I have created this thread to discuss why we think Activison is so successful despite COD being so terrible, here's my theory below

Activision bribes gameing journalists like Gamespot and IGN to say good things about the game even though each game is 95% the same as the last one. I also think that Activision bribes people on the street to buy and play the game.

Now for your theories

Call of Duty is successful, in my opinion, because firstly of its great origins, the original Call of Duty games were very fun experiences though they were mostly Single player. Another reasons is due to the low skill ceiling meaning anyone can do very well in the Multiplayer component even if they would do very badly in other Multiplayer titles. Also the heavy advertising Activsion puts in for its CoD games also helps a lot!

I don't personally believe that Activision bribes game journalists with money and the like to give high scores, that is a very insulting statement to make to a lot of people (though I will admit there are some shady reviewers, that is the same in many fields). However I do know that many more popular review sites give good reviews, or at least above a certain threshold, in order to be able to release their Reviews not only at an early date but be able to receive copy's of future games down the line. At the end of the day it is all about the page views, that is where they get much of their income. If Activision (Or any other publisher) does not send a review copy to a site because they previously gave a bad score, then they miss out on a huge chunk of interest from readers.

I like some CoD every once in a while. It seems like everyone jumped on the ol' "CAWD SUXX" Bandwagon after MW3.
And I'll be honest...The people bitching about it non-stop piss me off more than the people who say it's the best game ever....And I've never seen the latter

Steelpoint wrote:Call of Duty is successful, in my opinion, because firstly of its great origins, the original Call of Duty games were very fun experiences though they were mostly Single player. Another reasons is due to the low skill ceiling meaning anyone can do very well in the Multiplayer component even if they would do very badly in other Multiplayer titles. Also the heavy advertising Activsion puts in for its CoD games also helps a lot!

I don't personally believe that Activision bribes game journalists with money and the like to give high scores, that is a very insulting statement to make to a lot of people (though I will admit there are some shady reviewers, that is the same in many fields). However I do know that many more popular review sites give good reviews, or at least above a certain threshold, in order to be able to release their Reviews not only at an early date but be able to receive copy's of future games down the line. At the end of the day it is all about the page views, that is where they get much of their income. If Activision (Or any other publisher) does not send a review copy to a site because they previously gave a bad score, then they miss out on a huge chunk of interest from readers.

Of course they bribe critics to give it good reviews, many game companies tend to do that. That doesn't mean the games are bad though, I thought all the CoD games were pretty fun, especially the multiplayer. People that jump on the COD SUCKS bandwagon are missing out on genuinely fun games. Although I can't forgive cod for ruining the FPS genre.

Steelpoint wrote:Another reason is due to the low skill ceiling meaning anyone can do very well in the Multiplayer component even if they would do very badly in other Multiplayer titles.

I'm bad at all CoD Games, Fairly good at Battlefield and Amazing at Crysis.

EXPLIYUN DUT.

lololord wrote:

Steelpoint wrote:Another reason is due to the low skill ceiling meaning anyone can do very well in the Multiplayer component even if they would do very badly in other Multiplayer titles.

I'm bad at all CoD Games, Fairly good at Battlefield and Amazing at Crysis.

EXPLIYUN DUT.

You suck :3

Did you guys know that many game companies mastered the technique of putting in a series of flashes in their games in order to stimulate parts of the brain.

In lamans terms: Video games are drugs.

Awesomeguy147 wrote:Did you guys know that many game companies mastered the technique of putting in a series of flashes in their games in order to stimulate parts of the brain.

In lamans terms: Video games are drugs.

Is that why i'm addicted to Kirby?

What I meant by bringing is that they don't just hand them a suitcase of money and tell them to give their game high ratings, I say that they heavily encourage reviewers to give them good reviews via several more subtle methods such as....

- Early access to a review copy, and exclusive rights to be able to be the first (or among the first) to publish their review.
- Paid trips to events to cover the game.
- Priority access to future review copy's.

If Activision decided to not give, for example, IGN a early review copy, then IGN would be at a massive disadvantage to other reviewers. Since by the time the game is released and they get their hands on a retail copy, and then review it, people have already read other reviews from other publications. This means less page views which equates to less revenue. It is in the interest of most review sites to keep on the good side of publishers, so in order to maintain this many will guarantee that a game receives a higher score then it deserves.

In my opinion, while I do enjoy the CoD games when I do play them , I don't honestly think they deserve 9's and 10's on the score chart. I would argue that after Call of Duty Modern Warfare the series pretty much remained the same with little to no innovation (In most cases). I would have given most later released titles a 7/10, with MW3 being given a 6/10 and I would argue CoD Black Ops 2 could warrant a 8/10 simply because Teryarch are trying to innovate to an extent.

It's successful for the same reason as Pokemon. It's manipulative in it's target audience.

Where Pokemon looks like a target audience of 3+, it appeals to every age group.
Where CoD looks like a target audience of 18+, it appeals to largely 10-21, but also older people.

Unfortunately, CoD has gotten so popular that the developer can truly cock it up, and still make a lot of money. Just look at the PS Vita game.