Poll: Do you think CoD will ever die?

[Forobryt]

Hmm well I ate some cod earlier from the fish and chip shop so it depends on how much it gets overfished....oh wait you mean the game.
Yes it will, everything dies.

 

[Korten12]

I mean, hey. I can't stop anyone from hating CoD, but at least be realistic in your expectations. CoD is a symptom, not a cause.

We're actually already starting to see another. I am actually seeing less CoD clones lately and more MOBA clones. Hell I swear a new MOBA gets announced every other week.

 

[Savryc]

Sure, CoD will die eventually. Then the next big thing will roll around, be milked for all it is worth, copied by lazy and greedy devs and blamed for everything wrong with gaming.

Rinse and repeat.

 

[laggyteabag]

Eventually sure, but seeing as the most recent entry to the franchise, Black Ops 2, raked in $500 million in its first day, $1 billion in 15 days, and it shifted 11 million copies in its first week is pretty damn impressive. To put this in perspective it beat Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 which (when it was released) was one of the, if not THE, best selling media product ever, so if Black Ops 2 beat that record I'd say that Call of Duty is still on the rise.

If Call of Duty is going to die, its not going to be for a while now, and when it does its going to be a really slow death.

 

[Vigormortis]

Well the reason a lot of people hate its popularity is because a lot of other developers try to emulate COD by adding COD elements into their FPSs. As a result the FPS market becomes more and more homogenized and over-saturated with COD clones. One of the reasons a lot of Battlefield series veterans were unsatisfied with Battlefield 3 was because it added COD elements to the game.

While the blame should rest with the developers that try to emulate COD and not COD's popularity its not unreasonable to think that if the COD series dies other developers would stop trying to copy it. Although, you are right about COD being the symptom of a much bigger problem; With the cost of AAA development and a fragile economy developers are not gonna what to take risks and therefore will stick to playing it safe,

But devs copying other popular titles is nothing new. That practice has been around practically since the inception of video gaming, and the gaming market has been flooded with clones for decades. The big publishers, always looking to nab a piece of the pie from someone else, would always and will always market their half-assed copies to as wide an audience as possible. The same thing is happening with Call of Duty knock-offs. It's not a new practice.

This is why we're more aware of the knock-offs. We simply see them advertised more often.

That said, while we may see adverts more commonly for these types of clones, the market itself is not flooded with them. At least, not nearly as bad as many seem to think. In fact, in the past, specifically during the NES and SNES eras, it was far worse. You had to search high and low for game variety. Today, our choices are much greater.

For every Call of Duty clone that surfaces we'll also see games like Bioshock, Portal, Crysis, Left 4 Dead, Serious Sam, Team Fortress, Payday, Dead Island, Stalker, Borderlands, etc, etc. And, that's just sticking to the first-person shooter genre.

My point is: many of the doom-and-gloom claims regarding Call of Duty are gross exaggerations.

Not all, mind you. There are aspects of the series design that are quite troubling. However, as I had said before, most of them are more or less part of a systemic issue within the industry and not so much problems borne out of Call of Duty itself.

Sadly, even though I'm pretty much both indifferent and ambivalent towards Call of Dutys eventual fate (whatever that may be), if it does "die off" soon it will make no difference within the industry. The mantle will be passed on to whomever finds the new, popular formula in game design. And then, the same issues we see now will likely continue.

 

[AITH]

People seem to forget CoD was around before Modern Warfare. My guess is that after they bleed the current modern military shooter IP dry, they will move on to CoD: Future Warfare with lasers, etc.

I was a big MW1 fan and enjoyed the campaign for 2 but I won't be picking the series up again until it is rehashed to the future timeline.

 

[gallium12]

Short term probably not, but in the ultra mega doom bringing long term it will most likely die out eventually. Unless aliens come and do something.

 

[Angelous Wang]

FPS military shooters as a genre will never die.

But CoD might if it gets outdone by another game.

At one point Medal of Honour was the FPS military shooter king, but now it's pretty much sitting in the gutter.

 

[immortalfrieza]

I just covered how that's not true, so let's move on....

No you didn't. There were maybe 2 or 3 notable Mario clones out there, (and even those make at least a pathetic attempt to make it look like they aren't cloning it) how many COD clones are out there? Oh yeah... EVERY SHOOTER ever made since COD hit it big, and even games in genres that don't have anything to DO with COD or shooters are throwing elements of COD in order to try and get into COD's audience.

Could you rephrase that into something intelligible? Too many commas make for confusion. You even look like you contradict yourself.

It's intelligible enough, and I can't see how anyone could possibly think I was contradicting myself.

Of course, the knockoff mentality was a large contributing factor in the 80s video game crash, but it was largely positive.

lolwot.

I suppose we should pretend Mario clones were also largely beneficial and not contributing to the same issue once more, because ponies, right?

The crash would have happened, clones everywhere or not. The crash occurred because of terrible business decisions in a infant market that didn't yet have the legs under it or corporations big enough to be able to shrug off the consequences of making bad business decisions. Back then, the knockoff mentality is what gave birth to most of the game mechanics, means of development, and graphical improvements that we have today, and that's where the largely positive aspect comes from. As I said before, because they made at least a pitiful attempt to make it look like they weren't cloning a particular popular game developers made changes, which resulted in new ways of making games, playing them, and looking at them which resulted in better games. Any clone that didn't do this ended up in the bargain bin, since everybody who would have wanted to play a direct clone probably already has the original and would rather play that instead, which the same reason that the countless WoW clones these days can't keep themselves subscription based.

With COD however, video games are so ingrained at this point that terrible business decisions and making crap clones are barely a blip on a publisher's profit margins. As a result, direct COD clones are rampant throughout the industry, and thanks to blind fans and casuals that'll buy up anything even slightly COD related failing and ending up in the bargain bin by any actual corporation rarely if ever happens. Unlike with the clones back then, developers don't even TRY to make it look like they're not just copying COD straight, in fact they frequently advertise and even flaunt the fact that they're doing just that. As a result, while the clones back in the 80's resulted in improvements industry wide out of necessity, COD clones have resulted in nothing but terrible games that would either never have existed or would have been far better if COD had never existed or had died out.

No downside except a possible diminished investment in gaming as a whole because it no longer looks like a tenable market. You left that part out, and it's rather important. Your expectations are unrealistic and speak more to your "optimism" than any realistic understanding of the corporate mindset.

Diminished investment? Barely, if that. As you yourself admit there's still plenty of other popular game franchises that are still making billions that will still exist when COD eventually dies as well as more that will be made by that time that corporations will be able to take their cues from, so investment in gaming as a whole won't be significantly effected. However, developers and publishers would now have an example of what NOT to do, a flashing neon sign that all developers and publishers are going to take notice of and at least a few are actually going to pay attention to.

An industry never makes any real changes until somebody big in that industry sets an example of what to or not to do, and the video game industry is no different.

 

[TIMESWORDSMAN]

All things must come to and end. The sea will not forever lap it's shores, the moon shall spin away, Sol shan't shine as it did before, and Earth shall turn to grey.


...I'm terribly sorry, I suddenly felt poetic for no reason.

 

[TheYellowCellPhone]

I'm not fucking voting because the answers go "Yes but CoDsucks" or "No but all games that aren't CoD don't suck". Just put "Yes" or "No," stop trying to look cool in front of the mob.

It's a rather simple game with solid gameplay, a big following, and some determined developers and fans; it wouldn't be logical for it to die out any time soon.

 

[BLAHwhatever]

As long as there's 10-18 year old angry little leethaxors COD will never die.
Except someone creates an "even cooler" game with the same shit, but better *something*

 

[Axolotl]

CoD probably will die, but not in the next few years, we need some big new franchise to come along and displace it.

Although personally I stopped caring about the franchise when they started hiring warcriminals to advertise it.

 

[Fox12]

It's not going to disappear, but I think it was definitely the "fad" for this generation. It will supersaturate the market, and ultimately be replaced with something else hugely popular. It's not going to disappear immediately though, it'll linger on, and remain relatively popular for at least another decade. I think the golden age of brown and grey shooters will be over in the next several years.

 

[Lt._nefarious]

Hope not, I love CoD. Eventually it'll die down a bit but then some other dev will come and remake it and we'll get a few more but nothing lasts forever. Although the way Treyarch is going with all the new settings and fun gadgets I imagine even if CoD dies they'll be making similar games but even sillier...

 

[Awesomesauce123]

Well, eventually, yeah. Definitely not soon. Anybody will get tired of anything if it goes on too long. Again, it won't be soon. Game franchises like Madden and Zelda haven't gone anywhere, I don't really expect COD to be different.

 

[Grouchy Imp_v1legacy]

Is Mario dead? Is Zelda dead? Is Sonic ... Ok, bad example. The point is that franchises can and will stand the test of time if enough people play them, and MW3 had 11 million players on the 360 alone (don't know about BlOps2 but it'll be somewhere in the same region). When it started out CoD was a WWII franchise. When that slowed down it moved to modern day. Now that has slowed down it has moved to 'near future'. The hard evidence points to a series that (regardless of what the detractors say) moves with the times and evolves with the changes in public perception - which are the hallmarks of a long-running franchise.

Like it or loathe it, CoD is here to stay for as long as the FPS genre remains popular.

 

[AnthrSolidSnake]

I don't know. I just wish people would stop thinking it's an awful franchise with no redeemable features. It's not a bad FPS, it just hasn't changed much since the first Modern Warfare. They have short single player campaigns and the multiplayer became so popular that it only seems like nothing but children and dude-bros play it because there are so many people that play it, eventually driving those not in those two categories to find something less popular to play. That's about it. Other than that, the multiplayer is fun and a test of skill. Is being "twitchy" a skill? Yes. I've actually found myself playing many games better from the coordination building that I've gained from playing CoD.

Do I agree that it's overrated? Yes, especially so far down the line. It's become mundane, but that doesn't mean the franchise needs to die. It means people really need to push the devs to change things up and innovate. Will they? Probably not, not as long as the community if filled with small minded people afraid of change because that means they will have to go back to square one and suck just as bad as everyone else.

I legitimately enjoy the games, and I no I don't just play FPSs. I do find that they have quality to them, they just need to add to it rather than rely on stale mechanics that were fine for 2007.

 

[SouthernStar]

Lol will Mario ever die? Because he needs to die before COD does. Wanna talk about rehashing Nintendo has been doing the same thing for 2 decades. DECADES

 

[Haakmed]

Not sure when but I would say yes. I mean it could be in the next couple of games. Seeing how they cut the production cycle down so much its turning into sports games like madden, NBA, NHL etc... I don't see new features being introduced, and even level design has been compromised. Single player stories being sacrificed because at this point not many people play it apparently. I would like to say the game is worth saving but I don't know anymore. If Call of Duty had to die so we could have some diversity in games again I think it would be worth it.