3:52 PM
By now, nobody who knows me well enough thinks I've got anything positive to say about Call of Duty as a franchise, but I think the gaming community may be getting a little harsh on "Infinite Warfare".
It's the most heavily disliked gaming-related video on YouTube, literally ever (As of this writing, nearly a MILLION dislikes). While I disapproved of the trailer's use of a remix of David Bowie's "Space Oddity" (The Starman died a little recently for you to be slapping his work on a video to promote a game that simultaneously trivializes and glorifies dehumanizing warfare), most of the flak from the gaming community seems to be slamming the title for its choice to use a futuristic setting, that included space combat.
Here's the thing about that: I honestly think that is a far more damning piece of evidence against the game's main fanbase than it says about the game itself. The community that is the rabid following of CoD has always been characterized as immature and lacking in imagination, buying yearly installments of the SAME DAMN THING over and over again. While CoD has flirted with futuristic combat as a franchise, it's always remained safely within the realm of edge-of-reality and never strayed too far into the extraordinary, out of a tireless devotion to an oddly suspect definition of "realism".
With "Infinite Warfare", they've taken off the safeties and thrown the players into SPACE, which in my opinion doesn't usually equate to a bad decision. Space is an awe-inspiring place, and a great setting for video game fantasy. Apparently, though, this has alienated a large portion of their audience, who have already crucified this installment.
That, dear reader, is a mistake. When a community of devoted fans refuses to allow artists to evolve and innovate, they assume that the artists will continue to crank out consistently quality work within the same damn wheelhouse, but locking artists within a creative box does a disservice to the industry as a whole. Am I saying "Infinite Warfare" is going to be an amazing game after a string of same-ey arcade shooters? No, I'm not saying that. I have no idea. I can't say that one way or another. But we must allow developers to take creative risks, in order to evolve not only themselves, but the industry, to bring us passionately created experiences and new IP's that will inevitably follow.
That said, I also wouldn't make the mistake of TRUSTING Activision. If there is anything we DO know for sure, it's that the game will be overhyped, cross-promoted onto the favorite products of teenagers and frat boys everywhere, and chopped up and sold back to us as DLC packs and/or an "Elite" subscription package. it's the same reason why I'm floored by the massive response to EA's "Battlefield 1" trailer, which presents a daring attempt at a WW1 themed shooter. A commendable goal, trying a setting that will include biplane dogfights and archaic weaponry, but while I support the direction it is taking, I haven't forgotten the debacles that have been every Battlefield/Battlefront release since Battlefield 3's "Premium" debut. Those mistakes, however, are not the fault of the artistic team, so one should be careful to delineate the two when bringing up gripes. New artistic directions are a POSITIVE thing for the industry. What the corporate interests follow them up with to ruin them is an entirely different story.
