Call of Duty Scores Convention of Its Very Own

[Logan Westbrook]

Call of Duty Scores Convention of Its Very Own

If you fancy hanging out with a few thousand Call of Duty fans for a weekend, Activision has you covered.

Activison has announced that it will hold a two-day fanfest for the Call of Duty games called Call of Duty XP. According to the publisher, the event is along the lines of BlizzCon, Blizzard's annual convention, but will be a very different event, as befits a very different game.

The event will take place in Los Angeles on September 2nd and 3rd, and it sounds like Activision is rolling out all the stops. As well as attractions like paintball, Activision promises Triple A music talent and a massive CoD tournament featuring a million dollar prize. There will also be demo kiosks where attendees can try out Modern Warfare 3 and real world replicas of CoD locations that they will be able to visit.

There will be 6,000 tickets available, priced at $150. Activision's Eric Hirshberg said that the ticket price was somewhere what you'd pay to attend BlizzCon, and what you'd pay for Comic Con, and that it represented fantastic value for money. "If you attend any AAA concert, that's about what you'd be paying," Hirshberg said. "So we think we're providing tremendous value that's really unreplicable [sic] anywhere else." The proceeds from the event will go to the Call of Duty Endowment, a charity that supports returning veterans and helps them find work.

It doesn't take a math whiz to realize that Activision is probably going to make a pretty hefty loss at the event. Even If it sells every single ticket, that's still only $900,000, not even enough to cover the tournament prize money, let alone hiring a venue, acts and all the other costs. But while Call of Duty XP might not make money in its own right, as a marketing tool for MW3 and Call of Duty as a franchise, it will do just fine. Tickets go on sale on July 19th.

Source: Gamepro [http://www.gamepro.com/article/news/220822/call-of-duty-xp-is-the-franchises-blizzcon/]




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[matrix3509]

Reading this on another site, I was under the impression that the million dollar prize was going to be for the paintball. I guess it makes more sense that it would be for the actual game. I am disappoint now because I love paintball.

 

[Catchy Slogan]

I wonder how many people will be accused of camping and drop-shotting in the paintball?

 

[Soviet Heavy]

Bet you this will be more expensive than Blizzcon. And then there will probably be an "elite" service for people who want to be VIPs.

 

[brazuca]

Will there be cosplay?

 

[cryogeist]

I wonder how many people will go as a main character or antagonist?
hell if i could go i would friggen go as pvt koopman from WaW XD
if you don't know he's the guy that gets shot in the head in the level where you're landing on the beach

 

[FogHornG36]

Will there be cosplay?

Tactical cos play... i think that's the only way i would be willing to do it...

 

[duchaked]

yeahh...def don't wanna go to this
tho admittedly I really would like to visit Cali, but there are other cons in the state haha

 

[intheweeds]

I have never in my life heard of a concert referred to as 'AAA'. Is that even a thing?

 

[superdelux]

I assume one person will run around with one of these instead of shooting paintballs
(use it like a knife)

 

[teh_gunslinger]

I have never in my life heard of a concert referred to as 'AAA'. Is that even a thing?

Perhaps AAA is a band (with very expensive concerts it seems)?

Now, I'll grant that I mostly go to metal concerts, but as a rule I've not payed that much. Not even the Slayer/Motorhead/Rammstein combo was that expensive. The closet I got was an Iron Maiden one that cost 666 Danish KR.

 

[GeorgW]

A really smart move. It's the biggest entertainment franchise right now, they should have a convention. And I don't think they'll lose any money, they'll have DLC there for you to pay for things like food and toilets.

 

[Uber Waddles]

... and THIS is when CoD crossed the line.

I can live with $15 map packs. I can live with CoD elite. But an official CoD convention? Blantant franchise milking is blantant.

BlizzCon works because blizzard is working on multiple games that they work on for years at a time, not to mention the new releases they do offer have some real girth to them. Future expansions for existing franchises, completely new games, future patches for games that are already extremely deep.

Compare that to Activision - they have one CoD game a year, not to mention 0 support for games that are not the most current. There is no depth in the game to be discussed, its a first person shooter. The most you could do is say "gun x is too weak/strong so we plan on buffing/nerfing it".

There's no complex lore, theres no complex mechanics. And they will more than likely be talking about one game. Not. worth. it.

 

[TheRealCJ]

Oh good. I'm looking forward to the inevitable kegstands and obnoxious hollering that a only a thousand CoD fans can produce.

 

[Daaaah Whoosh]

It'd be funny if the convention was in an airport. A Russian airport.

 

[koroem]

lol more ways to rape blind fanbois of their cash. Wonder how many more "creative" ways Activision will come up with before people start to realize....

 

[imnot]

It'd be funny if the convention was in an airport. A Russian airport.

They should totally re schedule it to there.
And come in cos play.
Including real guns.
While playing soundclips from the game XD.

 

[Owyn_Merrilin]

Call me a PC elitist, but I just can't help but feel like this is overkill for a game like CoD. It's not an old school shooter, where getting the drop on someone is not an instant kill if they're better at actual combat, it's a modern shooter which boils down to "he who sees the opponent first gets the kill." It doesn't even have the dynamism of the Battlefield series, where the maps are huge and there's more ways to get to any given location than there are players; rather, the maps are generally small enough to make a decent game of TF2, with roughly the same number of alternate routes, but none of the uncertainty that comes with a firefight in that game. I guess what I'm saying is that CoD isn't the best choice for a competitive shooter; the fights are too determinate, and there isn't enough variation to make it a decent spectator sport, either.

If you look at the following examples, you can see that other games require all of the skills that CoD does, plus quite a few more -- making it effectively baby's first FPS. Competitive CoD is like Professional Teeball; sure, you can play with the training wheels, but it doesn't make you look good next to the actual MLB players.

Spoiler: High level Quake 3 match

Note the emphasis on map knowledge and map control; these are supposed to be the main skills in CoD, but as you can see, high level Quake involves map knowledge on a level that CoD players would never need.

Spoiler: Competitive TF2

This time, map knowledge is just as complicated as it is in CoD, but it's clearly not the only component

Spoiler: BF2. Not competitive, but a decent example of how the game works with good teamplay

As you can see, positioning is what decides an infantry fight, much like in CoD. The difference is that the maps are huge and the vehicles make it incredibly dynamic, completely changing the nature of the game.

Spoiler: competitive CoD

As you can see, it's just not as dynamic as any of the other games. The game makes map control the only important skill, removing about 90% of what makes competitive games interesting. Also, note the trash talk; the players in the other games were quite a bit more polite, apparently having learned about good sportsmanship as children.

All in all, this seems like a pretty crass attempt at marketing. CoD is officially the Budweiser of videogames.