Modern Woefare

Not my best pun

I'll admit, I've been something of a lax friend towards my old pal Call of Duty lately. The franchise was a staunch companion of my youth, the hours me and my dad spent playing Spec-ops across Modern Warfare 2 are cherished in my heart. But I've not called. Ever since Modern Warfare 3 I've treated the franchise like the overpriced vaguely eastern-European landlord constantly hounding me every year for '$60' rent in order to jump aboard the next iteration of his franchise. ($70 nowadays!) In the times when I relent, typically around another's house or during trial play events, I'm always impressed by how perfectly refined the COD gameplay has become, which makes it all the sadder that I can't justify forking out the funds for a franchise that has increasingly favoured it's online features over the once flagship campaigns which got everyone talking, like the action-movie 'Fast and Furious's of the gaming world. (You'll get my £70 when you fix your damn campaign!)

I rolled my eyes hard when they ran out of steam and decided to trace their own steps in the sand by literally remaking Modern Warfare, their most successful game, although from all reports the effort that went into that first one was truly astounding! That is to say, the effort that went into the actual Modern Warfare remake, not the remaster for the original which released a stone's throw away. (God, Activision make this franchise so bloody confusing to follow.) I was rather intrigued by the way the game seemed to tell us more about the character's we loved, less like it was replacing the originals and more just recontextualing those action movie originals with a more sedate, yet differently intense modern military thriller. (With a light bit of rewriting real world war crimes thrown in there for good measure.) There really wasn't any sadly gunning for old classic story beats, which made the overlapping naming convention utterly pointless, but there we are.

Modern Warfare 2 was not quite as interesting on the campaign front, but it tried to expand out what the first game had established and provided enough campaign thrills to be interesting. See that's the thing about Call of Duty Campaigns, even when the writing isn't exactly top-notch- the mission design is the one thing they can always fall back on. They're fun and cinematic and old school in a world of games constantly falling for the 'open world' trap without any real idea of how to make open worlds that are fun to navigate. COD's tighter mission based layout feels appropriate and effective, and allows for some truly memorable little campaigns like the 'Cold War' story with it's slight multiple path variations. It's good that Call of Duty has some staunch fundamentals it can always rely on- huh? Oh, they got rid of the linear mission design, didn't they?

It's hard to really sum up everything that the Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3 campaign did wrong in order to earn their historic 4 from IGN, without just throwing away the list of carefully curated tallies and just saying screw it- they did EVERYTHING wrong! Giving players early access to only the campaign of Modern Warfare 3 should have been a warning sign that this was something the team wanted to slip out as quietly as possible, but their ploy didn't work. Fans played it, and they are pissed. Reactions are so bad that I've heard some wonder if MW3's campaign isn't somehow worse than Black Ops 4's. Black Ops 4 didn't have a campaign, they forgot to make one. Even 'Vanguard' is somehow winning 20-20 wistful memories despite it's awful 'momentum-free anthology dependent' campaign, gimmicky 'modern-Battlefield' style level structure and Lord of the Ring's Merry as a Nazi. (Seriously. I couldn't stop laughing.) What did MW3 do so bad to make those the good old days?

When the announcement was first made that COD was going 'open world' in it's mission layout, there was nary a single unraised brow from the peanut gallery. No one believed it would be a good idea. And now that it's here- wow it's even worse than we could have imagined! These missions, 'open combat' as they're known, basically chalk up as Infinity Ward's attempt to fill space. They are all maps taken from Warzone, thrown into the game with the most pathetically basic objectives ever (go here pick this up then extract) strung together by high quality but dissonant cutscenes stringer together by a lethargic narrative. It's pathetically no effort, requiring no assets, no design, nothing but voice over dialogue justifying the adventure. All those carefully designed globetrotting antics are thrown out for something a modder could have slapped together in a week. The few actual narrative missions tossed in there inbetween aren't enough to mount anything near the same level of cinematic excellence this franchise is used to. (Their version of 'No Russian' is pretty pathetic.)

Speaking of- I don't know what happened but somewhere along the line it seems the new Modern Warfare games gave up on telling their own much more grounded and intense narrative and have now begun chasing after the big set piece moments of Modern Warfare 2 and 3 like a lost child, resulting in the stumbling mess which is the Modern Warfare 3 Remake narrative. Full to the brim of half-hearted reimaginations of classic video games scenes that are so rushed and badly executed it fills like the writers (if indeed this mess had any writers) are simply trying to tick down as many checkmarks as they could to try and bring this in line with the original trilogy. The MacTavish key scene was almost hilarious in how stupid it is, I've already spat at their idea for No Russian, (You can tell someone only put thought in the planning stages of the narrative, but wasn't there to help design an actual playable mission which wasn't two minutes long.) but I think it's Shepard's fare which got the worst glow up. They traded an incredible two man assault cinematic climax against Shepard's rogue faction resulting in a three way fist fight and the knife throw of destiny- with a backroom silencer. In an end-credits cutscene. Pretty weak for a TV show, pathetic for a video game.

But you know what, I'm not even out of steam yet! Sure, the Modern Warfare 3 multiplayer has yet to drop (And I couldn't care less about it anyway) but can we just stop and talk about the logistics of this game for a minute? A maximum 213GB install size, are you stupid? In what world does this skeleton of a game require more than a fifth of total storage? It's not like COD games are the biggest in the industry in terms of content, so why in the hell are they always the biggest to download? I may be talking out my ass here, but this smells like embarrassingly bad optimisation choices. I remember back in the day they used to claim the game's audio files came unencrypted in order to not comprise on the all-important sound front, but that was back when these games clocked in at the 80GB mark, what is going on now? Did someone record themselves reading the entirety of War and Peace and leave it in the files? And no, the fact the game can be downloaded in parts is not a remedy, it's a salve to the wound. Heck, the campaign somehow clocks in at something close to 40GB some insane how, despite consisting of only cutscenes and recycled maps. 

I didn't think it was possible to be disappointed by a Call of Duty game, a franchise for which I suspect most expect nothing. But this is a disgrace to the art of design, of writing, of digital execution, of marketing price points. A campaign like this can only be made by a team who either got slapped together at gunpoint to pull this off in under two months, or a cabal of developers who've just had enough of creating altogether and what to demonstrate how absolutely done with their career paths they are- because those are the only extremes that would justify this assault on taste. And yes, I am angry with Call of Duty. Angry because I know where this leads to. I know what is next for the industry. I know that others are going to see this and figure they can get away with screwing single player fans because they 'don't matter' and I know DICE is seeing all this and believing themselves relieved of all the rightful condemnation they get for abandoning narratives altogether after Battlefield 4.

The Easter Egg that went too far.

Fetch me their souls...

We all love ourselves a little Easter Egg, don't we? A nod and a wink from the developers to you to remind you that at the end of the day you're still playing a video game and silliness is a given, right? Maybe they'll break the forth wall, maybe they're tell a stupid joke, maybe they'll just reference something from a past game that makes you go: "Huh, that was cool that they did that. I liked that!" And that's all an Easter Egg is supposed to be, a cool little something extra that doesn't get in the way of the core experience that the developers are trying to create. Just something you nod at and acknowledge, and then immediately forget. Like the Skyrim style Iron Helmet you can find encased in glass at the beginning of 'Wolfenstein: Old Blood', the upside-down effect applied on mobs assigned that special name in Minecraft, things of no consequence like that. What an Easter Egg is not supposed to do, is spiral off into it's own reoccurring minigame that spawns a cult-like following of people who don't even really show up for the main game anymore, not when they can pick apart these Easter Eggs.

I remember when I first heard about Nazi Zombie mode of Call of Duty: World at War. "That's really cool" I thought, and thus felt more than justified going around the houses of friends just to play that one zombie map with them when I would never consider doing so for Cod proper because... I mean who wants to play an Online FPS at someone else's house? But Zombies was different, it was trendy, it was cooperative, and it was pretty darn straightforward and simple. Just endless waves of shuffling dead in Nazi uniforms that would try and wear you down wave after wave until they killed you off. Their trick being that the zombies become slightly more powerful until your guns actually can't take them down. It was a fun party time that I think we all enjoyed and certainly didn't expect to see return really ever. Little did we know the seeds of what would become a ten year ongoing narrative were set before the next game was even a glint in Treyarch's eye.

Oh Yeah! Because for whatever reason the developers of this Zombie mode had the seeds of an ongoing story in their head to try and justify this throwaway minigame. Because it's a zombie invasion, so there has to be an explanation; doesn't there? A mystery, with twists and reveals? No. Because at that point what you're doing is twisting up the Easter Egg into something more. Something dangerous. But none of them every cared. Not for a second did they think there would come a point where actual waves of COD fans would show up only to plough the Zombie modes for details. Not a huge number of them perhaps, but a number at all! And that the Zombie mode would then become an expectation of the franchise that needs to be lived up to with each entry to such a point that when the Zombie mode is bad, such as it was in Cod Vanguard, that is a point of genuine criticism! A zombie mode so ubiquitous that the partner studio who handles this franchise, Infinity Ward, got jealous and tried to make their own version called 'Extinction' featuring aliens. But that mode really sucked for some reason. (I just couldn't get into it.)

A video caught my attention on Youtube of someone desperately trying to make the original map of COD Zombies fit into the wider lore of the extensive series of interconnected Lovecraftian zombie modes across the games in some way more significant than just: "This was the first map that the team thought of." And in their ruminations and suppositions I glimpsed a touch of that mania which emanates out of a well drunk deeply and excessively. That rabbit hole you've all put fallen completely down at this point, with no hope of escape. And I thought; "Cod Zombies can't have gotten that wild, can it?" I mean this guy was talking about Elder Gods and multiple Universes and CIA sub divisions and there just ain't no way that COD zombies has facilitated all that through their little survival modes, right? And then I thought about it just a little bit harder.

See I grew off the zombie trend with the rest of the world, and even quicker off the Cod Zombie trend as it became increasingly clearer that these modes weren't exactly being made for the likes of me. Not anymore. Every new map had the basic foundations of what COD Zombies were supposed to be, wrapped over stunningly elaborate Easter Eggs designed to stump internet sleuths with their cryptic nonsensical actions. Whenever I showed up to friends houses to play zombies, it always became a case of "Hold on, let's do the Easter Egg from this tutorial I saw on Youtube" which was always this overly elaborate multi-step process that rewarded some miniscule lore snippet that I could barely understand let alone be satisfied by. I stopped playing the games before they added in actual Easter Egg rewards, but even then I could see that there was a dedicated throng of fans glued to some hyped up meta narrative. So what does that look today?

What if I told you that the current COD zombies narrative consists of a race of primordial extra-dimensional entities known as the Keepers who maintain all of the Aether (existence) from the influence of Dark Aether (the obligatory evil opposite) as it becomes manipulated by an evil offshoot of the keepers known as the Apohticon. Those Apothicon were banished from existence after a war against the two races, with the keepers led by Malcom McDowell, and have spent the millennia since trying to influence the waking world by stretching their influence into reality. Those Apothicon sent elements emanating their influence across the universe and one just happened to land in an American Cowboy town in the middle of nowhere, spawning zombies that kicked off the whole COD Zombies timeline. Oh, and the Keepers call the highest of their order 'Elder Gods' which is where the Lovecraftian influence starts seeping into things. Does that sound sane to you?

That's what happens when you try to write a back story to something as stupid as nazi zombies, but then actually turn around and do a good job of it. I can't lie, the extent of the lore that the zombies mode has is damn impressive and intricate; I only wish it wasn't all tucked behind miniscule snippets of lore you have to uncover and put together like you're researching a dissertation on alien philosophy. Mixing the supernatural with high cosmic fantasy is a bold step for a horror game to take but considering the hoards of loyal fans this mode of COD alone has maintained, I've thinking they've done a damn fine job of it. It's gotten so wild now that the latest COD Vanguard zombies, in way of making up for the truly lacklustre zombie mode it launched with, included a gargantuan colossus boss fight against a Lord of the Dark Aether, and no one batted an eye and thought of it as a strange addition to zombies. (Although, to my understanding this and the last COD zombies entry established a brand new timeline for COD zombies so I'm not sure if this fits in with all that insane lore I just discussed. God this is giving me a headache...)  

I often hear some on-the-sidelines COD fans wish that Activision would just put together a pack of every COD Campaign together and sell that to get fan's attention. But honestly I would much prefer a zombies stand alone game that just mashed together all of the zombie content so I can play it all without having to source a copy of World at War behind the mummified remains of a bombed out Blockbusters. Few games match the commitment to puzzle solving that Treyarch does and even if it's just to see the sights whilst jumping across all the historical zombie backdrops, I think there's a very special COD journey wrapped up totally separate from the main game. COD Zombies went too far; it became a whole other game in and of itself. And I think we're all better for it.

Playstation being whiny again

 Sad days... sad days...

It is excessively difficult to feel bad for a company. You know, on account of them being a faceless monolith representative of hundreds to thousands of similarly faceless people in joyless identical suits that sit at desks and do slightly similar vectors of one overall job that they don't quite understand, because no one left in employment really does remember how it all fits together, but we do know that as long as everyone hits 'send' at the end of the day the company appears to stay solvent? (>phew< that was a mouthful!) But I find it even harder to feel bad for a company when the company in question just happens to be Sony, the makers of PlayStation, because how can you feel bad for people who vacuum up as much money money out of the backs of people as they do? Just recently I summarised that they are the secret architects of their own dwindling respect, and now I want to touch on the really elaborate play through which Sony are attempting to try and place themselves as the underdogs in a race they are winning.

First I was to elaborate; PlayStation is the best selling console... of this generation. Of course the Nintendo Switch has been around for much longer, is much cheaper and can actually be found in stores, so that console currently runs dusty rings around PlayStation and Xbox combined; but if we limit ourselves to the current generation then Sony is ahead of Microsoft by actual millions of consoles, it really is no competition. And that is because Sony have dedicated themselves to building a reputation of quality and exclusivity that has benefitted them extensively for years. A successful reputation, mind you. Not like when Ubisoft tries to convince us that they're a 'triple A' company by re-releasing that one game they made ten years ago with another paint job the team spent the past year making all shiny; PlayStation are the lions of the pride when it comes to console gaming. So when they try to play the scrappy small player in the big boy pool, it comes off a tad sanctimonious.

Which is kind of funny because, in a way, they actually are the small boys in this equation. Sony are one of the biggest companies in the world, no doubt; but Microsoft are titans. If Microsoft main ever cared enough to actually devote themselves to it, they could probably systematically destroy Sony simply through financial means. But then they'd up against anti-competition lawsuits and they'd have to pay those fines and that just about makes that unprofitable for the moment. That is literally all that is keeping the Microsoft dogs at bay, a line on a theoretical strategy spreadsheet that currently adds up in the red instead of the black. I figure if I was living under a sharp paw like that, maybe I'd get a little loopy from all the anxiety too. Who can say for sure what they'd say or do until they get trussed up like and presented to their predators like that?

I can tell you what Sony would do. They would whine. Incessantly. We've seen that first hand when it comes to Xbox's purchase of Activision which, whilst it's another big consolidation move in this wide industry of ours, when considering how evil the company of Activision regularly is, I think most normal people  are receptive to the idea of those executives getting some executive oversight of their own. But whereas everyone from the small consumers of the world, to the fellow companies who might be affected by this seismic shift to the landscape of gaming seem content with this movement, Sony are the sole dissenters who stand by their disdain. They complained about it before through the official channels when it came to ratifying the purchase for the various trade commissions of the world, and now they're whining about it in interviews.

Do you know how embarrassing that is? Filing an official complaint is it's own level of demeaning that can at least be justified by the fact that it's an official and painfully dry legal rebuttal document that they could have just safely assumed no one would ever read and a calculated business move when we really break it down. If they can help break up this deal, that'll be a solid win for Sony who can't possibly afford a purchase nearly as big to match the Activision buy out. What you can't beat in the light, can be undermined in the dark. But an interview is made with the expectation that this information is going to be spread, and you have to put out an actual human to pout and stamp their feet over the most inane and eye-rolling topics imaginable as though all their life revolves around maintaining the relationship that PlayStation has had with COD.

For those that don't know, Sony have been freaking out since the Activision purchase that Microsoft would take away COD from other consoles because, you know; that's exactly the kind of scummy move that Sony would have done in an instant if they were in this position. But COD is already licenced to offer PlayStation ports for the next few years, and after that Microsoft have revealed no exclusivity plans whatsoever. Not making COD exclusive would be very much in line with how Microsoft had handled these big genre defining games before, such as with Minecraft. Everybody can still play Minecraft; Microsoft would be the ones taking a financial hit if that were to ever change. But Sony are fearmongering for the worst possible ending because that gives them fuel to argue that this is all 'unconstitutional' or whatever their bloody problem is.

Playstation CEO Jim Ryan revealed that the company had actually conducted talks with Microsoft regarding the expanding future of COD and had actually received an offer, which Microsoft absolutely would not be required to do being the sole owners of Activision. Without going into specifics, Jim then went on to lambast Xbox calling the proposition "Inadequate on so many levels" like a literal entitled valley girl. So let's read between the lines a little here. 'A deal' implies that Microsoft are not, as we suspected, looking to cut off Sony completely from Call of Duty games in the future. And either they're blackmailing them for it's appearance, which sounds very unlikely given the heavy illegal ramifications that would incur if it were to ever come out into the light, or Microsoft are offering some sort of future where Xbox gets first dibs on maps, modes and maybe an exclusive feature here and there, but Playstation still gets its port. I think this is pretty likely, given how this is the exact relationship that Sony maintained with COD for the years before this deal!

That's the bit which gets to me, and the others in the online peanut gallery; Sony would have been ruthless in Microsoft's place at every step of the way. They would have cut off every other console completely cold turkey were it their decision, and they would have squeezed every bit of life out of Microsoft in order to make any sort of crossplay deal, but then they want to turn around and act like the aggrieved party when it suits them? They held their console exclusives back from the PC for years! The aggressively pushed for a ten dollar mark up to current generation games, and they tried to grift a pretty remaster as a full-blown remake under that same scandalous price tag. Everything about the way Sony has gone about business in the past two years has been 'inadequate on so many levels' and they have gall the size of Galactus' testes to try and turn around and say that they're getting raw-dogged simply because Microsoft wants to exercise some mild benefits over a franchise developed by a company they currently own. Get over yourself, Sony. You're making yourself into a mockery.

So Sony is the underdog now?

 How the turns table.

Sony and Microsoft are the like dual antagonists of the world's most repetitive anime, one that is rife with filler episodes that are stuffed with petty disputes where Twitter memes are slung back and forth, to huge arc enders where one side decids to try and get the other totally destitute and destitute. (Huh. Kind of like the relationship of the McGill Brothers from Better Call Saul now I think about it.) We've had a lot of the former kind of ribbing through the recent years as the big spokemen from both companies have gritted their teeth and sung the 'We're all in this together' song from High School Musical. It's always been a façade, though; the world sees straight through it. And in fact we got our chance to get a major ending arc moment when Sony tried their darnest to get official government regulators to block a huge potential Microsoft acquisition by taking a huge slice of 'hypocrite pie' and characterising themselves as scrappy underdogs under big-bad-Microsoft's shoes.

Now there is obviously no doubt about it; Microsoft does indeed have a simply scandalous amount of money at it's disposal and it's more than Sony could ever hope for in order to play about with. But you must also bear in mind that this is because Microsoft owns the single most popular Operating System in the world and is deeply entrenched in just about every part of the tech world whether directly or through subsidiaries. Sony has it's TVs. Pretty much any other angle they've tried to branch out in hasn't really amounted to much apart from their phone business. I still hear fond memories of the Ericsson here and there, for those that still use phones. Although not to distance them too far apart as competitors; Xbox is a minor division of the Microsoft whole, they are beholden to their corporate masters just as Playstation is; only if Xbox are really good boys and do all their homework on time, they get a slightly bigger allowance that Playstation would in the same scenario.

Such an allowance that could lay the ground for a 68 billion dollar buyout which still makes me wince to consider. Where does that money even actually go? I mean I know it goes to Activision; but where from there? I'm sure they roll some of that into the studio but come on- that isn't evet going to be anywhere near to a billion. Lawyers will take some vile cut of the pot, but then do the executives all go off and buy themselves private islands or something? Retire twenty years early? That's enough money to make every single employee, from the managers to the janitors, millionaires and still have too much left over to know what to do with. That's just simply too much money to throw around bloody game development studios. I can understand why Sony might look at those numbers and decide there's some shenanigans going on. (Someone did the money hack in real life.) But only if it gets through regulatory bodies of office.

We aren't privy to the regulatory hearings that such a process is subject to unless we get all litigious, but thankfully thanks to the international scale of Microsoft we were bound to run across a legislation with more lax rules on in-house conversations. Through this we've managed to get a ear into the process through which regulators reach out to other big players in the game's industry to get their perspectives on the deal taking place and to see if they believe it to be too monopolistic. For the Activision Blizzard deal in particular, one big point of contention was the ownership of the Call of Duty franchise and how that might effect the game's market if it were to become a sudden platform exclusive. Such is not the plans for the series currently, as COD is committed to at least three more releases on all applicable platforms but after that contract is up... well, Microsoft would be crazy not to put the screws on the kings of exclusivity deals, wouldn't they?

And so regulators turned to Ubisoft to ask them how they'd feel about an ecosystem ruled by COD exclusivity. "It's no biggy" Ubisoft said "We've got 'Rainbow Six: Siege'". "Ditto" said EA, "We've got Battlefield" and so on and so forth; all the way up until the conversation turned to Sony, want to guess what they said? "It's not fair" they said "Microsoft is cheating, COD is a game so huge it becomes a category of game unto itself, it cannot be realistically competed against. Whatsmore, Microsoft is trying to create an environment that no one can profitably stand up to them in." (For the sake of transparency I need to disclose that none of those were direct quotes but rather summations of points.) That's right, Sony believe that by taking COD from Microsoft they are going to irrevocably tilt the console wars in their favour because 'COD is a game that informs people's console choice'. Ain't that peachy? Imagine a video game company relaying and draconian exclusivity contracts to try and tilt the public's console choice? Well I never...

Of course that's exactly what Sony have been doing for years upon years! They've built and maintained a cadre of studios dedicated to creating the most polished single player games in the industry and then jealously maintains their exclusivity for years before giving them up to PC. They've also tried to use this monopoly on the cutting edge of the industry to try and push the retail price of video games up by another $10, all the while Microsoft is offering first party games day one access on Game Pass. That last bit is what's really getting under Sony's skin, because no matter how they cut it they're not willing to try and compete with that service and so are doing anything they can to sour that deal. Including, according to Microsoft themselves, locking devs in contract that prevents them from showing up on Game pass. The mind boggles at how ridiculous that is if there's any actually fire to that smoke. (Which isn't that hard to believe given this blocking attempt by Sony.)

Now it's very unlikely that Sony's words had any real effect, given that all of their peers seemed utterly unabashed with the buyout, it would be surprising if regulators took Sony's sole, clearly biased, condemnation as sacred. However this has unleashed something of the ill will between the companies which has been somewhat kept at bat until recently. Microsoft has already made a shot back across Sony's bow about those alleged contract lock-outs, and everything is looking like console wars 2.0 after years of 'will they won't they' about cross compatibility. (Another pro-consumer step which would be so easy to implement if not for Sony dragging their heels.) I'm not one to take sides in a war of corporate interests; but I will say that Sony is certainly looking more wrong out of the options available.

To be clear, Sony seem to be a bit up their own ass recently trying to paint themselves as a company on the brink when they are the leading console developers in the world right now. They have a very competent line of exclusives ahead of them and a huge headstart in popularity. There are no underdogs in a story like this, and maybe if Sony were a bit more honest with the way they formed their arguments I would have an easier time taking them seriously. As it stands they've got me rooting for Microsoft's deal to go through just for how bad faith this argument was, despite me not liking the overall market consolidation of developers in general considering we have a lot of evidence recently that the bigger the company becomes the worse their games end up being as everyone loses sight of what they've even making in the first place. Long story short: shut up, Sony.

COD and plagiarism

 They can't keep getting away with it!

It's funny that COD should in the centre of so many competing crosshairs as big console manufactures argue about whether or not the game is fundamental to competition across the FPS market. It's funny because whatever way you look at it, this conversation is placing COD at the top of a very influential pedestal where almost everyone can agree it is a model to aspire to for continuing success. So all eyes are constantly on them when they have a month like the one they're living through. You know, the sort of month where you get continuously pulled up for plagiarism again and again to the point where you look like hack amateurs with absolutely no quality control department whatsoever; meanwhile giants are wrestling over who gets to stick you on their shelf to be their golden trophy. That's what you get for having idols and role models, I guess.

To be clear, accusations of art theft are a pretty hefty chunk of mud to sling around and are so hard to prove in most cases, almost as much as it is to find. With so many artists in every field, more than at any other point in history by several orders of magnitude, content is being developed incessantly and constantly, everywhere that you look, so if someone wants to steal a little idea concept from some small corner of the internet, who the heck is going to know? To be fair, the COD design artists are probably look at this as 'taking inspiration' from the work they see everyday; which there is nothing wrong with as long as you put enough of your own special juice in it to transform the final product. This month has presented an Activision that were very lax on the whole 'changing up the homework in the assignment' part of the equation.

It started with a posted advert for an upcoming COD Vanguard skin, the worst performing COD game in a very hot minute, in which one of the coming skins had a very eye-caching and interesting design to it. It was a heavy winter suit with the head of a Samoyed dog thrown over the player's usual boring human head; making the player approximately 15% all around better. Honestly it was a striking design that would have been really cool if it wasn't a paid cosmetic... oh, and bastardized from a random artist on the web! An Artist called 'saillin' took credit for the design and compared the COD dog with his own military canine design in some side-by-side comparisons. The concept itself was already pretty novel enough to inspire a raised eye-brow or two by those already in the know, but after that comparison; with how closely the military gear the dog is wearing matches up with what COD were planning: there really is no question, so shenanigans were taken here.

To their credit Activision did move to remove marketing materials featuring that dog and later announced that particular skin would be scrapped (Instead of, I don't know, maybe just paying the original artist to use their cool design. That would have worked even better in my opinion.) And to take away that small credit, they had to be mocked and ridiculed in order to do so. Had no one really made a fuss about this and the situation still be bought to Activision's attention; they would have helpfully ignored it so that they could continue their money raking unabashed; because that's just the kind of company that the COD creators are. Although, I wonder how this backlash might shake the structure of their content development departments going forward considering that, as I mentioned, this was not the only significant case of plagiarism that has been bought up this month.

 

Yet another upcoming skin for Warzone and Vangaurd featuring future-tec glowing pieces, has ended up drawing comparisons to a truly vapid upcoming game, leading myself to wonder if the COD plagiarists have literally no shame. Because at some point you have to grow some standards, and I'd feel that would come at some point before ripping of designs from the Dr Disrespect's Crypto FPS 'game' he's trying to tote up: Dreadrop. Although to be fair, there is a bit more nuance to this one. Not least of all because the aggrieved party is actually an ex Infinity Ward manager. He has taken it 'on the chin' by joking that Activision should name the skin after him (Ha Ha- they're never going to do that.) but even then I have to throw up a little bit of doubt to how much this one quite constitutes plagiarism. 

Oh the designs look similar alright! Damningly so, in fact. But COD's Malware Ultra Skin is just a guy in neon blue techy-armour with a hood on; it's not exactly the most inspired armour design ever invented. Of course not, they're being compared with freakin' Deadrop; a game dripping with unoriginality, this dispute really just raises concerns about the trite thematic elements fuelling both design processes. If it hadn't been for the more obvious dog-skin rip-off, people would probably be making more of a fuss about the big design variations, such as the skull face and glowing exo-skeleton design elements of the COD game versus Deadrop's decidedly more boring hexagonal urban camo design. Both skins do use pretty much the exact same colours, however; which doesn't help Activision's case at all. 

And then people just entered 'Twitter cancellation mode' where they comb through your entire history looking for a smoking gun to hang you with. They found it in the prospective logo for a COD mobile game that doesn't even have a title yet; it's just known as 'Project Aurora'. Well Aurora recently got a new slick logo featuring a sharp and spikey stylized 'A' at a slight slant which certainly looked cool- probably because it was allegedly ripped from Amuro Ray's personal emblemage on his RX-93 v Gundam from 'Mobile Suit Gundam: Char's Counterattack'. (Thank you, Animenewsnetwork, for being so complete in their coverage of this story.) Again, one could argue this as a coincidence since the logo is quite literally just a stylised A; but it just doesn't make for a very good look, does it? 'Confirmation Bias' is turning into 'Confirmation Prejudice' at this point.

All of which goes to paint COD, one of the biggest franchises in the world, as a lazy corner cutter who cares nothing for the sanctity of art. Although to be fair there is a perfectly rational explanation for a lot of this; pressure piled on by time constraints as a result of failure. Remember, 'Vanguard' pooped the bed as far as COD games go, shipping less units than the franchise has suffered in about ten years. That reflects badly on the team who are then flipped into a rush to hurry out content that might win people over, rushed employees start ignoring due diligence or just ripping off ideas full kettle in order to keep their jobs, and the potential media backlash for any of these screw ups is so unlikely because no one ever pays attention to this stuff. Until the day that they did, and now their bad position has probably become much worse as their indolence has been characterised as incompetence. Let this be an example of the snowball effect of big company run development studios where stopping to take stock is a crime punishable by redundancy. 

Toys for Bobby Kotick

Is Bobby Kotick Mr Smith?

Comparing where we were to where we're at, in terms of life and what we see around us, can yield some interesting results in the realm of judging what has progressed and regressed respectively. Are we still working towards the same goals, are the same things still important to us, or has our world view changed and grown somewhat slightly as we, or maybe just the world around us, has matured. Looking at Activision through this lens, it sure has seemed that they regressed these past few years, as just when it looked like this storied publisher was getting a hand on actually diversifying their audience, they've retreated back to the same old holding pattern of 'Call of Duty'. "Got to make more 'Call of Duty', else we may run out!" This reached a whole new scope just the otherday when a promising and well positioned studio was sucked into the Call of Duty machine, thus giving Activision studios the dubious honour of having every single one of them working on Call of Duty to some degree. (And to think we were measuring up the Call of Duty franchise for a coffin but four or five years ago)

So if you're currently an FPS fan looking at the game industry today, you're just about sitting pretty with the amount of options available to you! (Well, unless you're a tactical FPS fan, in which case all you really have is Rainbow Six Siege, but I digress) Apex Legends and Call of Duty provide all the competition and diversity you could ever really need in the somewhat narrow demographic of casual online shooter games with battle royale modes, and they've pretty definitively taken over the market. I mean, who'd have thought that all Call of Duty needed to do in order to soar to unexplored heights would be to just offer their game up for free and charge on the backend? (Everyone in China, I guess, given how that's what Call Duty had been in China for years beforehand) To call Call of Duty Warzone a goliath to rival COD in it's heyday seems apt, so I cannot feasibly throw up my hands and feign surprise when I see all the company slowly mould itself around supporting that game model in the years to come. But even acknowledging that, surely there has to be some limits!

Activison is a big company, afterall, with a storied history touching so many different properties and genres over the years. Do you remember when they used to be that studio for making Marvel games and we got such fantastic titles like Spiderman 2 and Marvel Ultimate Alliance? (Bet they're sad they lost that licence...) They even used to make Tony Hawks game and even a little Guitar Hero back when those sorts of titles were popular. What I'm trying to say is that Call of Duty isn't the only game these guys made and they used to get on great splitting themselves between COD and several other game franchises. In fact, even recently things had been working out just fine for them on that front on account of the revival of the old Spyro and Crash Bandicoot games. So what could have got in the way of this exciting revival for the action platforming genre now that they've got this promising studio 'Toys for Bob' working on them. Unless... on no, they didn't!

Actually, they didn't. 'Toys for Bob' hasn't be shut down or swallowed or forcibly downsized just yet, and with some luck maybe things will stay that way, but they doesn't mean they've been allowed to persist unmolested either. After sitting down and bringing the Crash Bandicoot series back to life through the N Sane trilogy, and then getting the chance to hone an honest-to-goodness sequel with 'Crash Bandicoot 4: it's about time', Toys for Bob have received the ultimate position in Sovngarde; relegation to a support studio. No, I'm not joking, you did read that right, they were rewarded for helming two successful titles by having their autonomy stripped; what the what? Now, one on hand you could look at this from the angle of these developers getting the opportunity to work on the hugely successful Call of Duty Warzone, and be able to stick that on their resume; whilst on the otherhand you could say that they could have requested a transfer to a COD studio if they wanted, and now none of them have that choice.

Now to be fair (pff, there's that expression again) Call of Duty is currently sitting at a very unique spot within it's own history. Not just because they've never done a battle royal before (again, they actually had; but in China) but because they're currently experimenting with having an on-going free-to-play game run alongside their biyearly premium paid for games. There's a sort of shared infrastructure going between each title that just makes absolutely no sense even in summary, so I can only imagine the nightmare that the staff needs to go through in order to keep it running. What I'm trying to say is that I actually understand why Activision feels the need to get more hands on deck in order to keep things running, they've currently given themselves a huge undertaking to handle. But does that really mean every single other property owned by Activison needs to get shafted in order for COD to shine? Because I feel like when you start weighing that up as the alternative to scaling back, maybe you've gone a bit too far and grand plans for COD need to be toned down a bit. (You know what they say about spreading eggs and baskets.)

Mostly, however, this is unfair to the folks over at Toys for Bob and the plans they had going forward. One such plan apparently being a multiplayer add-on coming to Crash 4 that would have shaken up the gameplay and extended that title's lifespan. On such plan who's future is now in question because Toys for Bob isn't necessarily the biggest developer in the world and who knows if they can even do two projects at once. (Even if their new COD duties are more in support) One contractor took to Twitter to mutely share his disappointment on the whole situation, hoping along with everyone that this move is just temporary whilst Activision management get off their behinds and do something proper in this situation; like hire more people to fill support spaces. (You know, be an asset to your market. Is that too much to ask?) So that just goes to show you that at least someone who's worked with Toys finds this all a little distasteful, so there might be more in the studio as well with similar sentiments. So way to demoralise your own staff, Activision, setting that example.

One rumour which spread out of this whole situation was the idea that layoffs had followed this decision, which would have been horrible if that were the case, although it apparently isn't. Some contractors didn't have their contracts renewed, which kind of makes sense considering the vast change in direction for the studio, but no one was whole sale let go just yet. Still, that makes for a small victory when those that remain aren't going to be making what they signed up to do, because artists in particular do have a tendency to underperform when mismatched. (I've met and worked alongside some to know that little tidbit well enough) Just look at other studios like Bioware when their projects started to move away from what they were good at towards what their producers thought would be more profitable. Layoffs weren't needed, key members just quit. What's the point in sticking around when you're not being utilised, right? So will a similar fate befall Toys for Bob? I honestly haven't the foggiest; but it's a possibility.

So all in all, like the Infinity Stones coming together for Thanos; every Activision Studio has come to fall under the COD umbrella. Is this the grand future that Bobby Kotick sees for his company? Mass homogenisation to the point where every studio becomes interchangeable and just eventually end up changing their names to 'Activation California' and the like? Is that just the dream for every mass publisher out there? (It might as well be, that seems to be becoming something of a trend) I want to believe that it's not, Activision still remembers the other properties under it's belt and, most importantly, that Crash Bandicoot doesn't get itself left unceremoniously to the wide side because, gosh darn it, we just got that furry fella back! Thank you for all your hard work, Toys for Bob, I hope that you'll have the chance to demonstrate that ingenuity, talent and resourcefulness once more. (though that's looking like a hope for the far future at this point)

Skill Based Match Making

Who's the most skillful of them all?

When we look at the spectrum of online games, there is a certain common expectation of 'competitive purity' that tends to transcend games and genres. Whenever we get to the point of pitting one human against another is a match-up of, what is predominately considered to be, skill, players engage with these matches whilst putting their trust in the developers behind the game to ensure that match-up is as fair as humanely possible to aid the most objective result. This is a responsibility that is very important for any online game developer to take seriously, lest they risk ruffling their core fan base, and it is the driving force behind many of the chief concerns that run in game developers minds to this day. However, there are times when the pursuit of objective fairness clashes with ideals that some consider to be healthy to the community, and I want to explore that today. More specifically, I want to discuss the benefits and ramifications of 'Skill Based Match Making'. (SBMM.)

Maintaining a healthy online ecosystem has always been important for online developers, but with the recent rise of 'live services' it has become even more integral than ever before. Developers are expected to keep on top the latest cheats and exploits that threaten to ravage their game as well as prevent the homogenization of particular 'Meta strategys' that could prove threatening to the concept of gameplay variety. This sort of management it what allows games like 'Overwatch', 'Team Fortress 2' and 'Counter Strike: Global Offensive', to continue to dominate online play times despite being years old. To this end, teams often deploy a variety of different methods to stay ontop of things, ranging from hands-off endeavours such as the development of 'Anti-cheat' algorithms, hands-on methods such as investigations into reported system abuse and banning, and community efforts such as Public Test Servers. (PTS.) All these systems serve towards endorsing a fair environment where as many people as possible get to enjoy themselves, benefiting recurrent player numbers and, hopefully,  provide strong feed for your monetisation mulcher. (Gotta pay for those servers somehow, right?)

Recurrency is a very important figure when it comes to any game's statistics, but it is incredibly omniscient in the 'online gaming' sphere. That is because 'recurrancy' is a figure often consulted when judging the 'health' of a game and, therefore, the viability of continued investment. Basically, if people enjoy the game enough to keep coming back then Publishers are more interested in supporting further development of that game in hopes of turning those players into profits down the line. This relationship incentivises developers to go out of their way to keep players happy as it benefits them financially: A perfectly symbiotic relationship with absolutely no downsides, right? Well, it actually depends who you are. For it is in the pursuit of 'making as many people as possible happy' that some peculiar systems have been created and endorsed by gaming companies in the past.

Perhaps you've heard of the concept of 'beginner's luck'? An interesting phenomena that is certainly worth some philosophical debate as to it's validity, but there is an observable result on the individual effect of it which is more relevant to the matter at hand. When the person in question, whom we shall call 'Individual A', (Like this is a freakin' legal document) tries their hand at a new skill, they can often do so in a probationary capacity in order to determine whether or not they'll enjoy the activity that they are attempting. The question of whether or not they will continue to try their hand at that activity can often be dependant on those initial few attempts. (You're likely familiar with the commonly recognized importance of 'First impressions') Therefore, if 'Individual A' has a positive experience in their introductory step into this new activity, they'll be encouraged enough to stick around and see where it takes them. This kind of reaction also applies to Online games, and as such it is very attractive in the eyes of developers and publishers.

Not too long ago, in the prime of online games, there was a bit of hubbub around a system implemented by developers with the intention of securing that early retention, which would then hopefully lead to regular recurrancy. This was a practice wherein new players would receive a 'beginner's bluff' when they started playing an online game that would subtly make that player more powerful, thus increasing the chances of them winning their inaugural matches and getting that early positive feedback loop started. This buff would typically only last for the first few matches, or until the subject secured their first win, but it still tilted the balance of 'fair play' in a direction that was unfair to those who put their time and effort into the game in order to become 'skilled'. Whatsmore, the practise came across as deceitful due to the fact that it was never disclosed explicitly by the company's who did it, despite the fact that a lot of them did. (I believe even Call of Duty got on board with this trend at one point.)

In their defence, however, the practice could be looked on as something mostly harmless in the grand scheme of gaming. Skewering a few matches in hopes of securing some more fans to the game might seem a bit dishonest, but it's certainly a lesser evil when compared to the methods that some of these companies use nowadays. Pro and Hardcore players have complained that this practice sullys the 'purity' of the game systems and well as decidedly striking against the core demographic of online gamers, (A.K.A. Them) but it is difficult to calculate what effect this practise actually had on the retention figures of veterans who were directly impacted from this system, and so such concerns typically went brushed off. Game developers who were outed for this practise hid behind the "You don't think you want it but you do" excuse that they so often do with clandestine systems like this. It is unclear whether or not that practice is still commonly used by online Devs, (I bet it is) but there is another practice which has drawn ire from the 'hardcore' community of gamers and that is 'mandatory SBMM'.

Skill Based Match Making is a system wherein the developers encode a series of AI algorithms to asses the 'skill' of players (often derived from stats such as 'Number of wins', 'Kill/death ratio' and 'Weapon Accuracy') and skewers the 'match making' systems in order to place players with others who are similar to them in 'Skill'. The intended consequence of this is to cut back on the amount of times that less-experienced players find themselves getting pummeled by those who are infinitely more skilled. In turn, this would promote the 'positive feedback loop' of players who feel more fairly matched against their opponents, thus encouraging recurrency and roping in a few more fans who can be monetized down the road. Once again, this feeds the old symbiotic relationship between players and developers so there can't be anything wrong with it, right? Well, this time there are some unforeseen consequences which actually effect more than just the few.

Most obviously, there is the accusation that this 'sullies the purity of the compeititon', which may sound 'whiney' but there is some truth to that accusation. Competitions, by their very nature, inspire a number of individuals from all levels of skill to compete against each other to secure some sort of victory. Developers who endorse SBMM, operate under the assumption that those who find themselves hopelessly outmatched will be then disincentivised to continue improving, but often the opposite can be true. Some folk, who find themselves eager in the face of challenge, can look upon the most powerful opponent of the game as a goal to strive towards. if they find themselves being constantly outwitted, they'll take it as indication to improve and these are the kind of folks most likely to become dedicated regulars to the game. But if these folk never come across anyone who truly challenges them, then they have no incentive to push themselves as they never come across an example of someone who is that much more skilled then them.

Of course, there is also an argument to be made for SBMM when it comes to 'high level play' scenarios too. Players who enter the upper echelons of competitive play are often left dissatisfied with picking off the bones of less skilled players, so it would be better for them to try their hand against players of equal footing to really challenge themselves. Of course, the method to make the best of both worlds in this scenario would be to allow a choice, and that is something that a lot of game's companies recognize, hence the creation of 'Ranked Matches'. Ranked matches typically use SBMM for those times when you want a blood pumping match up, whilst casual matches exist for those who appreciate the random luck of potentially being paired with a master or a novice. The key here is player choice, something that not all developers have been on board with all the time.

Apex Legends recently cam under fire for the way they implemented SBMM into their core, and only, match making function. It was stealthily added to the game in season 2, and folk are just starting to get sick of it and the way they've been given no choice but to play along. One of the key issues that has been pointed out with this set-up is the way that SBMM often overrides proximity based connections and thus can result in iffy Internet connections. Traditionally it is the top priority of any match maker to ensure that latency and lag is under control, but that all goes out the window with SBMM and Apex fans felt that the integrity of their experience had been sacrificed in the name of feeding the 'casul' market.

I find the debate surrounding SBMM to be a particularly interesting and intriguing one as it lacks a clear cut 'right' answer. One on hand I applaud the efforts of any studio that seeks to make their games more accessible, whilst on the other I don't feel that necessarily has to come at the cost of the core gaming experience. I'll be particularly interested to see how this issue plays out with Apex, given that they just won the Multiplayer game of the year award. For better or for worse, eyes will be on them to set an example going forward, and seeing as how I doubt this SBMM issue is going anywhere, theirs is an example that will prove very enlightening.

The quality of gaming AI and bots

Machine or man?

The gaming culture is one of ebb and flow, fads and trends, habits that come and go. Sometimes that is for the best, and sometimes it's for the worse, but either way, it makes gaming and game design a world in constant flux. To pull out that Bennett Foddy quote again, "It's like building on drying concrete." We all have those eras of gaming that we wish we could return to, times that we can point to and go "There! They had the right idea with that one." But time moves ever onward. That cannot prevent some wistful folk, like myself, for sparing a nostalgic thought about what was and what might be had certain trends played out differently, with that in mind, let's talk about AI.

No, I'm not talking about the traditionally accepted definition of AI (Which can be more accurately defined as 'super-intelligent AI') but rather the collection of algorithms and processes that make up the mind of a computer; it's 'Artifical Intelligence'. In gaming, we commonly use the term 'AI' to refer to the handling of bots and NPC's by the software, it's a catch-all term that encompasses their behaviour, reaction and believability. A game that would considered having 'good' AI, would be one wherein the NPC's make appropriate use of their tools, navigate their environment succinctly and pose an actual threat to the humans; whereas a 'bad' AI would be the type you see running into walls and standing around waiting to be shot.

In the early days of gaming, AI wasn't too much of concern for programmers as their games were a lot more simplistic in scope. Enemies didn't really need to be programmed with a wide range of possible actions and route planning algorithms, they just had to operate a simple patrol task with the player's one job to be to avoid them. It was in this vein that famous video game bosses such as Super Mario Bros' Bowser, resorted to little more than jumping up and down and shooting fireballs every now and then. The only real challenge on the player's part is jumping over the Koopa king and hitting the axe-switch to plunge him into lava. Difficulty ramped up as patterns became more unpredictable and/or erratic, which is why many a player still has nightmares about the Hammer Bros from Super Mario Bros 3 and the Gorgon heads from Castlevania.

Games gradually evolved throughout the years, however, and so too did people's perception about what made good enemies in video games. In my opinion, the real watershed moment was when 3D world's became a thing with the advent of the Nintendo 64. Suddenly, AI would need to navigate a whole 3D environment and it became difficult for Developers to get away with simple patterns for the enemy AI. Now they had to code in path-finding and write in extra rules to determine line-of-sight and determine when to use certain abilities. The old guard method of planning would be to have enemies attack the moment they rendered on the screen or whenever the player got too close, now games consoles had become so powerful that this was unfeasible, enemies could be rendered from far away and players could navigate in 3 dimensions, requiring the system to evolve.

This really started to take route in the early 2000's when Developers began to expand the sorts of games that they could make. On of the biggest games of the time that boasted about it's AI's capabilities would have to be, possibly the first game I ever played, Metal Gear Solid. That was a game which ushered in a whole new genre of play, stealth, and with it a whole new set of requirements when it came to coding enemy AI. Patrolling guards had to follow their routes, sure, but they had to be able to react to their situations in a way that felt dynamic and realistic. Should they become alert, they needed to comb the area in search; if someone held them up with a gun, they needed to freeze in fear of their life. This revolutionized the way that people viewed AI and laid the ground works for where it would evolve next.

From this point onwards it became something of a point of pride for developers to boast about the cool new AI that their games had to offer and boast about how clever it was. Battlefield 1942, for example, had one of it's key selling points rest on the strength of it's bots and their ability to mimic real life opponents. (Isn't that weird? A purely online game that teases the offline components.) This trend caught on too, with future online games like TimeSplitters putting considerable effort into ensuring that their offline play was just as exciting as their online play. During this time it was actually feasible for an offline gamer, like I once was, to buy the newest multiplayer centric game under the knowledge that I wouldn't be left out.

One might have thought that this influx of innovation would be never-ending considering the huge jump forwards in software tech in the years since, however that has not been the case. It seems as standard AI procedures (AI good enough to hold their own against a human) became less of a novelty and more of the norm, there grew less of an incentive to strive for improvement in this general area. Games stopped boasting about how smart their AI was and some multiplayer titles started forgetting about AI Bots altogether. (COD has never had AI bots in their multiplayer as far as I know.) I guess that creating the perfect online opponent was too close to literally cloning gamer brain patterns for Devs to continue down that road. (Although, some of the best advancements in the development of general AI have been made in Video game settings. Maybe these game companies are selling themselves short.)

In the modern age, the only time you'll hear a big fuss made about the quality of AI is when something truly spectacular has been achieved. Who remembers the reveal gameplay demo for 'The Last of Us' when we saw Ellie dynamically react to a situation when the player was in trouble? It was an incredibly impressive showcase and one that should have, in a perfect world, sparked interest in bot development for the future. But it didn't. The same was true for the impressive AI systems behind the Xenomorph from 'Alien: Isolation'. With a reputation for being the 'perfect organism', Creative Assembly knew that they had to do something more imaginative with their Alien beyond giving it a patrol schedule, and so they designed two AI 'storytellers' to manage it's behaviours. One storyteller would give the Alien's AI clues as to where the player was, simulating the 'it's always nearby' paranoia from horror movies, whilst the other would send false clues to distract the alien, ensuring it wasn't always on the player and making it's movements difficult to predict. Despite the creation of this ingenious system, 'Alien: Isolation' was not the spark to revive the AI trend.

So is the concept of great AI complexity dead in the world of gaming? Not quite. Some games have started to look into bringing bots back into multiplayer games, like Battlefront 2, and advanced AI scripting is slowly becoming more of a talking point thanks to pioneers like 'The Last of Us part II'. But perhaps what we really need is a huge leap forward in the technology to really fan the flames of creativity once again in the minds of creators and push the boundaries of what can be possible. I've seen AI demos in simulated environments that go so far as to start simulating the action/reaction motion of human emotions, effectively creating artificial wants and needs; the least we can do in gaming is create an AI that chooses to take cover once and a while.

Celebrity Cameos

They're just like you or I

Let me be cynical for a second as I say that the easiest way to circumvent the process of creating an interesting and likeable character who is loved for all of their strong personality traits and/or driving goals, is to just replace all that with a celebrity cameo. Now, of course, that isn't always the case when it come to arrangements like this but it sure tends to be more often than not. Afterall, celebrities already have a following of some sort, must be innately likable in some way, and can draw a decent crowd to your project. This is the reason why big name actors now rule the Hollywood screens and why we see gaming studios drop big money to bring such talent over to this world.

I've always approached the fabled celebrity cameo with a healthy degree of skepticism as I try to figure out exactly what it is that the studios are trying to sell me. Even in the times when the cameo has worked out so well that you forget you're listening to the soothe vibrations of celebrity vocal cords, there is still a hint of exploitation behind the whole process that turns my stomach a little bit. The exercise must rake in some success, however, seeing as how video game studios are still giving it a swing as recently as this year. (It still isn't rampant as in main stream movies, though, so it can't be too profitable in the long run.)

I think that perhaps the most contemporary example of this is in Hideo Kojima's latest work, Death Stranding. (Light spoilers.) Some ripples have reverberated over the Internet in regards to this title and it's not just because of the fact that the game is as weird and wacky as people have been assuming it would be for all these years. Nor is it due to the occasional piece of out-of-place product placement that we see scattered around the game world. I think the biggest "What?" that seems to have been stemming from this game is the secret in which you can track down Conan O'Brien and have him give you a hat in the shape of an Otter. Now I could go into details of where you find him and the potential links that this appearance could have to his 'Clueless gamer' skits, but honestly does any of that really matter? Conan O'Brien's hologram shows up in a Hideo Kojima game. 'Nuff said.

When I forced myself into Gears of War fandom in order to keep up with everyone else's hype, the last thing I was expecting was for a rapper to turn up as one of the side characters in the latest entry. And yet, Gears of War 3's Aaron Griffin turned out to be exactly that as he was voiced and loosely modelled around Ice-T. Epic games were clearly proud of this particular collaboration as he was one of the hardest characters to unlock in that game's horde mode too, requiring players to make a stupid amount of money through playing the mode. (Enough to require several days worth of playtime to be dedicated exclusively to this mode.) Epic even reached out to Mr. T again (Not that Mr.T) when it came time for Borderlands 3. Or at least, I assume the Epic connection was the reason why Gearbox were saddled with bringing Ice into their game.

Ubisoft wanted to get onto this train this year with a game that I have covered a decent bit on this blog: Ghost Recon Breakpoint. If you remember, I mentioned how they wanted to make a big splash with the major villain of that game by modelling him and having him voiced by Jon Bernthal. Now Mr. Bernthal is a tremendous actor known for his roles in Walking Dead and the Punisher, and casting that man as a disgruntled ex-special forces terrorist seemed like actual dream casting. Unfortunately, this game was written by Ubisoft's games-as-a-service team and so they actually managed to bungle a script that literally wrote itself. Bernthal's Walker does what he can but there is only so much anyone can do with a generic, unfocused 'mad at the system' character who is, bizarrely, designed in such a way that the player can kill him off half way through the game and have the rest of the plot play out without him. (Doesn't that defeat the purpose of a mastermind?)

Mass Effect Andromeda is hardly a game that will go down in history for great characters and/or voice acting but I always keep it at the back of my mind for several odd reasons; one of which being the fact that it is currently listed on Natalie Dormer's IMDB page. That is because Bioware decided to cast her as the Tempest's medical office, Lexi T'Perro. This was clearly done in a way to capitalize off of her recent 'Game of thrones' fame and not to benefit the actress' talents, as was made apparent by the way that Bioware published several videos teasing her involvement whilst in game she played an extremely forgettable side character. Lexi hardly has any baring on the main narrative and even when she does get the chance to speak it is as cold and clinical as humanly possible. (I honestly can't remember if this character has an emotion in the entire game.) So when it comes down to a question of wasted talent, Mass Effect Andromeda knocked it out the park here, too.

The Saints Row series, known for the odd wink-and-nod to the audience, went above and beyond with their cameo when they announced that Keith David would be playing your vice president in Saints Row 4. This came alongside much fan fare and advertisement despite the fact that, as veterans of the franchise would know, Keith David already played a character in Saints Row lore; the original leader of the Saints: Julius. (And you can bet that the Devs didn't miss a chance to mention that in the game.) Keith David is placed front and center in this game as a main character and given plenty of material to be as funny as possible, making him one of the better examples of cameos that we can see in the world of gaming.

Of course, one can hardly talk about gaming cameos without bringing up the classic; GTA San Andreas. That is because San Andreas is a game that is practically dripping with cameos out of every orifice. (Such to the point where the term 'cameo' actually loses all meaning.) We're talking about a cast containing the likes of Samuel L. Jackson, Chris Penn, Ice-T (again), James Woods, Peter Fonda, David Cross, Danny Dyer, Frank Vincent and more I'm sure. What makes it even better; some of those characters I mentioned are actually reoccurring or main characters. None of these characters are celeb fodder and most of them use the talents of the actor to elevate a strong character into an unforgettable one. This is the reason why San Andreas' cast is still remembered as the best that Rockstar ever assembled. (Also the music tracks. They were great too.)

Oftentimes celebrities are used as a replacement for good writing, that's immutable, but occasionally something decent and interesting can come from it. For every time that CoD uses Kevin Spacey or Kit Harrington for forgettable stock villains, there are games like Fallout New Vegas who know exactly how to use one of their celeb stand in's, The Radio DJ: Mr Las Vegas; to make for a fitting subject, The Radio AI; Mr New Vegas. I suppose it's up to the consumer to decide if they find the very prospect insulting enough to hold it against the larger game, or if they'll at least keep an open mind up until their suspicions are confirmed.

Well, Well, Well...

Look what the storm of controversy dragged in...

Things have been really tough for this year's Call of Duty, and I mean beyond the general public disdain that this series amasses from anyone who's not a die hard convert. For years pundits have been blaming Call of Duty for everything wrong with the industry, first with the lack of creative ingenuity and lately with the propagation of avaricious and predatory business practises. They've even caught a ribbing due to the fact that they seem to have run out of names to call their games. (In all honesty, Modern Warfare is a pretty dull title to recycle.) At times it can almost feel like Activision's darling series is the whipping boy of the gaming community, but they still make stupid amounts of money each and every year so nobody can call them the underdog.

That being said, this year has been something wholly special for the Call of Duty haters out there. Firstly there was the huge issue of exclusivity that Infinity tried to sneak past it's consumers during a trailer. You know, the one in which they wrote in the smallest of fonts about how Spec Ops Survival mode would be an exclusive feature to PlayStation consumers for a whole year? I covered this in my blog last month, as well as the fervour it caused. People flooded the official CoD subreddit and Twitter account, demanding to know what exactly it was that made their money less valuable than PlayStation owner's money. Some made the sound argument that other consoles should be charged less for the game, considering they are getting less of the game at launch. And it seems no one was soothed by the official response of 'That's only 1% of the game, calm down!'. (It would seem that the general public is capable of basic math, Infinity Ward. You've gotta be more careful with your assertations!)

With all that nonsense having come, and mostly blown over, Infinity Ward and Activision must have thought that they had weathered the brunt of the storm. (And mass pre-order cancellations that were heralded by, said storm.) Then the Hearthstone catastrophe happened with Blitzchung and everything blew up once again. This time, Call of Duty wasn't the instigator of Activision's public relations woes, but was an unfortunate bystander in the chaos. Now that it had been established that Blizzard, and through them Activision, were happy to dump their morales in order to make some that sweet Chinese Yuan, everyone thought it only fitting that they dump Activision whilst telling them to get a room with their Tencent sweethearts. Once again, this led to a string of cancelled pre-orders.

Obviously I covered the majority of these topics on my blog, however there was incident between these two that I ignored, simply because it didn't seem like anything out of the ordinary for an Activision title. Namely, the way in which Call of Duty seemed to be primed for the implementation of Lootboxes. Big shock, right? A greedy company succumbing to greedy tactics that sacrifices the integrity of the game mechanics and balancing in order to supplement their revenue? Absolutely unheard of! But even die hard CoD fans had been voicing their displeasure over this development, so maybe this was an issue worth covering afterall. Apparently, last year's Black Ops 4 (The game that was stripped of it's campaign after development mishap after development mishap) was completely gutted by it's microtransactions, and people were scared of it happening here with 'Modern Warfare'. I remember hearing horror stories of individual red dot lights costing upwards of 3$ and just ended up dismissing it as 'peak CoD'. But I guess last year's systems were the straw that broke the camels back, because we may be getting actual change from this year's CoD.

Of course, I would hesitate to call this a direct response to the 'lootbox issue' and more a concession on Activision's part in answer to all their mounting controversy, but hey, might as well take the little victory while you can. We got wind of some potential action being taking a while back when a popular, and often accurate, leaker claimed that Activision had held meetings to address their steadily dropping pre-order levels. (Hear that people? You were depriving the vampires of their life blood, how cruel of you!) Infinity Ward's response to their initial backlash did got out of it's way to throw shade on this leaker, labelling his or her's information as 'rumor' (A legendary moronic move seeing how these leaks were painting the studio in a socially aware and considerate light.) but most people just ignored the PR babble, as they usually do, and choose to trust the voice that had lied to them less. (Ugh, the state of developer/consumer communication these days...)

But how exactly has Activision responded to the lootbox issue, you may be wondering. What could they have done that is even remotely worthy of praise? Well, in a recent blog post 'The Call of Duty Team' detailed all the ways in which they wanted to prove themselves to the community and adopt a positive player-first approach. (Que the "Trust me, I've changed!" monologue.) This post including such 'revolutionary ideas' as; introducing crossplay. Because I've always wanted to get destroyed by PC players. Okay, to be fair a decent amount of thought did appear to go into this system to ensure that control schemes had to be similar to facilitate this type of crossplay, but I wonder about the framerate advantage of superior rigs. (Or will everyone get artificially throttled to keep things fair?) Then they boasted about their removal of season passes and DLC map packs to keep everyone on the same level. Something that the rest of the gaming industry learnt after 2012 with the community splintering effect of Gears of War 3's map packs. (But better late then never I guess.) They also mentioned how they are delivering free maps and post-launch content going forward, which is just an expansion of the above statement but the team needed another bullet point. Finally they vowed to ensure that all post launch maps and modes hit everyone simultaneously. Which is a tad laughable considering the cluster that the Survival mode incident incurred for the very merit of ignoring this release model.

Throwing all the rest of the blog away, the one headlining announcement that will have caught everyone's attention would be the fact that the game will now be featuring a Battlepass system, not lootboxes. I feel it important to note that this message went out of it's way to say "Not a loot box system", as if to throw shade on the leaker who claimed that was their original intent. However, we did see some bugs in the Beta mode for the game which gave away the Loot box system too, so you can kindly get the heck off that high-horse Activision, no one's falling for your crap. Additionally, I am so tired of these developers using the "everything's always changing" excuse to keep consumers guessing about monetisation until a week before launch. (Heck, sometimes it's the day of launch.) Just to be clear, everyone already knows that the studios are dead-set on their monetisation system months before launch, and Call of Duty would have most certainly had a Loot box system if Activision didn't have so many fires to put out.

The cherry on the top of it all, however, is the way how CoD are switching to a Battlepass system and calling it a day. Don't get me wrong, I generally do prefer a Battlepass system over lootboxes, it is certainly leagues more fair on the player's bank account, but that just makes CoD another one of those games desperately vying for player's eternal attention through recurrency ensuring tactics. How long until the gaming industry realizes that there are only so many hours in the week that people can realistically divide between games? At this point, Activision are actively poaching recurrency away from their other games, like their own Apex Legends. Although, given Respawn's tone deaf and draconic approach towards monetisation and public relations I would be hard pressed to say that the game didn't deserve it. Yet it does seem like history is repeating itself and no one learnt their lesson. (I'm referring to the time that Respawn's great shooter, Titanfall 2, was killed by Activision because they released it in a window sandwiched between their own Battlefield game and Call of Duty.)

Maybe this is the first sign of Activision turning a new leaf. Maybe we can expect a player first approach from the studio going forward and every proceeding endeavour will prioritize the quality of the game over securing a profit. Maybe we'll all live in flying castles in the sky with talking pigs serving as our butlers. Who knows what the future will bring. But I find it infinitely more enlightening to look at the actions of a company before the walls start closing in on them, and back then they appeared to be just as avaricious as always. So I wouldn't expect much change from the Call of Duty franchise once the brand finishes licking it's wounds and comes back swinging next year. You could argue that this was the right choice on Activision's part and that I'm discounting that in order to feed into my superstitions, but I always like to remember the adage; Even a broken clock is right twice a day.