The Escapist Bulletin: Why it’s bad that Modern Warfare 2 is so good

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FEATURE

The Escapist Bulletin: Why it’s bad that Modern Warfare 2 is so good

Repetition by referendum

Product: The Escapist Bulletin

by The Escapist

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 was released this week, and to absolutely no one's surprise it smashed sales records all over the world, selling over a million copies in the UK alone on its first day. So what does this mean for gaming?

Well, George Carlin once said that if you vote you have no right to complain if the leader you helped pick, one way or the other, turns out to be a rotten apple. That might not seem like it has a lot to do with gaming, but let's put it another way: gamers lost the right to complain about sequels this week when they went out in their millions to buy the sixth Call of Duty game.

Don't like first-person shooters or terrorists of ambiguous nationalities? Well that's unfortunate, because it's likely you're going to be seeing an awful lot of both. Why? Because publishers know we like that sort of thing.

When it comes to games, we cast our votes with our purchases, and we've sent a very clear signal to Activision and all the other publishers about what it is we want in a game. We like shooters, we like terrorists, and - most importantly - we like sequels.

This isn't a new phenomenon, of course, and it's one that Activision, the current heavyweight sequel champion of the world, has built an entire business model around, but it speaks of a certainly naivety when gamers complain that the there are no new ideas in gaming when sales of sequels remain so high.

Not only have we shown Activision that its anti-creativity stance is absolutely fine, but we've legitimised higher prices - especially in the UK - and the removal of features. Good luck finding dedicated servers in any PC game ever in the future, for example - we've made it quite clear that we don't care.

Of course, it's disingenuous to claim that the only reason Modern Warfare 2 has sold well is because it's a sequel. Its predecessor was a very good game and that is a major contributing factor, and to Infinity Ward's credit it hasn't set the game in some non-specific middle eastern country.

In fact, the general consensus is that Modern Warfare 2 is a very good game indeed, but is it good enough to be the best selling game of all time? Sales figures would suggest that it is.

Gamers, and especially hardcore ones, seem to conveniently forget that gaming is an industry just like any other, and that publishers will put out what their sales sheets tell them people want to buy, so the almost inevitable glut of modern day shooters in the immediate future is a direct result of the gaming public being utterly besotted with Call of Duty.

Not that there's any harm in enjoying a sequel. Sequels give developers a chance to innovate without having to revolutionise, but given the utterly overwhelming response to Modern Warfare 2, what incentive do developers and publishers have to ever investigate new intellectual properties?

When games like Modern Warfare 2, Grand Theft Auto IV or Gears of War 2 sell by the bucket load, what reason does the industry have to set aside winning formulae and get inventive?

The Escapist is the internet's leading source of intelligent writing on the subject of video games.

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The Escapist 14/11/2009

Have your say!

Powerbacon | 14 November 2009

Well, i have to agree with you... This attitude from us, gamers, os generalized, and we like sequels, thats the big true, because new franchises hardly sell that good as sequels... I dont remember right now which new game sold pretty good right in the beginning... But we know that gta vi sold better than the first, just like call of duty franchise, and in the iPhone world, rolando and tap tap revenge are good examples of that!!

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quantumsheep | 14 November 2009

I'd argue actually that yes, while we love sequels, they have to, by their very nature, have come from something original that was actually popular in the first place.

It seems like stating the obvious, but if Modern Warfare didn't exist as an original idea (let's remember that it's part of the Call of Duty 'franchise', but that it was a massive deviation from the preceding games) then there would be no Modern Warfare 2.

Gears of War, is another example you mention yourself.

"but we've legitimised higher prices - especially in the UK" - this isn't really true. In the UK, the game was on sale from day one at far less than the £55 srp. Indeed, some supermarkets were selling it for just £26 - less than half its stated price.

If anything we've seen that pre-orders on massive games will disappear, as people will hold off and see how much the supermarkets will charge first as it's likely to be cheaper!

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