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"They will remember everything you ever say for eternity.' Maybe. But outrage that results in meaningful action lasts a few months at most. The first person sh

"They will remember everything you ever say for eternity.' Maybe. But outrage that results in meaningful action lasts a few months at most. The first person shooter industry is fascinating to me. Somehow Call of Duty is still extremely popular and commercially successful series year after year despite continued management by the exact same studios that repeat the exact same algorithm: 1. Release re-skinned game each year with huge promises of new and original content to come 2. Underdeliver on said promises and lock remaining ones behind micro-transactions, loot boxes, and DLC 3. Abandon game 6-12 months in to begin preparation for the next iteration of the game after raking in millions on suckers 4. Repeat You'll see thousands of people swearing they'll never pay another $60 + add-ons for a CoD game ever again and yet somehow the cycle continues year after year. There are numerous other video game series (not just in the FPS genre) that follow the same pattern. Some eventually get run into the ground, but only after a very slow and profitable death. People have short attention spans. You might remember touching a flame, but the feeling of pain quickly fades.

teej 7y ago
Call of Duty is like Coca Cola or McDonald’s. When you buy it you know exactly what you’re gonna get. It’s the shooter version of a FIFA game. EA isn’t promising a drastically new game every time.
- flukus 7y ago
  > EA isn’t promising a drastically new game every time. Every couple of years they promise "completely new engine from the ground up" and deliver an incremental improvement on the previous years. I don't necessarily consider the result a bad thing, but the marketing is always BS.
gpm 7y ago
I don't think that's the point of the quote. If you said 5 years ago that the game was going to include a talking cube, the internet is going to remember that and when you publish is going to expect there to be a talking cube (or accuse you of breaking your promise). The outrage only lasts for a short period of time, but it can be based on promises said ages ago that without the internet would have been long forgotten.
- AstralStorm 7y ago
  And it tends to peak in the critical point of game adoption: at the outset.
- arrrg 7y ago
  Often that’s not what happens. Devs say “Oh, hey, talking cubes are cool, maybe we will integrate one” people will accuse them of breaking their promise (which is nonsensical) if they don’t include a talking cube. But this doesn’t happen in isolation. It’s likely that people who dig up that “promise” had an axe to grind anyway, so it’s about scoring points based on spin and lies.
  - username90 7y ago
    Can you name any large controversies around something as small as that? As I understood it the large ones like No Man’s Sky or Anthem even doctored gameplay footage during their presentations in addition to promising the moon and more. However when it was just "We might do this", then almost nobody blames them, a small minority might be angry or upset, but most don't care and many steps in to defend the devs in those cases.
    - arrrg 7y ago
      The problem is that even something like “we are doing that” is seen as a promise which it isn’t. It’s just a description of what they are doing. Even no man’s sky was like 90% toxic exaggerated bullshit, 10% truth.
      - speeder 7y ago
        I think No Man's Sky went the wrong way when they started to promise whatever fans were begging them to promise... If they had stuck with their seemly original plan, that was make a modern copy of the game Noctis, with no base building and a stronger focus on exploration of precedural worlds... things would have went better. As soon they tried to mix it with minecraft they introduced incompatible elements on the game and ruined it, they made stuff they already had not work, and promised stuff that in the new game they were making made no sense. I didn't played the current heavily patched version, but read about it, seemly the game shifted genre completely and is nothing like the original intention. Meanwhile I wait for someone to make a cool noctis clone... or maybe have the original author finish Noctis 5.
LoSboccacc 7y ago
generation gaps are shorter for the younger populace, think high schooler, there's not much interaction between seniors and juniors. for ea is like that the markets renews every couple years. I wonder what proportion of the cod sold are first or second purchases into the franchise before the infatuation tapers off, my hunch is that it's quite a majority
is0tope 7y ago
I think call of duty in many ways makes sense when viewed as a singleplayer game (which in recent years it hasn't been). When I buy it, I am not looking for "innovative gameplay, etc". I am instead looking for the gaming equivalent of a Movie. I typically like the story, and with around 6 to 8 hours of gameplay this works out to around 4 movies which is coincentally about the same price when viewed in terms of tickets.
dijit 7y ago
Call of Duty lives in an odd space, I am guilty of buying it much more often than I should. The problem is that the people I would want to play with stop playing the older games, so if you want to play with your friends and get a half-decent matchmaking experience then you have to get the new ones. There's also a minor problem with the older games, people get so good that the enjoyment is sucked right out, it's nice when everyone is unfamiliar with the balancing/movement/etc in the first months, it evens the playing field a lot. (also, older and thus cheaper/free games lead to a lot of cheaters who don't care if they get perma-banned).
- ForRealsies 7y ago
  >people get so good that the enjoyment is sucked right out Coming from the fighting game realm: >The group of scrubs won't know the first thing about all the depth I've been talking about. Their argument is basically that ignorantly mashing buttons with little regard to actual strategy is more "fun." Or to be more charitable, their argument could be that the game becomes less fun if they use tactic X, or character X, or whatever. That might be true temporarily until they figure out how to beat whatever it is, but ultimately the experts are having a more nuanced exchange, more opportunity for expression, for clever plays, for smart strategies, and so on. -Sirlin.net

teej 7y ago

Call of Duty is like Coca Cola or McDonald’s. When you buy it you know exactly what you’re gonna get. It’s the shooter version of a FIFA game. EA isn’t promising a drastically new game every time.

flukus 7y ago
> EA isn’t promising a drastically new game every time. Every couple of years they promise "completely new engine from the ground up" and deliver an incremental improvement on the previous years. I don't necessarily consider the result a bad thing, but the marketing is always BS.

gpm 7y ago

I don't think that's the point of the quote. If you said 5 years ago that the game was going to include a talking cube, the internet is going to remember that and when you publish is going to expect there to be a talking cube (or accuse you of breaking your promise). The outrage only lasts for a short period of time, but it can be based on promises said ages ago that without the internet would have been long forgotten.

AstralStorm 7y ago
And it tends to peak in the critical point of game adoption: at the outset.
arrrg 7y ago
Often that’s not what happens. Devs say “Oh, hey, talking cubes are cool, maybe we will integrate one” people will accuse them of breaking their promise (which is nonsensical) if they don’t include a talking cube. But this doesn’t happen in isolation. It’s likely that people who dig up that “promise” had an axe to grind anyway, so it’s about scoring points based on spin and lies.
- username90 7y ago
  Can you name any large controversies around something as small as that? As I understood it the large ones like No Man’s Sky or Anthem even doctored gameplay footage during their presentations in addition to promising the moon and more. However when it was just "We might do this", then almost nobody blames them, a small minority might be angry or upset, but most don't care and many steps in to defend the devs in those cases.
  - arrrg 7y ago
    The problem is that even something like “we are doing that” is seen as a promise which it isn’t. It’s just a description of what they are doing. Even no man’s sky was like 90% toxic exaggerated bullshit, 10% truth.
    - speeder 7y ago
      I think No Man's Sky went the wrong way when they started to promise whatever fans were begging them to promise... If they had stuck with their seemly original plan, that was make a modern copy of the game Noctis, with no base building and a stronger focus on exploration of precedural worlds... things would have went better. As soon they tried to mix it with minecraft they introduced incompatible elements on the game and ruined it, they made stuff they already had not work, and promised stuff that in the new game they were making made no sense. I didn't played the current heavily patched version, but read about it, seemly the game shifted genre completely and is nothing like the original intention. Meanwhile I wait for someone to make a cool noctis clone... or maybe have the original author finish Noctis 5.

LoSboccacc 7y ago

generation gaps are shorter for the younger populace, think high schooler, there's not much interaction between seniors and juniors. for ea is like that the markets renews every couple years. I wonder what proportion of the cod sold are first or second purchases into the franchise before the infatuation tapers off, my hunch is that it's quite a majority

is0tope 7y ago

I think call of duty in many ways makes sense when viewed as a singleplayer game (which in recent years it hasn't been). When I buy it, I am not looking for "innovative gameplay, etc". I am instead looking for the gaming equivalent of a Movie. I typically like the story, and with around 6 to 8 hours of gameplay this works out to around 4 movies which is coincentally about the same price when viewed in terms of tickets.

dijit 7y ago

Call of Duty lives in an odd space, I am guilty of buying it much more often than I should. The problem is that the people I would want to play with stop playing the older games, so if you want to play with your friends and get a half-decent matchmaking experience then you have to get the new ones. There's also a minor problem with the older games, people get so good that the enjoyment is sucked right out, it's nice when everyone is unfamiliar with the balancing/movement/etc in the first months, it evens the playing field a lot. (also, older and thus cheaper/free games lead to a lot of cheaters who don't care if they get perma-banned).

ForRealsies 7y ago
>people get so good that the enjoyment is sucked right out Coming from the fighting game realm: >The group of scrubs won't know the first thing about all the depth I've been talking about. Their argument is basically that ignorantly mashing buttons with little regard to actual strategy is more "fun." Or to be more charitable, their argument could be that the game becomes less fun if they use tactic X, or character X, or whatever. That might be true temporarily until they figure out how to beat whatever it is, but ultimately the experts are having a more nuanced exchange, more opportunity for expression, for clever plays, for smart strategies, and so on. -Sirlin.net