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At least not our definition of gaming
Hold up! Don’t like reading? Watch instead…
Remember the time when Sports weren’t woke? Then they went woke. Then they started going broke, but refused to change?
Remember normies asking the obvious question,
“99% of their audience doesn’t like this shit and they’re losing views and money, why do they keep doing it?”
And the people ahead of the curve replied with the obvious answer,
“Because you’re not their audience anymore.”
It’s time to acknowledge that, for now, you aren’t Infinity Ward or Activision’s target demographic.
In fact, their target demo doesn’t even play video games.
Modern Warfare 2, Warzone 2, and the entire CoD line have become primarily two things:
Financial instruments or vehicles no different than stocks, real estate, cryptocurrencies, government bonds, or other methods that maximize ROI.
And testing grounds for technological solutions aimed at maximizing metrics ultimately designed to increase profit.
Both of these combined create product strategies akin to casinos and gambling.
And you know this is true.
Every time a new Call of Duty releases, the community is confused about why Infinity Ward, Treyarch, and the rest of the “incompetent” gang can’t stick the landing.
That’s because Gamers aren’t the client. Money men are. And money men understand a special term in the land of business: MVP or minimum viable product.
In other words, how cheap and barebones can my product be to barely make it into the market so I can start making money? No more, no less.
It’s why the stock market up until very recently was flooded with SPACS — they don’t actually do anything except raise a lot of money.
It’s why the bar for creating, hyping, pumping, and dumping the newest animal-food fusion cryptocurrency is so low — you guys want to buy my new Hippo-Koi coin? It’s going to the moon, bro.
Call of Duty’s are no longer games in the traditional sense, they’re games in the same way making money on Wall Street is a game.
And technologically speaking, just like how the US stock market was experimented on, then fully invaded by, high-frequency trading — basically, algorithms — Call of Duty is now a petri dish for every money-making scheme that pops into a sociopath’s head.
SBMM and EOMM prove this. Warzone 2 and the wider Call of Duty have become testing grounds for how to manage the fine line between player retention and player spend.
There’s no longer any thought for game design and game loop. All of the big brains are concentrating on combining AI, machine learning, and human psychology to generate maximum revenue in the gaming and entertainment sector.
Slot machines go “Ding, Ding, Ding!“, hitmarkers go “Dih, dih, dih, dih…” (and it feels so good)
Conclusion
Activision, Infinity Ward, and the rest of the cabal are going to try and perfect their MVPs til the bitter end.
And make no mistake about it, the modern technological and psychological solutions they discover will be patented and leased out to other actors in the gaming, gambling, film, and government sectors of our society.
Here’s a bit of hope though: We know. The CoD community’s rhetoric on the state of the game and its systems is heating up to a point where there will be consequences.
See you on the battlefield and as always, stay cool, gentlemen
