I a recent interview, a representative from Infinity Ward said that they won't be making any real changes to the Call of Duty games because it's fans weren't "really gamers".

"It's kind of a weird, ironic thing to say... 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 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."

Three things really stand out to me about this statement:
First off, they have just admitted that each installment will simply be the same thing over and over with little to no changes.

Secondly, they just verbally slapped their fans in the face. "I know you play our games faithfully, but we won't be offering you anything innovative because, well to be honest, we just don't really think of you as gamers, and you couldn't handle any changes to the game you're used to."

Third, they say fans are going to keep playing regardless of platform. So they think players will just continue to buy their game regardless of whether they try to accommodate their preferences or not.

Are they saying these fans are too unintelligent to handle changes, or simply that they wouldn't play the games anymore because they "aren't gamers" and so aren't dedicated to the game series?


What do you think of the whole thing? Was it a tasteless insult to their fanbase, or did they just state their honest feelings? Were they wrong to say this about the people that pay their bills, or were they within their right? When they say people will play their games regardless of platform, are they taking their fans for granted? I'm not a CoD player, but I personally found the whole thing offensive.

The sad truth is that the game will still sell amazingly because the general fan base does not care, or is too ignorant to see the problem. 

They are at least honest.
Its true, there fans arent hardcore gamers. if they were, they wouldnt buy the same, full price modernwarfare 1 dlc every year.
They havent changed anything because the fans will still buy it. They wont change anytime soon, because neither will the fans. If the fans want it to change, they shouldnt keep buying it. Its not that complicated. No point in getting annoyed with IW for hitting the nail on its head.

thenumberone : See, I do agree with you for the most part, I just feel that it was tasteless for them to say that about the people that faithfully support them. The whole comment was bad PR, and just bad taste in my opinion.

But yes, I do think the fan base wants the game to remain unchanged, but if anything at all had to be said them, it could have been said much more tactfully.

I don't know that guys who play Call of Duty consider themselves 'hardcore gamers' anyway.  The majority look at people who play video games and don't see themselves.  They don't immerse themselves in RPGs or go to CosPlay events or attend gatherings.  They get online, drink some beer or smoke and kill other people with knives, grenades, guns, and so on.  They heckle and insult each other, have team play and basically fight to the digital death.  Then they turn off the tv and go to bed or work or wherever.

They see it as a pastime and something to do.  They don't see it as a culture or a fan base or what have you and they won't care what some guy who programs games says about something they don't care about.  They want to shoot people and play FPS games all day with a good connection to kill people around the world.

They generally don't want or need any more and the comments won't have any affect on them because they don't care.

Wow, I guess this really all depends on your definition of a gamer. I personally see a gamer as someone who plays games commonly for recreational purposes be it competitive or casual; "CoD gamers" would fall into line with this as well. Funny thing is, I play CoD a decent amount even if it isn't on of my favorite series it can be entertaining, I among many other people I've met spend the majority of their spare time playing games including CoD, if that isn't "a hardcore gamer" I'm not sure what is.

However what truly shocks me is the generalization of a huge fan base as insanely huge as CoD is. With any fan base the people are unique individuals; I've met racists, bronies, "pros", actual professionals, casual gamers etc, all of them acted differently and had different viewpoints on countless situations.

From a more professional stand point CoD actually isn't all that terrible either, there a large amount of tactics and play-styles that are used in higher level gameplay, the only thing is not everyone looks at it that way, feel like this representative shared a very narrow minded outlook at the player base; However it is possible that he was told to do this so that must be kept in consideration.

warmaker : I think I understand where you are coming from but I simply disagree; Perhaps the majority of the player base is like that, but not most of everyone I've met. Usually people tend to play a variety of other games as well from my own experience in the franchise. (Introduced in MW2.) Personally I consider myself to be somewhat of a hardcore gamer, I focus on doing as well as I can at least, and CoD is definitely not my only game or even my most played game. That hasn't stopped me from getting 15 out of 20 kills as headshots in a single match before though.

And to be honest I play it so I can shoot people around the world with a good connection too, that doesn't meant that I can't enjoy the mechanics either though. (As wonky as they are.)

Eirinn :

You mean like what Nintendo does alot with virtually every series they own? Minus the insulting part, and Nintendo DOES actually come out and do something different and awesome at the same time.

ie

Majora's Mask. Mario Sunshine. Mario Kart Double Dash and Mario Kart 8.

ect.

warmaker : I agree with you. I play video games because it is a way for me to pass the time. I do not have a job, but I still apply to anything that I think I might have a chance of when I wake up. I might wake up at noon my time, and go to bed at about 3 AM my time, but I still try looking for a job. Granted, there is not very much in a desert where most of the work is warehouses, which I can't work because of my back, but still; I apply to a few jobs before I start my games each day. 

warmaker : I'm sure that applies to many --if not the majority-- of Call of Duty players, but for them to say Call of Duty players aren't gamers at all is incredibly inclusive I think. As Frodlex pointed out, there are gamers who play a very broad spectrum of games and Call of Duty just happens to fall into the mix of games they play. Further, many hardcore gamers play Call of Duty as well. For Infinity Ward to assume the entire core fan base falls into this small and restrictive box they made is a bit offensive to many Call of Duty fans. In all actuality, it's prejudice (literally: already judged/determined) albeit on a far smaller and less offensive scale than we usually use the term.


Frodlex : "However what truly shocks me is the generalization of a huge fan base as insanely huge as CoD is. With any fan base the people are unique individuals..."
Well said. They could have said anything to categorize their fan base, and they would have been wrong. You just can't lump a bunch of people with a few similar "likes" into a big box and assume you're right about it. If they're so right about the fan base, then why were so many fans disappointed with the trailer for Advanced Warfare at E3? I'm sure it will still sell well, but my point is, if they knew their fan base as well as they thought, why would they have disappointed any of them? They do all think exactly the same, like the same things, dislike the same things, all have the same personality,. and all sport the same haircuts since they're Call of Duty players, right (hyperbole)? As ridiculous as that comment I just made was, it's the exact same thing Infinity Ward did.

YAY! so does that mean i am a gamer?

this is gold! its bold! its brilliant! its borderline GENIUS! its quite possibly the greatest marketing strategy ever devised! "how can we keep selling games?" "i gotta idea! lets hack off our fan base!" now that the sarcasm is out of the way, i will state that this actually ALMOST infuriated me, and thats actually hard to do. i would LOVE to see how activision reacts to this. i also think this will actually test the intelligence of the CoD crowd, lets see if they boycot the dev, the whole franchise, or just keep buying. this was, however, a representative, no? so i myself see at least one of two things happening, they run off their fans and the next game bombs, they fire their representative, or both. i have never played anything after the games for ps2, so i have never actually played an infinity ward game, but i have heard that the treyarch games are better. less focused on mass producing the latest chinese plastic wal-mart piece of crap, and focusing on the interactive digital symphony that is the modern video game.

Eirinn : do you have a link to the whole interview? i would love to see the rest of what this bozo had to say. if this has not already done so, it needs to go viral. it would be hilarious if the interview was published in gameinformer!

m0ssb3rg935 : I said "Representative", but it was actually their executive producer Mark Rubin, which makes it even more shocking than some random PR guy saying it was.

And sadly, no I do not have a link to the entire interview, but there are several snippets of the interview popping up all over the internet now including some very reputable sites. Bad PR spreads fast, I guess. lol What's even more hilarious is that in the same interview (I assume) he said that they included female characters because their fanbase was so huge and --get this-- diverse. They're a diverse fanbase, yet he lumps them into this "Casual gamers that aren't really even gamers" category. Not sure how that makes any sense, but apparently it's Mark Rubin's logic.

I agree that this could have been said a lot more tactfully if this is truly how they feel, however, I can't say I really disagree with them that much. I recently watched a really good game theory video that kinda relates to this.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cxhs-GLE29Q

Although I can't say I agree completely with this video either, it does bring up some good points and evidence.



Personally, I feel that Cod is a very successful franchise and they are right to not try anything new, because they risk really outweighs they reward.

They know that by improving simple things like graphics and matchmaking they can still maintain a growing fan base, and until this changes, there is no reason to put money in something that might fail.

Eirinn : i love it when people contradict themselves, so call of duty is going the political correctness route? it sounds to me like they're trying to ruin it, not keep it the same.

Orgrim : nothing ventured, nothing gained. look at resident evil 4, thats nothing like the rest of the resident evil games and it sold like crazy. they even remastered it like 3 times. or think about the legend of zelda with ocarina of time being their first venture into both the N64 and 3D gaming, its considered one of the best n64 games made, one of the best zelda games ever made, and to some, THE best zelda game ever made. you dont have to re-invent the wheel, but if you dont bring something new to the table the games get stale.

Wow, they really said that? That's interesting. But I would say that they are just being honest. It is a realistic view to much of the COD playing audience. Not all of them. But a lot. So I guess it can't hurt to be honest. But I don't know if it was a good idea to make that quote public. It might make some fans angry. But then again, they'll probably never see it anyway.

Maybe it is just a demonstration. They might basically just bragging about their success and their future success. I can imagine some meeting where they say "How can we really rub it in other peoples faces?" "I know... We can insult our whole fan-base publicly just to show that it won't make us lose anything in sales." Honestly, a CoD fan is going to buy the next game no matter what the developers say on their own time. It doesn't make their FPS trolling any different. I bet they could openly call them a group of lazy children and pantywaist adults who still live in mom's basement, and they wouldn't lose any significant chunk of their sales. To clarify, that isn't my view of the CoD fan-base. It was just an example, so don't jump on me for that.

Eirinn : Here's the thing, If you play all the call of duty games...no matter how faithfully...even though they don't change anything about gameplay, you just shoot people up every night, I  would not call you a real gamer either. Just for the fact that gaming is an art that takes on many different forms. Real gamers enjoy games not because of the name or the fact that you're pretty much killing everyone in the game, but because there is actually something unique that is worth having in a game. I'm sorry, and you can pm me all your insults, but if people seriously fall for a cheap gaming scheme that really does not give you a new game, you deserve to hear that. I'm not saying it was right for the game makers to say that, since they probably will offend a lot of people that are paying their bills, but I believe their statement is indeed correct. I'm  quite an avid gamer, and do enjoy donkey kong, but when I realize that most DK games are little more than Super Mario bros with different sprites and set in a jungle, I really do not feel interested in getting any more, until they show me something different...like Donkey Kong Jungle Beat. A true gamer will evaluate games based on various things. How many games have I played like this before? If there are a lot, another question would be, Is there a good reason for me to buy this? What are the worlds like? Are they too similar to the ones before? What did they add here? Should I really buy more platforms just because they have another of virtually the same? I mean no offense at all, but if y'all get offended just make sure you follow the rules of vizzed...please. And I am sorry if I hurt your feelings.

If you play Call of Duty and you play plenty of other games and understand the problems that this game series has, then you are true gamer.

If you are one of those fanboys that buy every game in the series, play nothing else, constantly have ecstatic convulsions over the graphics of the game series rather than the quality of its gameplay, hate on every single other game in existence saying "it isn't good enough", and treat yourself like some kind of God for playing this game series for being "good" at it, then you aren't a gamer by any definition. You just mess around in a game where you shoot people and you happen to be good at it.

Remember: Being a gamer implies that you play more than one game.

FaithFighter :
DrakPokeMaster :

While I have to disagree with you both in saying playing a single game series faithfully doesn't make you a gamer (to me a gamer is just someone who plays Video Games) I do agree with your basic train of thought. I don't consider them "true" gamers as it were, but in all fairness, our standards here for a hardcore gamer are high because most of our more casual gamers are hardcore to most people. In my opinion, these guys are casual gamers, and that's about it. If you play one series and no more, then you're casual at best.

But as I said, I agree with almost everything you both said. I do however feel that they (the Devs) were wrong to say something so offensive about their fans. And while this may not seem offensive to many people, it's definitely offensive to a gamer -- casual or not. Still, I can see other gamers not viewing these guys as gamers, but the developers whose checks they pay have no right to insult them like they're a mindless mob that doesn't care what they say as long as they pump out the same regurgitated glob in every game they release.

Honestly I think Infinity Ward has just gotten too full of themselves over Call of Duty, and they're going to fall in the next five or six years. Or maybe that's just wishful thinking (about CoD falling, not Infinity Ward).