by Mofesdo
Call of Duty was originally a historically accurate game that emulated significant wars that occurred in real life. After many years, the franchise had made a transition into fictional settings rather than historical ones. Even after this great transition, the franchise has been thriving. In this essay, I will look at the history of this franchise and why it is still a commercial success today.
Origin of the Franchise
Call of Duty, the first entry of the series, was created on October 29, 2003, for Microsoft Windows. This first-person shooter simulates the infantry and warfare of WWII and has many gameplay similarities to the Medal of Honor franchise. In order to stand out from being a generic war simulator, Infinity Ward, the original developer studio, designed the game to allow players to view multiple sides of the war. The game depicts the war from the Americans, British and Soviet viewpoints. Call of Duty also innovative in the idea of AI squad members to immerse players in the battlefield, unlike other war simulators that had players play as a “Lone Wolf”. This new franchise was such a success that it sold 790,000 copies and earned $29.6 million by August 2006 in the United States alone. On November 16, 2004, Call of Duty: Finest Hour was released for Xbox, making this the first entry to enter the console market. This newest installment to the series not only brought the franchise to console but it brought online and local multiplayer, a giant staple in the franchise till this day. Call of Duty had established itself in the shooter genre and this led annual releases of new installments into the franchise.
Annual Releases
When a game series has annual releases, there tends to be sloppiness and rushed products. To counter this, Activision had split the development of the games between two studios, later in the future, another studio would enter. The two studios were Infinity Ward, the original developer studio for the first entry in the series, and Treyarch. In November of the year 2005, two Call of Duty games were created; Call of Duty 2 and Call of Duty 2: Big Red One. The second game was a spinoff of the franchise but was intended to see if Treyarch were capable of living up to the Call of Duty name. They had fulfilled the expectation and the game was received well by players. Although the exact number of copies sold is hidden to the public, we know that according to Metacritic, there were at least 300,000 copies in the United Kingdom, which indicates that the U.S. sales were much more. Following the year 2005, Activision made it so each developer studio would make one game every two years to allow for amazing, polished games to enter the industry annually. The cycle went with Infinity Ward in 2006, then Treyarch in 2007 and so on and so forth. As video games evolved, so did the franchise and to compensate for more complex games, Activision hired another developer studio in 2011 to help Infinity Ward with Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3. This studio was known as Sledgehammer Games and they would eventually become the third major developer studio in the franchise and would enter the development cycle in 2014 with their entry Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare.
Multiplayer
The biggest innovation that the Call of Duty franchise did was introduce online multiplayer to consoles. This is without a doubt a major factor as to why the franchise has survived till this day. The Call of Duty franchise was one of the first shooters on consoles to offer gamers online multiplayer. The idea of being able to play with others over the internet had become a reality during the end of the 6th generation of consoles; Playstation 2 and Xbox. However, for most gamers, that experience would not be accessible until the 7th generation of video games consoles; Playstation 3, Xbox 360 and Wii. With online multiplayer, Call of Duty fans had convinced many of their friends to get the game so they can hop into online matches and battle alongside each other (I was one of those friends that convinced others to play). In 2007 Call of Duty changed their multiplayer experience drastically with the addition of perks. Perks were customizable feature players can choose to use that gave their soldiers an advantage in their field. These perks varied from giving players more health, dealing more damage, increased sprint speed/duration, and so much more. This change allowed players to have significantly different playstyles; from being the “sniper” to the “run n’ gun” fanatic to the melee only troller, there were perks to help you play how you want to play. This new feature of the franchise set it apart heavily from its competitors and also helped the franchise shape its own identity. Call of Duty from that year forward would become the most “casual” first person in existence, meaning anyone can pick up the control and hop right into the fight with the assistance of perks.
The Great Transition
As I mentioned before, Call of Duty had originally historical settings but that isn’t the case anymore in today’s Call of Duty games. In 2007, Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare marked the franchise’s transition into fictional settings. CoD4’s story took place in the year 2011, where a radical leader has executed the president of an unnamed country in the Middle East and started a civil war in Russia. Although this setting is purely fictional, fans quickly accepted this since the gameplay and overall theme was still the same. Players still played as a U.S. or British Soldier that takes down a bad guy with great realistic action all between the campaign. This marked the beginning of what I will call, the “Modern” era of Call of Duty. The developer studio, Infinity Ward, would continue this modern era all the way until 2013 with COD: Ghosts. The other developer studio, Treyarch, had not followed this trend. Instead, Treyarch made their following two games based off historical settings but had added fictional elements into those settings to create realistic fictional stories that many fans of the franchise would love. Treyarch made COD: World at War and COD: Black ops.
World at War took place during WWII while Black Ops took place during the Cold War and Vietnam War. Within both of these stories, Treyarch fabricates fictional characters and events, then has players be the heroes of the historical wars. Treyarch then abandoned this idea of historical settings mixed with fictional events to go into the “Futuristic” era of Call of Duty. The “Futuristic” eta of the franchise is what I would call “The Great Transition” because it almost killed the franchise but at the same time saved it. The first game to take place in a somewhat far future would be COD: Black Ops 2. This game was set in 2025 and was released in 2012. This game featured many advanced technologies that beyond comprehension for many fans of the series. There were attachments on guns that let you see through walls, Automatic piloted explosives, giant explosive robots, and so much more insane technology. This was a huge shift from the grimy war-themed shooter. However, this game was seen as one of the greatest entries to the franchise due to its innovation and refreshing new content. Activision saw this huge praise for the game that they got their third developer studio to produce Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare. This is where things went downhill according to many fans. Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare was set far into the future and featured many technological advances that just didn’t feel right in a game like Call of Duty. The game had exo-suits that allowed players to literally fly through skies, it had laser beam weaponry, nano-tech explosives and so much more sci-fi tech. Fans did not like this at all.
Game journalists wrote praising reviews on the game about how it was amazing but everyone I personally spoke too and all of social media had said otherwise. This game also was the first title of the franchise to release “supply drops” as microtransactions. I’ll get into this later but just know that fans absolutely hated this new feature for years to come. Due to these supply drops, Activision made so much money that this warranted another futuristic game and this came as the entry Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare. Fans were frustrated with the disconnect that the developers had with the player base. When Infinite Warfare’s reveal trailer was released on Youtube showing off exo suits, space warfare, and more sci-fi tech, fans rose up and showed their hatred by disliking the video to voice their opinion. This video had become the 2nd most disliked video on the entire YouTube platform and still until this day it has remained as the 3rd most disliked video that isn’t a music video. Most hardcore fans, including myself, did not buy this entry and that has been the only Call of Duty I have not purchased. The player base knew that Activision wouldn’t listen to their voices so the player base spoke with their wallets and did not buy this entry to the franchise. The following year, Activision announced that the next Call of Duty would go back to its roots and feature “boots on ground” gameplay and be set during World War II. Fans rejoiced and quickly praised Activision for listening before even playing the next entry. This had marked the end of the “Futuristic” era of Call of Duty and the player base has been growing ever since “boots on the ground” gameplay was reintroduced. The new era of Call of Duty games hasn’t seen any type of similarities in theme between the games so we’ll just have to wait and see if the franchise will survive. If their sales indicate anything, the franchise is far from “dead” as many said during the futuristic era.
Micro Transactions
As I mentioned before, Supply drops, a random loot generator in the game, were introduced in Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare and players hated them in years to come. Supply drops offered players a lot of customization but the problem with this system is that it also included overpowered variants of weapons in the game within these supply drops. In order for a regular player to get these variants, they needed to open up their wallets and pray they receive the items they wanted. This is literally gambling and it was very manipulative to the young player base playing these games. If a player didn’t have these weapons they were at a severe disadvantage to other players; This was a pay-to-win game. Activision never released their sales of these supply drops in 2014 but if a player searched up advanced warfare content on YouTube, they would be bombarded with videos of people opening hundreds of supply drops, which meant the creators spent hundreds of dollars on microtransactions of the game. This trend continued onwards into Call of Duty: Black ops 3 and it was even worse than before. Although Black ops 3’s supply drops did not include variants, it did include overpowered weapons that were ONLY available through supply drops. Players were forced to pay for a chance to get these weapons with no duplication prevention. This led to content creators who wanted to make reviews on the guns and pro players who needed the new weapons to stay relevant in the competitive scene, to spend thousands of dollars on trying to to get these weapons.
Some of those people unfortunately never got all the weapons even after spending a lot of money on a $60 game. The reason these weapons were so hard to acquire was that the supply drops’ loot pool had been flooded with common and unwanted items that were worth nothing to players. According to Charlie Intel, Activision made $3.6 billion off of micro-transactions that year. History had repeated itself in Black Ops 3 and players were angry. The next time a change in the supply drops was made was in 2017 with Call of Duty: WWII. In this game, players were able to get supply drops pretty easily just by playing the game and players enjoyed this. The best part of this was that new weapons were added to the supply drops as well as being able to be unlockable by completing quests. This meant that it was possible to get every new weapon without paying a dollar more than the $60 price point of the game. Players were happy about this until Activision did the same mistake they did in Black Ops 3 and they flooded the loot pool within supply drops with tiny, insignificant cosmetics so that players could not get the rare items without spending money on supply drops. Players then cried out to Activision to stop putting supply drops in their games. Surprisingly, in the newest entry to the franchise, Call of Duty: Black Ops 4, Activision adopted the Fortnite approach to the game and had players be able to buy what they want directly from an “Item shop” instead of gambling and trying to get their desired item through supply drops. Players currently don’t like the prices of the cosmetics but this is a step in the right direction by not including weapons in the shop and have them earnable by just playing the game.
Future of the Franchise
Call of Duty took a big hit during its “Futuristic” phase but it was able to make a giant comeback by finally listening to community feedback. The franchise is off to a brand new era that fans are looking forward too. The most recent installment, Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 had many record-breaking sales. According to Forbes, Black ops 4 was “the biggest day-one digital release in the company’s history”, “the best-selling day-one full game on the PlayStation Store globally”, “the best-selling Activision day-one digital game on the Xbox Store”, and “the release on Battle.net also saw major boost”, “more than doubling PC digital sales over last year”. It has also been rumored that the next installment in the franchise will be a sequel in the Modern Warfare series, which is the most popular Call of Duty series. The future looks bright for this long time running franchise.
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This article was published as a requirement for the History of Digital Games course at UC Santa Cruz with A.M. Darke. Please be kind.
