Call of Duty is, without a doubt, the most popular online FPS game of our time. Millions of people have played it and become accustom to the mechanics, so much so to the point where if you want to make a successful shooter, you have to ape the way CoD plays and feels to a certain degree.
Not so with Red Orchestra 2, which has an upcoming expansion in the form of Rising Storm. PC Gamer spoke to Tripwire Interactive President John Gibson about the expansion, but also about how he feels that Call of Duty has “almost ruined” a generation of gamers.
His frustration mostly stems from trying to create “Action Mode”, a blend of Red Orchestra and Call of Duty and not being able to make it work. Call of Duty players were called in to consult on the mode and the mechanics for RO2 just aren’t compatible with the way CoD plays.
While I think that Call of Duty has definitely tainted the design for shooters this generation, I don’t think that it has “almost ruined” it. Sure, it’s the dominant FPS game, but a large part of Mr. Gibson’s ire probably comes from trying to make his game into something it’s not. Red Orchestra 2 is not Call of Duty, and probably shouldn’t be trying to compete with Call of Duty. Heck, Battlefield, which is made by the hugely talented team at DICE and backed by EA, can barely keep up.
He also notes that the “skill gap” in Call of Duty is super compressed, and by observing CoD players he noted that they’re not “very good” at first-person-shooters. Perhaps not, but they’re good at Call of Duty. He also says that the fear of failure is what keeps CoD gamers from branching out. Red Orchestra 2 is designed to be a hardcore title, whereas Call of Duty is not. You can’t put a square peg into a round hole and then say the hole is ruining pegs.
Of course, I might be a little biased because I played Red Orchestra 2 when it was released and found it obtuse, hard to control, had terrible-feeling weapons and wasn’t that fun as a result. True, my main course when it comes to first-person-shooters is Battlefield, but I’ve been playing the genres for years so I feel like I have a pretty good grasp on what makes an FPS game fun.
What do you guys think? Is Mr. Gibson right on the money? Is CoD ruining shooters?
Source – PC Gamer
Theres that median ground where cod has destroyed alot of things when it comes to FPS but not all games are entirely affected by it. Hell take Half Life its no where near like it yet it still was successful. So even though it is partly polluting the way it works its more of just a pain in the ass game cause people are like COD4LIFZ and besides according to the 12 year olds on the internet a lot of them have done my mom and I suck. so going on the community it sucks but its not really a bad per say game.
There’s nothing wrong with CoD or CoD gamers. A lot of people who play it are simply casuals and Activision has managed to successfully tap into their wants. It’s an easy game geared towards people who just want to take a break from life, sit down, and game. Instead of comparing CoD to Half Life, Counter Strike, or Team Fortress, it should be more thought of something along the lines of ‘Angry Birds’. Easy and accessible to all. That being said, the CoD games also attract ‘hardcore’ players who play a plethora of other games, making CoD’s community more varied than we give it credit for.
In addition, there’s a clear rift between casuals and more ‘hardcore’ gamers (like we Sushians!) on the internet. Beyond CoD youtube videos, CoD casuals aren’t a vocally powerful force in video game news sites/forums. Rather, it is the hardcore gamers who have the podium and from what I’ve seen, many have decent anti-CoD sentiments. The result? Practically the opposite of what Mr. Gibson said. Casuals stick to CoD and non-casuals avoid CoD like the plague. In fact, if anyone is being ruined it’s the hardcores. There’s such a strong anti-CoD stigma developing that hardcores are becoming intolerant of other gamer’s tastes. Going onto the Steam User Forums and attempting to start a calm, constructive topic on CoD is like a liberal/moderate trying to start a normal discussion in the Fox News comments section.
Personally to me it sounds like Mr. Gibson’s just trying to find a scapegoat.
Also, my skills as a scout in TF2 originated from the fast placed multiplayer of CoD. The whole ‘CoD players suck at every other game ever made’ is ridiculous.
I loved this article, I think he’s pretty spot on. Granted there’s obviously some personal bias on his account due to having to deal with the action mode of his game, but still I find his points pretty valid. I especially loved him related CoD MP to a slot machine, as I too feel that CoD compressed the skill gap so much that there doesn’t take much skill at all to play it (its ludicrously strong auto aim and kill streaks that get kills for you are just two of many reasons why this is the case).
@KillKill
I don’t think Half Life is a valid example, since there hasn’t been a Half Life game since Call of Duty exploded on the scene with Modern Warfare. Even then, there are two different demographics that play those two games, whereas Red Orchestra is going to share a similar genre.
While CoD has become something that is slowly deteriorating itself, he can exactly compare Red Orchestra 2 to CoD. It’s not an apples to apples comparison. Two different games, two different styles. I get a little exasperated at folks who try to say that CoD and some other game are the same. THEIR TWO DIFFERENT GAMES. Sure they share similar mechanics, but that doesn’t make them the same. I still enjoy playing CoD online. I’m just thankful for a mute function and my headset’s mixamp so I can turn the dial to the game volume side and silence what the community of CoD has become. I mean, just last night, me and a friend hopped on CoD 4 on PS3, and had a blast for hours just playing casual rounds of Team Deathmatch. We remarked at how Prestiging used to be something you revered in CoD, but now has become a stupid useless status symbol. In CoD 4, if you Prestiged, it was a gamble because you’d lose all your unlocks and start over. But it was a calling card that, “Hey I’ve put the time in, better watch out for me in a round.” Now it’s just a pointless statistic, like kill/death ratio…
While I agree that CoD has made an impact on this generation, there’s no basis to state that a single game franchise ruined us. President Gibson’s statement misses a rather critical underlying fact: We weren’t exactly a great generation to begin with. (Just kidding)
But in all seriousness CoD is a decent game. I’m not the first to admit that it’s not the Holy Bible of gaming. A more accurate analogue would be the Rosetta Stone; from its structure, an entire language (or in this case a single genre in a single generation of gaming) has been rebuilt. (Remember that FPS games have been around since the N64 days, ie Golden Eye) Yet even this success is due to our generation having a preference for CoD’s traits.
So don’t blame the game, blame the gamer. But Mr Gibson shouldn’t be surprised if his company’s next project busts; you can’t improve sales by insulting the clientele’s generation.
sounds like sour grapes to me. It’s a fun game and nothing else has come along that has made people turn away from it yet.
Kinda torn on his opinion. On one hand, I think Anthony’s right: Sour grapes. On the other hand, CoD has a massive influence on other multiplayer shooters in the console market. I don’t know if it’s ruining this generation of aamers, but it’s certainly affecting this generation’s game design.
Should Red Orchestra should be concerned with this? Red Orchestra is aimed at a different market. CoD has a large casual audience, I can’t see RO bringing in the same crowd. I always thought a series like RO (ie. not exactly newbie-friendly) thrived on keeping a loyal following and sustaining numbers rather than raking in thousands of new players every week. Perhaps John Gibson should evaluate his priorities? No offense, in the current market he’s never going to match or remotely rival CoD’s numbers. My opinion? Focus on the audience he WILL get (hardcore FPS fans, people interested in a different kind of shooter/time period, etc) and get as many of those guys on board as possible. Once it gains the loyal community word of mouth can spread. But then, what would I know? I’m hardly an expert!