Poll: Do you think CoD will ever die?

[RJ 17]

Quite simply what the topic's title asks: do you think CoD will ever die? Or "be retired" to phrase it another way?

I'm not looking to attack the game or praise it, just a curiosity poll to see what people think of the series' future. Now for some clarification, I'm talking within the next...let's say 5 years. That'll be what the poll is asking. For bonus points, though, give it a 10 year outlook in your comment.

Also, please do explain why you think it'll be retired soon (or eventually) or if it'll keep on truckin' with no visible end on the horizon. The new generation of consoles is coming out, will this be a shot-in-the-arm to give CoD a boost and propel it forward? Or will people be looking for fresh new concepts and games to dive into as we move forward?

 

[Foolery]

Maybe? Who knows. I'm inclined to say it'll be sticking around, or at least something like it. Either way, doesn't bother me. There are plenty of other decent games that aren't COD.

 

[Zhukov]

Eh, nothing lasts forever. Just ask the Romans. Or Blizzard.

It's not going to die any time soon though. I'd say it's got at least another five years of, at the very least, even sales.

It will be a slow sputtering downturn though, not a sudden crash.

 

[Tom_green_day]

I love most new CoD games, and they're really solidly put together. I think it'll last at least 5 years, if only by trying to innovate (yes I said CoD innovates, get over it) to get past all the games which are trying to emulate it. The only problem is they've done the past, present and future, so they're gonna have to come up with some further-field ideas and more importantly get the existing fanbase on board before they can go anywhere with them.
Nothing game-wise can last 10 years though, and sooner or later Treyarch definitely and IW probably will want to create something new, causing them to leave the CoD cycle. If they do this, I think Activision will probably give the franchise a break rather than fly someone else in like they tried to do with Gearbox.

 

[Smooth Operator]

Well in the same way WoW, Halo, FIFA, Angry Birds, Justin Bever, Kardashians,... and other such nonsense "dies", it's a franchise that will forever make stupid money for nothing but no one really wants to talk about how they are secretly helping to fuel this problem.

 

[RJ 17]

Nothing game-wise can last 10 years though,

World of Warcraft begs to differ. Granted it's been bleeding subscriptions as of late, but it's still going very strong and it came out about a decade ago.

I do see your point, though, and that's what I'm asking: will IW and TA eventually grow tired of it and move on? If so, will that happen sooner or will it happen later? I'd imagine some would argue that you should ride the gravy train all the way till it finally comes to a stop. IW and TA have a pretty sweet gig going and I doubt they'd jump ship on their own until it was clear that the gaming world was finally getting tired of the franchise.

As for "innovation" in the CoD games, the only innovating they've done is making new crap in the sky to kill you before you even know what the hell is going on.

 

[Mister Six]

Has Madden died yet? Mario? Fifa? Legend of Zelda? Yeah as much as we may dislike Call of Duty, it's not going to go anywhere.

 

[King of Asgaard]

Eventually, yes, it will go the way of the dodo.
But not any time soon. Hell, I feel that this decade will continue to have successful COD sequels. Maybe then we'll see the franchise lose favour in the mainstream.

 

[Erttheking]

Oh yeah. It's a bubble, eventually it's going to pop. Giant things that practically print money don't last forever. Look at the speculator boom. It'll slowly shrink away. Come to think of it I think it's already happening, BLOPs 2 didn't sell as well as previous games.

 

[ZZoMBiE13]

It'll be around a while, that much is certain.

Once Call of Duty took Halo's spot at the top of the shooter list, everyone said Halo was dead. And it has sold more copies each time a new one is released. It's arguably more popular post mortem if you listen to nay sayers.

CoD isn't going anywhere. And honestly, why would you want it to? It keeps other games free of CoD players if nothing else (Ba-dum, tss). So thank God for CoD.

Now I'm oddly hungry for fish for some reason.

 

[Evonisia]

It'll die when the fanbase eventually stops caring.

Take CoD: Ghosts for example, it hasn't been hyped up anywhere near as much as Black Ops II was, and it's only gameplay has shown us that the game will identical to previous CoDs with the exception of occasionally controlling a dog (gameplay wise we already saw this 'function' in Black Ops II). It's actually relying on Black Ops II to advertise it, because when you go on it you get messages saying "PRE-ORDER CoD: Ghosts and get a camo/titlecard", where none of the previous CoDs were advertised by the rival company.

I think Ghosts might be the beginning of the end.

 

[kyuzo3567]

Snip

I think there should be a third pole option saying something along the lines of "One can only hope" cuz as much as I want it to, I still think it will continue on for a few more years at least

 

[immortalfrieza]

No, but not because I think COD has any merit. COD has been pretty much a cancer on the game industry since the franchise was created, stifling innovation and creativity across the industry. However, despite this it'll definitely survive if not thrive due to it's blind fanboys and the casuals who'll buy up anything COD no matter how crappy it is. When it does eventually die, it'll leave a nearly dead industry struggling to breathe behind it.

 

[Mister Chippy]

What people need to realize here is the the COD games are NOT bad and that if they lose popularity it won't be due to some huge realization that there are better games out there, only that people will eventually lose interest.

In fact the COD games are very well put together, but the emphasis in their design isn't in making them 'good' as we see the term but instead making them accessible and rewarding to play.

Random spawns, high weapon spread, crazy low Time To Kill, lots of low skill/high reward, and kill streaks all mean that anyone who plays a COD game is likely to get not one but multiple kills, and they will be REWARDED for it. They will be told that they're good, even if all they really did was fire blindly around a corner with a grenade launcher. The games reward almost every action with medals and ribbons, things that are commonly associated with great achievement, even if you haven't really done anything. This high accessibility leads to lots of people playing the game quite a bit, and contrary to what all use 'hardcore' gamers like to think, there is in fact skill involved in COD and you can get good at it.

More importantly, the people who play COD THINK that they're good at it, and they've invested a lot of time in it because of this feeling. The reason that each new COD game is so similar to the last one is because the devs want to retain these people and reassure them that just because this is a new game, it doesn't actually mean it's a DIFFERENT game.

This focus on reward, accessibility, and retention means that the COD crowd are actually quite dedicated and really do know the game really well. It's also why some of them got outraged enough to send death threats over that recent balance patch.

Also, if we look at other FPS games with large devoted followings such as TF2 we'll see that people who really like a certain game and feel that they've invested a lot of time in it will stick with the game for a really long time as long as there is consistent "new content" (which in TF2, a game people generally agree is really good, is normally just new hats).

Finally, why the hell do people want COD to die? Millions of people enjoy this game immensely, and we all want to take that away from them because we feel that the game isn't 'good enough'? I'll admit I would love it if other publisher started realizing that trying to attract the COD crowd won't work because they're all to busy playing COD, but I don't begrudge the people who actually enjoy the game, I'm just pissed at the stupid executives who make those decisions.

 

[Lightknight]

Every product has a life cycle. It may die but only if a sufficient replacement presents itself. It's in a better position than WoW only because COD is a series instead of a standalone game that gets DLC instead of replaced. So this could last far longer than the immensely popular WoW. Which is saying a lot.

There's nothing wrong with COD. It's a very well-made FPS that can even have the occasionally interesting main storyline. Can't really ask for more and that's why they sell.

 

[wiiguy21]

Personally, I really hope it does, but unfortunately I don't see it happening any time soon. I used to play a lot of the older COD's (United Offensive with the planes mod on the destroy-the-three-enemy-bunkers game mode was amazing) and recently, I even went back and finished COD 2 (as in the original COD 2 without the Modern Warfare attached to it) and was shocked at how, gameplay-wise, it felt a lot more realistic than the new titles. I only got up to Modern Warfare 2 before getting sick of all the repetition and switched over to Battlefield instead (though I admit I still bought Black ops for the zombies, please forgive me).

So personally, I thought the franchise should have died 3-4 games ago, yet for some reason more and more people keep buying it, so maybe I'm just not very good at predicting these kinds of things. I thought it was just a fad, but now it's almost ingrained itself as a permanent part of our culture, God help us all...

 

[fix-the-spade]

Quite simply what the topic's title asks: do you think CoD will ever die? Or "be retired" to phrase it another way?

Quake Died.
Unreal died.
Medal of Honor died (tell someone in 2003 that CoD would dwarf Medal of Honor).

All it'll take is a couple of high budget flops, nobody is immune from that.

 

[Ragsnstitches]

Tough call.

My initial thoughts are "yes", because when all said and done I find the games so bad, so unbelievably poor and detached from the player, that I think surely they can't go on for too long?

But then I look at all the rehashes which the likes of FIFA have conjured up over the past 20 years, and also the state of some of the drongos out there not developed enough to play anything other than something which is essentially a slightly interactive movie which requires no thought, and I really begin to wonder.

Voted "yes", but more out of hope than anything else.

Well, EA has kinda cornered the market for big name sports games (Fifa, NBA, NFL... etc.) . Even its closest competitors doesn't match the "authenticity" (relevant stats, leagues, players and their signed teams) of the Fifa series. You'll note that EA also has several racing games that cover many bases, but none of them get as much success as the fifa series.

CoD? It's a successful franchise in an UTTERLY saturated genre. There are 2 inevitable possibilities:

1: The majority audience grows tired of the CoD formula or the formula fails to live up to past successes, which will result in the audience migrating to other games. CoD probably won't die away due to this if the core fans keep playing them, but its relevance would significantly diminish.

2: A competing FPS manages to, somehow. pull the greater share of CoD players who, over time, stop buying CoD games (possibly even aping the new succesful formula, and getting scolded for it like EA and the recent Medal of Honour games). There will still be a core audience and having an alternative doesn't mean there won't be some crossover, but again, its relevance will diminish.

There is also a possibility that CoD does something totally new to reinvigorate the franchise, giving another lease of life. But Activision probably wouldn't have the balls to let such a decision pass pre-production, so that's slim at best.

CoD will die. It just won't be a dramatic collapse like some obsessive people seem to hope for.

It will be so gradual that no one will notice... until we start having CoD nostalgia topics on some weird near future forum.

 

[Kanova]

Not until all the casuals and bros die.