It’s the second best selling game of 2023 and it came out last month, though - that’s notable, particularly given the shitty reviews. Plenty of other games are also available on just as many consoles and storefronts. Zelda 20 was presumably mentioned because of name recognition and because it was previously second and is now third.
At this point they might as well just call It COD:Forever Warfare, make it a subscribtion service and sign people up for life, because people will just buy every COD.
McDonald’s is incredibly consistent in how they prepare food location to location. It turns out I just don’t like their food and much prefer the fancier place down the street.
Well, working in fast food, not all locations are the same. Some people care to clean the stoves daily. Some wait and do it weekly. Some managers change the fry oil regularly, some don’t. You can taste the difference.
I guess I don’t go to fast food often enough to notice. I don’t eat out very often (like once/month?), and when I do, it’s at a better chain (e.g. Five Guys) or a non-chain restaurant (I prefer the local places).
Yeah you hear some horror stories of different locations sometimes. Like floors being so filthy a maintenance worker had to scrape a spot for him to kneel down and the manager got upset, claiming he now had to clean the floors because of it. Places are run with a skeleton crew sometimes and cleaning is the first thing that gets skipped over.
Honestly? Gamers deserve all the shit they get, I’m all for consumer rights but I have no sympathy for the people that buys these games and then later complains about it. You’re not part of the problem, you are the problem.
I blame it on “content creators” on YouTube. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy watching someone play and complain about a bad game, but there are so many tubers that use the same format, or even the same titles just reworked a little bit.
A lot of this could be blamed on The Algorithm, but after a certain point you have to start blaming the creators themselves for sticking with the format.
I feel like The Act Man is catching strays on this one but honestly, newsworthy things will be covered by channels that talk about current events. CoD having a resurgence and doing well only to catastrophically fuck it up is worthy of talking about, so they do. Their jobs are to make content people want to see and people want to know why it’s dogshit… so they tell them.
I don’t. YouTubers just cover stuff people are interested in, they rarely create that interest.
It turns out people like whatever it is COD offers, so YouTubers make videos either about the good or bad things in the latest COD, and they attract the audiences that are looking for it. And that is where “The Algorithm” comes into play, if more people want to know what’s bad about a popular game, those videos will get more popular and thus recommended more often.
The people to blame aren’t the YouTubers, but the people who watch those videos.
I expect them to take 1+ year to produce a piece of shot game, not 6 mo. I didn’t buy it out of principal (aka my wife didn’t buy it, she carries the stats)
The people who care about quality will play real games, and the people who love the name brand will happily rebuy the same game again.
Either you love cod, or it doesnt exist. Its not like its a real franchise anymore, better shooters have met or surpassed it in spades. Anything you needed from this game you will get elsewhere.
The reason people care is that in capitalism anything that sells well will continue to be made. Resources are devoted to churning out worse and worse games and the large swath of people who don’t notice or don’t care continue to buy them, feeding the cycle.
Meanwhile good games, often indie titles, are overlooked by people who neither have the time or energy to look for these games which contributes to them being buried and lost to time. CoD now has confirmation they can churn out turboshit, charge beyond full price, and still outsell a game that is of higher quality.
Bad games doing well drags the entire market down with it. It shows companies they don’t need to try that hard if they’re popular. That’s why people care.
I don’t understand what you’re getting at. What you’re essentially saying is that the problem with capitalism is that popular stuff stays popular. That has nothing to do with capitalism and would exist in any economic system. Think back to your school days, there’s no capitalism system saying “X is cool,” that was just the majority opinion at the time (e.g. for something like local slang, not something advertising-driven).
What you seem to be really complaining about is a lack of exposure for smaller studios. That’s a hard problem to solve because when a studio gets popular because of a good game, it quickly becomes a larger studio, and thus “part of the problem.” Franchises have an incentive to change very little so they can maintain their customers. If your favorite restaurant drastically changed its menu every year, you’d probably stop going. The same is true for game studios, if the studio changes a lot from what sold well, there’s no longer an expectation that it’ll continue to sell well.
Finding good indie games is hard because there’s so much inconsistency in the marketolace. Big studios offer consistency, and they’re rewarded for it, yet they’re not that interesting because they have an incentive to avoid risks. Indie studios live and die by the risks they take, which is what makes them interesting.
Capitalism provides incentive for the least amount of work with the highest margins which results in bad products. Yes, it doesn’t play a direct part in it maintaining popularity but the popularity isn’t the issue it’s the fact the bad game is still popular even though it’s bad. I’m not complaining that CoD is the same every year because to a point I get it but there’s a right way to make a sequel and they showed us with rebooting MW. Hell, Cold War had an amazing campaign so it’s not like the concept is alien, they just chose to push this specific game as a full title for the sake of greed and rather than consumers realize this and skip it, a majority seem blissfully ignorant to the shortfalls.
Skyrim did well despite dumbing down mechanics fans of the previous game loved because it appealed to the people that don’t need to think very hard. They just play. We got a worse game, made better through mods, because it appealed to more people and thus more profit. CD:PR made Cyberpunk which was a far cry and massive risk for them, despite being a big studio, and it eventually paid off. I don’t agree that big studios have to be shoehorned into pumping out the same bowl of oatmeal with cinnamon, they’re allowed to make french toast and maybe some bacon and the vegetarians will just have to skip it. The industry is like this because we’ve allowed it to be. Because people will buy dogshit games by a popular company because of the company, not the merits of the game.
the popularity isn’t the issue it’s the fact that the bad game is still popular even though it’s bad
It’s popular because people like the series. Even a bad COD game is still a COD game, and the main criticism I see is that it feels like an expansion, but it was also allegedly planned to be an expansion until execs decided to release it as a standalone due to delays in another COD game.
It’s not a broken game, it’s just bland. People generally play COD for MP, not for the story, which is probably why it’s still selling well. Capitalism may have encouraged the studio to cut corners, but individual choice is why it’s popular.
People buy games because of the franchise, not the company. People buy COD because they liked other COD games in the past, not because they liked other Activision games. Each franchise appeals to a different demographic, so they’re not going to be trying to get COD players to play Spyro or Tony Hawk, they’re going to try to get COD players to play the latest COD game, and maybe try to attract Battlefield players as well.
And that’s why indie games struggle so much, by the time they’ve established a franchise, they’re a large studio. Most indie devs don’t do franchises, and very few get well known at a studio (e.g. Supergiant is an exception here). Usually a successful indie studio will have one or two hits and a bunch of less popular games.
So what you’re complaining about is inertia of a franchise, not capitalism, because that would exist even in a socialist, georgist, or mercantilist economic system (or whatever system you prefer). When the original team behind something disappears, the franchise tends to suffer, and I think that’s precisely what COD has become (it’s now your garden variety fast food of video games, like Assassin’s Creed, FIFA, and Pokemon).
They could of just mailed every one a turd instead of a game. People warned their friends and every one online, but they still bought it. So now Activision knows they can just put out shit, but the consumer will buy shit with that call of duty brand lable slapped on it.
I honestly am sure Activision doesn't see it that way. This further cements that it's a golden goose they need to protect. This level of a captive audience is incredibly valuable and I'd bet heads will roll for endangering it.
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