Call of Duty Tourney Play Puts Limits On Infinity Ward

[Karloff]

Call of Duty Tourney Play Puts Limits On Infinity Ward

Those core rules have to stay just as they are.

If ever you've wondered why each Call of Duty is much like the rest, you can thank tournament play, says Infinity Ward's Mark Rubin. E Sports are a big thing for the franchise, and if Call of Duty is to retain its edge it can't afford to change its core rules. Pro gamers need consistency, and that's what Infinity Ward provides. Luckily those core rules aren't too difficult to remember. "You're a player, it's in first-person, you have a weapon in your hand and you run around shooting other people," says Rubin.

There are things Infinity Ward can fiddle with, like the maps, and character customization, and Infinity always wants to make a better game than it did last time. What it can't afford to do is make a game that's significantly different from the one it made last time. So Infinity can have something like the new Ghosts [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/trailers/8075-Call-of-Duty-Ghosts-Single-Player-Trailer] game mode Cranked, which emphasises kills by speeding up your avatar every time you make a kill, and also punishes you with explosions if you fail to chain kills every thirty seconds or so. But what it can't do is take away the kills, or the guns, or the shooting of the guns to get kills. Yes to new game modes, yes to new game content, no to new game play.

Call of Duty: Ghosts is due for PC, PS4, PS3, Xbox One, Xbox 360, and Wii U November 2013.

Source: OXM [http://www.oxm.co.uk/63604/infinity-ward-cant-change-call-of-duty-too-much-because-its-like-a-sport/]


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[Sigmund Av Volsung]

I'm sorry but all I could see was "we use e-sports as an excuse to make the same game every year for people who have an aversion to money".

Activision, please.

 

[Phrozenflame500]

Bullshit. You make the same game because people are willing to buy the same game.

Don't get me wrong it's great business, selling cheaply-made games with tons of reused assets which sell by the millions to the lowest common denominator, but atleast be honest about it.

 

[fix-the-spade]

As the greatest and most eloquent response in history goes, bollocks!

What he means is "We change as little as possible and re-use as many assets as possible to cheaply crank out a game every twenty four months for maximum profitability, we also take as few risks as possible to avoid alienating the casual market that considers anything different from Call of Duty to somehow be a glaring flaw,"

There's no reason they couldn't mess with the formula but include a standard tournament mode that plays the same as the last (like say, Counter Strike, Halo, Quake, Unreal do or did). Or they could straight up admit why they don't change, it's a perfectly valid explanation, although the irony that the biggest jumps in Call of Duty's popularity were made by taking those risks they seem so hopelessly averse to now seems lost on them.

Claiming it's for E-sports just strikes me as disingenuous.

 

[rofltehcat]

This is really just BS. If a new game turned out to be very different than the old one, "pro players" would just complain and then either continue playing the old "classic" game or adapt. If the new game was really that different, it wouldn't be picked up by leagues and tournaments. But because those are paid by publishers anyways to pick certain games (BF3 over CoD, DotA2 over LoL etc.), this is no issue anyways.

To be honest, mixing up things once in a while might even increase E-sports viewership. Of course hardcore players would complain and some might not play/watch it (that much) but if a game were made to be entertaining to watch, even for "uninitiated" people, the viewership would probably be bigger.
Of course a big part of the people watching E-sports events are also playing those games but nearly all of those would transition from CoDn to CoDn+1 anyways.

The real reason why they don't change much: People keep buying the game, the game formula works extremely well. Why change it and risk alienating people when there is perfectly good money to be made?

 

[MysticSlayer]

"You're a player, it's in first-person, you have a weapon in your hand and you run around shooting other people," says Rubin.

Oh, come on! I wanted CoD to be an MMORPG with magic and elves! Why won't they listen to us and CHANGE!!!!!

Joking aside, this is just a stupid excuse. For starters, it doesn't justify yearly releases, which is part of the issue with the lack of innovation from the series. Second, he's basically just said CoD can't be anything but an FPS, but never specifies why they don't change some of the rules "unique" to Call of Duty. I mean, would it kill them to at least open up a new set of tactics outside the ones we established in MW2? I had to change quite a bit during the transition from CoD4 to MW2, so it isn't impossible to encourage fresh ways of approaching the game, even if the mechanics don't change that much.

 

[Alexander Kirby]

This REALLY isn't an excuse. Even with the games as similar as they are, a lot of people do still prefer the older versions. Besides, if you never innovate then how do you know that people won't pick up the new one and start to play it competitively. Sure, all the Counter-Strike games are the same, but then again they only make one every 8 years, and they never have the cheek to name or price them as full sequels. It's just a shame that developers are pushed into limitations because they want to relive the success of the old ones over and over again.

 

[Saelune]

Screw pro/tournament players. They suck the soul out of every game they touch. 90% of anything is considered banned...and have you seen what they do to Super Smash Bros!? Most boring level, no items...thats basically a literal soul suck. True pros can play through the obstacles rather than removing them and using just "skill".

 

[SecondPrize]

But all he says is that it needs to remain a first person shooter. That doesn't explain why the last half dozen or so titles in the series were retreads using the same engine.

 

[Thedutchjelle]

Screw pro/tournament players. They suck the soul out of every game they touch. 90% of anything is considered banned...and have you seen what they do to Super Smash Bros!? Most boring level, no items...thats basically a literal soul suck. True pros can play through the obstacles rather than removing them and using just "skill".

But in a game like Starcraft 2, everything is allowed and the most insane strategies or good builds usually originate from some pro-Korean.