Call of Duty and the Stagnation of a Genre

     One of my English professors once told me that some academic circles in the field consider Earnest Hemingway to be one of the most damaging influences to English literature in recent memory—not because he wasn't fantastic and groundbreaking, but because his style influenced writers and readers for so long that there was less room for innovation. I can't speak to the truth of this statement, but I can speak to the validity of the idea of the detrimental influence that a resoundingly good idea can generate.

     This is, in fact, why myself and many other gamers find fault in the recent iterations of the Call of Duty franchise. Be you a veteran digital soldier or a complete non-participant in gaming, chances are you've at least heard of Call of Duty—and with good reason. The series was initially centered around World War II, as were many shooters at the time; many gamers today think modern shooters are done to death (which they are), but the sheer volume of World War II games in the early 2000's was staggering. Even so, the first three Call of Duty games managed to carve out a fair slice of sales amidst the crowded genre.

     Then there was Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, a game that will likely resonate with hardcore gamers for years to come. It represented a leap forward in the industry and the genre—much like the first Halo game did—and introduced staples that appear in most shooters since. Perhaps the greatest innovation it had to offer was its role-playing game style multiplayer perk system: rather than simply tallying your kill to death ratio, every action and kill players achieved netted them points that would level up their player rank, provide new equipment, and unlock statistic-modifying “perks” with which players could personalize their character. This genius system added both a sense of progression and persistence to a genre that had largely never seen anything like it before; almost overnight, players were hooked.

     Unfortunately, rather than using this unfathomable fame and popularity as license to push the envelope, developers Activision and Treyarch played it safe. Each subsequent release of the franchise features some relatively tweaked variant of CoD 4:MW's perk system and has shifted its focus almost entirely to multiplayer. The first Modern Warfare's single player campaign had some truly shocking and memorable moments, but as the series has aged (and developers have learned what makes them money), these moments are now fewer and farther between. While there are of course great single player moments in these subsequent games, the stories and script seem to receive less and less attention and relegate the single player experience to that of visually dazzling fodder. Many gamers don't come to the Call of Duty franchise looking for a grand single player narrative experience, and I realize that, but the wasted opportunities in our current cultural climate is almost tragic. If multiplayer is going to be the selling point, however, the relatively modest additions to the system don't do enough to warrant such frequent releases.

     Furthermore—while there are of course exceptions to this—with modern shooters crowding store shelves, competing developers often go the “if you can't beat them, emulate the hell out of them” route. The worst part? They all sell like hotcakes. It makes sense—why would a developer, if they knew they could make ludicrous amounts of money by tweaking and rehashing an established formula, what incentive would they have to stray from it? These developers may be raking in the profits, but they're shoving those dollars down the throat of creativity and choking it to death.

     The Call of Duty games are a hell of a lot of fun—I don't know that many would argue otherwise—but the series has kept the industry from taking the same crucial step forward that they made with CoD 4: MW. What started out as an innovative leap has partially stagnated much of the genre and games in general. There are always more stories to be told and new ways to tell them; here's hoping some developer out there is both bold and apt enough to leap forward from that dusty spot that Call of Duty and its many clones cling to.