I'd hesitate to say that any game that rakes in a billion dollar is bad for the industry. I'm not going to suggest that Activision pours all that money back into development of other more interesting projects, because I doubt it. But overall, giving game publishers more money to spend publishing games is probably a good thing.Westaway said:Well when I wrote it it was meant to come across as a stereotypical Escapist, but I stand by my opinion. The monopoly CoD has is bad for the industry, and now we have a over saturation of modern fps's trying to cash in. If CoD died fast and brutally it would send a strong message to other devs and publishers. Fun fact, EA has 5 shooter series now: Crysis, Battlefield, Medal of Honor, whatever the Infinity Ward guys are makimg, and Crytek bough Homefront, so that should count too.MiracleOfSound said:Most people buy COD for the multiplayer, which is fast paced, silly, OTT and explosively lively.
Who didn't see a post like that coming?Westaway said:I think the best way for it to die is with fire and tears. No more CoD.
Sure, you do get bandwagon people. In fact, Call of Duty has its genesis in following the bandwagon for WWII games (already easily beaten by both Medal of Honor and Battlefield at the time of its debut). But, see, it's not "let's all climb aboard the bandwagon" that rockets a game to fame. It's innovation. Call of Duty 4 actually proved that: it took a genre (FPS) littered with stodgy and stale WWII shooters and provided us with a huge update. The corollary to any innovation, in my opinion, is that you hit long periods of stagnation because it becomes generally held opinion that the innovation is what works, so why improve upon it? But you need those periods precisely in order to innovate over again: you need people to come and accept the innovation as the default, and therefore strive for something better.
WWII shooters existed for at least eight years (I'm counting from Medal of Honor to CoD4. "Realistic" or "Modern" shooters have been around for five. So, I'd guess we can expect maybe three more years of this genre before it too falls by the wayside and we go fight Call of Duty: 1776 or 2050 something.