Do you remember that song that was everywhere on the radio a few years ago? The one that you absolutely hated? I’ll bet you that if I asked you what it was called, you wouldn’t remember, instead answering with “that one with the auto-tune” or “the one about the girl who missed the memo?” Now, if I were to ask you why you can’t tell me, you would probably say “I dunno, just stopped talking about it once it was off the airwaves.” Exactly, and that leads me to my point. For as many gamers that are out there crying about about and how much they hate it, I see very few ignoring it.
A new CoD has become procedural in the year-to-year goings-ons in the gaming industry, and it’s massive. If you frequent the gaming news aggregate N4G more than once a week, you will likely see at least one article about either the upcoming CoD, something about the current CoD, or an article about the developers of CoD. But this large showing is deceptive, as it does not indicate popularity among the gaming popularity among the gaming community, but vitriol. Showing the comments on any of these articles reveals posts along the lines of “CoD sucks,” “I’m tired of CoD,” or “why can’t we hear about anything other than CoD?” See the conflict here?
Why, in all of their hatred for the CoD franchise, can’t gamers stop talking about it? Thought-provoking articles on gaming and previews or reviews of under-the-radar games are ignored in favor of the most controversial or recent news on all that is CoD. All kinds of different gamers come to bash CoD in some capacity: Battlefield fans, RPG fans, indie fans, racing game fans, platformer fans…you get the picture. The question I have is, why are you not going out to support the games you like and helping them get more shine?
The more attention gamers pay to CoD, the more the gaming media is going to write about it. When you’re articles on Activision’s cash cow are getting hits by the thousands and your developer interview with that programmer trying to promote a new Kickstarter project gets read about as much by your audience as Mein Kampf does by the Jewish community, you’re going to write about CoD. Big sites need the hits to help pull in more potential advertisers and smaller sites need the hits to get any advertisers at all. Whether or not you like to admit it, money talks much, much louder than words can.
So where does that leave us? In a discussion about personal responsibility and being a goddamn adult. No matter how much the media pushes something on people, if they ignore it, it will eventually go away or, at the very least, slide into the periphery. Now, CoD is a special case because it has such a large following in the mainstream, but how often do you think people who just buy the newest CoD game every year are visiting you favorite gaming site? Not even for previews I would wager, as long as Call of Duty is in the title and their friends are buying it, they honestly aren’t concerned about it pre-launch: they’ll buy it regardless or visit a dedicated CoD fan site to get their news.
It’s up to gamers who don’t want to hear about the damn game to stop clicking on articles about the damn game. Your hate means nothing and honestly makes you look like an idiot. You know that guy in the movie who is pleading with all of the villagers to believe him when he says an army of werewolves is coming to maul them all to death? The guy who just gets laughed at? You’re that guy, right or wrong, the people who buy it. You see an article, you let your eyes wander to something you actually like and go comment on that. Trust me, whatever it is, it needs your attention more than anything on CoD does.
As for being an adult, knowing when to let events unfold on their own is part of growing up. When something is too big for you, you have to realize when it is, and be at peace with the fact that you have a mind of your own and can decide what is right and wrong for yourself. Don’t read the articles, don’t go out and buy it because all of your friends are (there are plenty of other online gaming communities you can be a part of) and, most importantly, if you are honestly infuriated about CoD‘ yearly success,
I can see just as well as you the irony in me writing this article, one about CoD telling gamer’s to stop talking about CoD or reading articles about CoD if they don’t like it. But that is not the issue here, the issue is that we as a gaming community need to come together for something higher than the whining and bitching that is so often the only reason the community comes together for anything. Let’s do something positive for a change.geek revolt source
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