This may just be an older gamer’s ailment, but doesn’t this modern era of multiplayer gaming…kind of stink? Seriously, what on earth has happened to online multiplayer? It’s gone from a revolutionary innovation to an essential feature brimming with potential, to what it is now: a grindy, often-broken inclusion focused more on selling skins than on providing players with a fun experience. We now live in a world where the three of the biggest online FPS series have all, in less than a year, released titles that were all either missing basic legacy features, utterly broken at launch or some combination of the two.
That’s right. Halo,Battlefieldand Call of Duty, arguably the biggest multiplayer franchises in gaming with tens of millions of dollars and hundreds of staff on-hand to produce them,cannot manage a functional, feature-complete launchanymore. Considering where all three of these series were just over one hardware generation ago, that’s stunning. What’s more stunning is that despite this, they’re all making more money than ever.
The most recent of these games, Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 (the second one), and developer Infinity Ward are currently taking heat from fans for its current lack of a number of legacy features. Features like HC Mode, leaderboards, stats, challenges and medals to name a few. Right now, one can easily find many articles and videos describing just how “outraged” fans are about losing aspects of the game that’ve become staples over the years. That so-called “outrage,” however, will likely not have all that much impact. It’s already too late.
In the few days since it launched, Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 (the new one) has already brought in 800 million dollars in revenue for Activision-Blizzard, breaking all manner of records for the series. In other words, the publisher has, just like with all of these anger-sparking major releases, already made its money. It’s made record-breaking amounts of money.
Sure, the fans are angry right now, but it doesn’t matter. The fans have been angry many times before and it’s never translated into lost sales. So, why exactly should Activision-Blizzard or Infinity Ward do any better than this? In their minds, the game will sell well no matter what. We gamers have shown that it will time and time again. This anger could even be, as it has been in the past, turned into good publicity for Call of Duty and Activision-Blizzard. They can, once again,add the missing features back inand say that they listened to the fans, which will no doubt translate into even more sales later. Sure, releasing this game with missing features is bad and should be called out, but we’re all doing a lot to enable the practice too.
The obvious solution would be to stop supporting it. Stop pre-ordering; stop buying skins; stop buying the battle passes, and stop buying these games during the first week. Ideally, most of us would wait to see what sorts of problems and omissions are plaguing the nest big game before deciding whether or not to buy. Obviously though, none of that’s going to happen.
Those gamers that do keep up with gaming news and are inclined to exercise that kind of patience are, like it or not, a minority among gaming consumers. Those that care about broken releases and missing features are too, and many of those who do will still buy anyway. This writer has several friends who actively complain about such things every year when it comes to the latestMaddenor Call of Duty, yet they always buy them at launch anyway because “I just gotta have the new one.”
So what’s there to be done? As “gamers,” not all that much unfortunately. Those that would like to see a return to functional, feature-complete releases that offer more than their predecessors are fighting against the current at this point. Really, the only thing that can be done is to defend one’s own personal interests. Purchase what’s “good” and avoid the “bad.”
It’s a shame to see mainstream multiplayer go this way, and it stinks that so many are willing to throw money at it regardless, but thankfully this isn’t the end for those who want to get a quality experience in exchange for their hard-earned money. The great thing about gaming is that there are more good games out there than one could ever hope to play in their lifetime, so even if the mainstream titans are too far-gone, there are still plenty of good titles to enjoy. It’s just going to take more effort to find them.
