it? MW3 anybody?) and they are obviously trying to spice things up a little bit. Apparently, Sledgehammer Games who have been working on this next installment seem to think that making COD even more futuristic is the answer when this is what the problem has been with the franchise since Ghosts. In one last desperate attempt to regain their dominance in the field of online multiplayer first person shooters they have created what looks like from the previews a rather far flung futuristic Titanfall concept. We can notice, if we look close enough, soldiers scaling walls like spiderman and deploying gadgets from the Halo series. It was bad enough that COD Ghosts had included a shootout in outer space and now they want to incorporate Mass Effect and Halo into the next COD. I'm sorry, but I must say now that this approach just is not going to change the current downhill path of Call Of Duty, rather, it will lead to its decline even faster.

                                                                                                        J30-06K

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