Call of Duty games are gaming marmite. For the most part folks either buy them every year without question or roll their eyes and snort at the very idea of playing such a thing. Personally speaking, it hasn’t been my cup of tea for a while now, but I don’t hate it either.
Still, I enjoyed the campaign in the World War II-set games and mildly tolerated the online component of Modern Warfare 2 and World at War. So with the recent announcement that CoD would be ‘’exciting and innovative’’ this year as Treyarch get a longer development cycle, I was curious what these exciting innovations were and what that meant for the near future of the franchise. Using a time machine/crystal ball/vision/imagination (delete as applicable) I saw where Activision will take its newly innovative shooter for the next five installments.
2015: Treyarch unveil Call of Duty: World at War II
Caving in to the hushed whispers for a sequel to the Call of Duty that was torn to pieces for not being Modern Warfare; Treyarch take the series back to its roots. So where’s the innovation you ask? Why it’s in the new Free to Play/subscription multiplayer model!
That’s right, Activision say this will revolutionise Call of Duty. By charging $15 a week if you play more than the ‘free’ eight hours of multiplayer they so generously give you, Activision hope that it will force more people to play the campaign instead. The move draws huge swathes of criticism from fans yet somehow WaW II sells like gun-shaped hotcakes, but not as many cakes as Advanced Warfare sold so Activision blame Treyarch, fans blame Treyarch and Treyarch curse themselves for being tied to this crapstorm. On a side note, the campaign is quite good, but nobody bothers playing it.
2016: Infinity Ward (Not the real one) unleash Call of Duty: Ghost Trap Team
Activision spend early 2016 promising an exciting and innovative CoD ‘’for realsies this time’’. The gaming world shrugs its collective shoulders and says ‘’yeah, okay mate’’. Scrapping the F2P/Sub hybrid model that was totally Treyarch’s fault, Infinity Ward’s latest entry is a reboot of the much-maligned Ghosts, but in a novel, never before seen twist, you can buy physical versions of guns and place them in a specially made stock to download them into your game. Once again, fans blow their tops at the sheer cheek of being asked to fork out $10 for each gun (a thirty-five gun set!) to unlock anything better than a slingshot and plan a mass protest. The protest ends up being six people in a Chinese restaurant and Ghost Trap Team sells twice as many hotcakes than normal. As before, no actual ghosts are in the game, just the ghost of a studio.
See what happens in the next three years overleaf…
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2017: Sledgehammer bring us Call of Duty: Super Advanced Warfare
Smelling the motherlode, Activision screech loudly that Sledgehammer will make the absolutely most excitingerest and innovativvy (words created by Activision themselves after running out of superlatives to plaster on their advertising) CoD yet. Super Advanced Warfare not only retains the plastic weapon tat that is in no way like Skylanders, but adds figurines of characters to the mix.
Oh, and the game is more of a spiritual sequel to Advanced Warfare than a continuation because now the war is battled out by superheroes! Fans quickly question the need for downloadable guns when you can fire lasers from your eyes, but that’s soon drowned out by the announcement that Kevin Spacey will return, now as a musclebound supervillian with a line in pithy putdowns and tight spandex as he vows to destroy Channing Tatum’s brooding hero. Activision move a step closer to world domination as unsurprisingly, Super Advanced Warfare sells a few copies.
"They’re taking the piss out of me, right?"
2018: Treyarch sabotage the series with Call of Duty: We Took a Day To Code This
Treyarch spend the year secretly making a good Medal of Honor for EA under the guise of Black Ops III: Blacker Ops and they submit something they found in the bins behind Ubisoft to Activision to pass off as the latest CoD in an act of defiant rebellion. Activision are a world superpower at this stage so they don’t bother to check it. Chaos ensues as the hot mess served up is panned by consumer and critic alike. There is a knock-on effect to Activision’s other big franchises as they only manage a mere few million in sales. In a panic, they bring back Guitar Hero and Tony Hawk again.
2019: Money is tight so Infinity Ward do a HD Remaster of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare.
After the dismal performances of Tony Hawk’s Shopping Cart Throwdown and Tambourine Hero, as well as the failed attempt to wedge Skylanders and Destiny into the same game, Activision have barely a few million quid in the pot. So they do the only thing any hard-up games company can do. They ship out a shiny new version of a decade old game to fill the coffers on the cheap. The only remaining people who care are so disillusioned by it all that they forget to buy it. Activision go into bankruptcy and are eventually bought out by Atari; who happen to be a big deal again for some reason. They promise next year’s CoD will be an intellectual masterpiece about the horrors of war. Kevin Spacey will star again, but in a twist, he will be a shifty-looking guy who turns out to be perfectly nice.