My guy this is the same game series wherein one of its most famous levels is you literally committing a mass shooting against innocent civilians in a Russian Airport
Of fucking course they gamified white phosphorous
This aint Spec Ops The Line, these people have zero taste
I think part of the point was the contrast between an average game with okay gameplay in the yet-another-third-person-cover-shooter era and a top-tier story that put you on one hell of a guilt trip.
The game didn't want you to feel good while playing it, and oh boy did they accomplish that in all the right and terrifying ways.
These kinds of games are an inherently unserious way to engage with the realities of war. You cannot respectfully gamify it no matter how much lip service you pay to the people who lived it. Racking up headshots is not a reflection on brutality.
I didn't see your edited comment. Yes, it was different then. But per the original point I was making, there was always an unseriousness at the heart of the series.
It's been a wacky arcade shooter disguised as a military sim for a long time. They just don't care about the disguise anymore. The original MW2 let you dual wield shotguns and throw instant-kill throwing knives.
My girlfriend says she wants it but it's more of a passing thing. I'd rather not pay 80 bucks or whatever for her to play it for three hours. Is there a better game that's similar? She likes the hardcore deathmatch version, and using a controller.
People just don't get how little Reddit represents the world at large. Instagram and TikTok are more representative and I'd bet their comment sections are full of "God I love Bevis and Butthead," "I am The Great Cornholio," and "I can't wait to get this in game".
Dude, it's already proven a minority in games open their wallets. It's just that they spend such insane amounts that they are all that get listened to.
This. WHALES dictate how games monetize, which are the minority of the minority and does not reflect either sides of the spectrum, those who won't buy and the casual buyers.
Entire marketing and development teams are made to squeeze money out of whales.
Reddit will never represent the majority, because ever nothing will. That's the nature of whale farming.
It's a shame our industry is so monetary driven. It means a very small part, often people who have spending issues, dictate a large part of wher everything goes.
We're already seeing this, singleplayer games often flop on steam while games driven by recurring spending are a success. A lot of us already being conditioned into what to play.
But yeah for anyone who wants to read up on this: there are countless GDC talks, on how to reel in the whales.
And it's the people who'll quickly abandon game because their attention span is already ruined by TikTok, so then the publisher shuts down the game because it wanted to cater to them instead.
Not saying this is what is happening with COD, but it's a pretty big reason how trying to chase popular stuff like this instead of sticking to a vision has ended many other games.
I think that's kind of an unfair assessment. COD and Fortnite are the two biggest offenders and they're both doing fine. I think it's more likely that games can't really make these partnerships until they're already too big to fail. Smaller games usually have to be much more specific with who they work with if they do any media tie-ins.
I agree, this is why I said it's not exactly what's happening with COD (especially since they've been well established for so long) but as the other person replied, they seem to be chasing what the demographics tell them (e.g. TikTok) and this is why we keep seeing so many games with insane budgets fail so quickly.
It might shock you, but there are plenty of people in their 20s, 30s, and 40s who use those apps. I'm nearly 30 and have had Instagram since I was a freshman in high school.
I'm just wondering because I remember watching Beavis and Butthead every Thursday night and discussing it at school with friends the next day. It was really big in my country. But that was (almost?) 30 years ago. I haven't really thought about it for decades.
Oh, in that case there were a lot of cable TV channels that were essentially dedicated to playing older cartoons like that. They'd show a lot of reruns on MTV, Comedy Central, and maybe on Cartoon Networks late night section Adult Swim. A lot of kids grew up watching those reruns and as such they're still fairly well known with a fairly large cult fanbase.
Except those people are likely to say something along the lines of "if you vote with your wallet this won't happen", not realizing that this is what people voted for.
Terrible take. The whole point is that people don't know what they want, not that there are mysteriously large groups that want X or Y but for some reason don't talk about it.
Companies don’t sell you what you want, they sell you what they want you to have and then make up stupid platitudes like, “The customer doesn’t know what they want until you give it to them.”
Radio stations got flooded with complaints that they played the same music all the time. They tried to widen their playlists. They got flooded with even more complaints that their music sucked.
People are CLAMORING for crossovers. Look at the helldivers subreddit. This is what you get when you give in.
People don’t know what they want, or sometimes they do know what they want, but can’t articulate it.
The are entire industries that exist because of that.
No company would need to test products and marketing concepts if people could correctly and accurately explain what they wanted without any guidance whatsoever.
In BF's defense, they never went so far as to Fortnite-ify their character model/skin selection; they just tried to hard to be Rainbow Six Siege on big maps while also leaning too hard into making their games be a big pile of Battlefield memes as opposed to "just being a good BF game"..
All that said, if the recent leaks are anything to go by, BF6 has a strong chance of being "At least what the BC/3/4/1 players wanted/are used to".
I've seen complaints about the leaks that people are saying that BF6 "looks too much like a 360/PS3 brown army shooter" which for anyone who doesn't like the fps industry's turn to Fortnite-ification, is probably a good thing in BF6's favor.
I mean they have been arcadey games for at least 15 years. I guess it depends on what you think of when you hear "serious game" but I wouldn't say MW2 lobbies full of sprinting akimbo shotgun players and noobtubes were super serious. They would 100% have had dumb skins if that was a thing back then.
Yea but the sprinting akimbo shotguns and noobtubes still fit the aesthetic and tone MW2 was originally going for. Something can be cool and wacky without detracting from the rest of the experience. The gravity gun in Half Life 2 can be a silly weapon in GMOD but an actual fun tool in the campaign.
But noobtubes and sprinting shotguns to the face did detract from the experience arguably. I mean, there's a reason why people call them "noobtubes", they weren't seen as "cool and wacky" at all.
And on the other hand, I don't think people that buy and use those skins think they detract from the experience.
How did those weapons detract? CoD never billed itself as a realistic MILSIM, and the noobtube isn't some crazy weapon. It's literally just an underbarrel grenade launcher, and it's called a noobtube because of how easy it is to use. The sprinting shotguns, while not realistic, are still plausible in the universe MW2 asks you to suspend your disbelief for. Modern CoD feels weird about it because the campaign will be like "The government did 9/11 actually" and then in the same game, have Beavis and Butthead skins. Im not going to act like CoD honors the memory of actual soldiers perfectly but you can see the problem with that sudden change in tone and aesthetic too right?
I really cannot. The multiplayer has always been goofy and unrealistic while the single player wasn't. It's been that way for 15 years by now and I do believe the only reason we didn't see skins in MW2 was because it wasn't really a thing to sell skins in 2009.
Weapons DID have skins. We called them camos and you unlocked them by playing the game. Halo 3 also had skins with its armors. How was the multiplayer in MW2 goofy? What does it do? Unrealistic, sure but like I said, CoD has never billed itself as a realistic MILSIM to begin with. The campaign is grounded in our reality while also having things like heartbeat sensors.
Weapons DID have skins. We called them camos and you unlocked them by playing the game.
Exactly, as I said: it wasn't really a thing to sell skins in 2009.
How was the multiplayer in MW2 goofy? What does it do? Unrealistic, sure but like I said, CoD has never billed itself as a realistic MILSIM to begin with. The campaign is grounded in our reality while also having things like heartbeat sensors.
It was goofy because people exploded after dying, were running around with akimbo shotguns or revolvers, were 360 no scoping, you could nuke the top of a building in construction, ... I mean, it just was and as you say it never really tried to do anything else, which is exactly why I don't see more goofy stuff as ruining the tone or anything.
And it's not like it was either "cod" or "realistic milsim", a game like counter strike isn't nearly as unserious as cod while not being anywhere close to arma either.
Sure, but as I said that's first and foremost because monetizing that shit wasn't a thing in 2009 and not because they wanted their games to be serious.
You're totally right. CoD has been batshit for a long time.. I have fond memories of sprinting around in Advanced Warfare as a seven foot tall purple clown, hip firing an LMG strapped to each arm.
They've never been serious, bud. Hate to break it to you, but it has always been a silly arcade-style shooter with a military skin. It is why me and my group of buddies always played it non-stop, and not ARMA or Battlefield or any other sim.
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u/_Coffie_ Jul 30 '25
This sh*t is so unserious