Call of Duty’s dominance is killing innovation in the industry

By: Moses Abaortae

  |   November 25th, 2012   |  

Uncategorized

Part 3: Spec Ops: The Line is just one example of a great game marred by a tacked on multiplayer component to compete with Call of Duty, but it’s not the latter’s fault.

The multiplayer in Spec Ops: The Line demonstrated the publishers are willing to push developers into places they do not want to go in terms of the level of freedom they have with their titles. The game was intended to be a single-player only experience and it was a great one at that as it broke the norms that had become a stagnating staple in the industry.

At the same time, Capcom, in an attempt to go the way of Call of Duty, has turned its classic survival horror series, Resident Evil, into another action game with less emphasis on the ‘survival’ and ‘horror’ which defined the game.

However, is Activision to blame for this? Should the Call of Duty series be held accountable for the lack of risk-taking in the industry? The simple answer is, no.

What Infinity Ward and Treyarch did was perfect a niche. The run and gun genre in shooters has reached its peak under the two developers and Activision seem to have realised this. Instead of changing the formula every year, the studio is instead tweaking and refining it. As the old saying goes, if it ain’t broke don’t fix it.

At the same time the studio switches releases between the more ‘tweak’ heavy Infinity Ward, to the more innovative, Treyarch, with both studios able to learn and feed off each other’s success.

The rest of the industry sadly, seems to have the right aim but the wrong approach. Instead of trying to create their own niche are trying to copy elements from the Call of Duty series. Third-person shooters are not meant to have the same elements as their first-person counter parts, however, one can find elements of this.

At the same time, titles that are innovating and trying something new such as Journey, The Walking Dead and even Spec Ops: The Line, seem to be on a more limited budget and available as download only titles, barring the latter.

In the end, Call of Duty dominates its own market but developers elsewhere need to work on stamping their own identity on their future projects instead of looking to see what works and cloning it in their games for the sake of the industry.

Disclaimer: the views and opinions expressed in this article are the writer’s own and do not reflect the editorial policy of Wishfree.com in any way.