Call of Duty and Innovative Gameplay

Call of Duty is an insanely popular first-person shooter (FPS) video game, available across several gaming platforms. It has always had a large following, but ever since Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, the franchise has become one of (if not the) highest grossing video game IPs on the FPS market. Each game since CoD4 has done little to change the original's formula, sticking with similar gameplay, match variants, and weapon load-outs. Sure, the story changes dramatically from one game to another, but any CoD player will tell you that you don't buy the game for its story - you buy it for the multiplayer.

Not me, but I'm familiar with his game-face!

I, like so many other gamers, really do enjoy the visceral, pulse-pounding thrill of matching my reflexes and skills against nameless, faceless opponents in online multiplayer. The current Call of Duty series does a great job of scratching that itch for its players, and its (relatively) simple control scheme makes it easy for new players to visit their friends and pick it up themselves. This generates an ever-expanding pool of potential CoD customers, and this money-generating formula  has put Activision and Infinity Ward on the map.

Now:

Imitation in the video game market is not a new thing. I'm sure even Pong had imitators. But there seems to be a startling shift in the gaming industry to shy away from more artistic endeavors in order to go for games that are sure to make money.

Take a second and breathe. I know this is shocking news that an industry is focused on making money. I didn't mean to spring that on you so suddenly.

But the problem is bigger than that. Older generations of games you'd find in the arcade, like Frogger or Mortal Kombat, tended to cost less than $10 million to produce. That still seems like a lot, but compare it to the games that have come out in the past 5 years, like Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, which have budgets of $200 million or more. The sad truth is that modern video game companies have to put more skin in the game in order to produce a title. That means that the business end needs to be fulfilled.

"Sure, Mr. Molyneux, we can produce your innovative new hit... But can you be sure we'll get our money back?" And the answer, sadly, isn't looking as sure as it used to.

"I would gladly pay you Tuesday for a video game today."

So how do these companies ensure they'll get their money back? Well, they look at trends. "Which games made money before, and which elements can we borrow from them to hopefully pad our own numbers?" Taking a look at Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, it sold 10 million units within its first year on the shelves. At $60 a pop, that's $600 million in revenue - at least 3 times what it cost to produce. Since it hit the market, many new FPS games have borrowed elements of the CoD formula. As video game reviewer extraordinaire Ben 'Yahtzee' Crowshaw has put it, they've all become "same-y, brown, realistic shooters."

"But isn't this what innovation means?" You might ask. "Taking what works and then adding your own spin to it?"

Well, on one level you'd be right. Yes, it is the nature of all human achievements to capitalize on the ground-breaking ingenuity of our fellow man by adding a little bit of our expertise to it. But the ugly trend is that we're not seeing that last step. Instead, developers are recycling the same tired game mechanics, over and over again, without any innovation in design. In short, they're being copycats.

Don't believe me that copy-catting is rampant? Do you remember Flappy Bird, the maddening mobile game that required you to try and navigate a small bird through a series of pipes? Did you know the game made the creator, Dong Nguyen, $50,000 a day at its peak? And did you know that now, after Dong Nguyen deleted the app and later restored it, more than a dozen Flappy Bird clones hit the mobile market every day?

Flap onwards to fortune, little bird.

And these creators are only looking for a single buck of your hard-earned money. Imagine the pressure when you have a $200 million budget you're trying not to blow.

The problem with recycling the same tried-and-true mechanics over and over again is the same problem as marrying your brother/sister and having babies: it's gross and makes Jesus cry. But, more seriously, you don't end up with a healthy gene pool. If the same mechanics keep being recycled, games could become indistinguishable. Was the "jumping from the helicopter while gunning down armed terrorists" scene from Call of Duty, or was it from Battlefield? Or was it from Counter-Strike? Without distinctive innovations in game play, the dividing lines between these games all start to blur. Even if it is against the interest of obtaining the all-mighty dollar, I (and hopefully many other gamers,) encourage game developers to try something new for a change.

Let's take a look at the innovations of the past: FPS gaming made massive strides between the iconic Doom of 1993 and GoldenEye of 1997.

Similarly large strides can be seen between Halo of 2001 and Battlefield 2 of 2005.

But what about Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare in 2007 and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 of 2011?

I don't mean to imply that graphics make a game. Look at the innovations in gameplay between these years: Goldeneye gave us a fully-interactive 3D shooting environment, something that Doom could only pretend to do. From Halo to Battlefield 2, we saw a lack of emphasis on running-and-gunning, and more of an emphasis on taking cover. But CoD4 and MW3 are very much the same game: not much cover to work with, health regenerates if you stay out of combat long enough, the weapon payloads are almost the same, and it's all staged in an urban setting. There was the same period of time between the games and yet not much innovation. Even the Halo series made innovative tweaks to its UI and game play between Halo and Halo 2, emphasizing bone-shattering melee attacks at close range and getting rid of the health-bar system.

I don't blame Call of Duty, Activision, or Infinity Ward for this startling decline in innovation. I do blame the growing presence that the business side of the gaming industry is having over the artistic side. While it's nice for games to be taken as a serious medium, deserving of hundreds of millions of dollars of funding, I'd hate to see game development going from art to assembly line.