The Current State of Call of Shady

JULY 15
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Made by Franco

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The Current State of Call of Shady

Alright, clearly Call of Duty is going through some shit. Well... a lot of it actually. I don't hate the idea of showing what's wrong with a title, since its the best way to find solutions.

At this point, we understand that in the content realm, a title's popularity lifeline is shorter than a hug from a father in law. It's just how it works. We get bored quick, quit the game when the skill gap is gross, and have zero patient with game bugs.

However, if you want to maintain a game relevant for at least a couple years you can. But you need the community in sync.

Activision had a promising project with the CDL + owners and investors with long term hype mentality, focusing everything on competitive... until Warzone appeared and caught instant success. Activision left the CDL in the altar and it's trying to juggle with content creation and competitive, at the outcome of fucking up both.

WHAT ARE PROS & STREAMERS SAYING?

Warzone is killing the Call of Duty League
Clyster— "The opportunities will becomes less for multiplayer and more for Warzone. How long can the CDL actually survive with this big of a gap in viewership?"

Scump— "Warzone already killed the CDL. Look at Twitch, Cold War has like 6K viewers, Warzone a minimum of 100K. In Warzone, they are playing for $100K every two days."

Hecz — "Would Warzone be this popular if it wasn't for Nickmercs, Tim and Jack playing it? I need them to build a department of people dedicated only for competitive."

Content vs Competition
Octane— "Are you going to be devoted to content or are you going to be the best that you can be? Scump does a pretty good balance, when he retires we are fucked. There's not enough people to fill his space. It's not hard to do both, do scrimmages from 1 to 7 and then, before bed, take an hour to create a Youtube Video, you don't have to stream for 5 hours."

The problem is that orgs want one thing and Activision the other. The disconnect is making team managers focus only on performing and not pushing their players to create content, which makes sense. It was the original and logical idea when the CDL was created.

Activision collected the juicy CDL franchise bags, didn't wait the long term mentality as promised and got tempted with Warzone's short term success.

But what happens when a new title takes #1 in the charts? Call of Duty would be left with a damaged competitive scene and an abandoned content zone.

It's not all rainbows and unicorns in Warzone
Yes...

Warzone can pull good viewership.
Pros are moving aways from the CDL towards content creation.
The game of choice for Twitch and Youtube is Warzone.

But forced.

Content creation is dictated by the main personalities in the scene. What ever Nickmercs, TimTheTatman, Courage, Ninja, Shroud, xQc and others play, people will play. Most of them are playing Warzone, because there's nothing else to do:

Hackers: the hacking narrative have been there for months and Activision can't solve it, actually, hackers are now getting to console as well.
Egos: I don't know what's going on behind close doors, but you would imagine a company with that much money being open to ask for help or partner with companies to solve this issue. Are they too comfy to do that? Or is there a shadier element that we don't know?
Streamers are vocal as fuck: all streamers are dissing Activision and Warzone. They are literally praying on stream, every day, for the next game to take the lead.

WHAT'S NEXT?

On the positive side for Call of Duty, we could hit a new golden era if hackers are cleaned and the right style of game is designed. It has been done before.

However, the reality is that people are extra negative at the moment. When the passion is lost, we complaint about every single thing, from important bugs to insignificant shit like the color of a wall.

In that state, it's hard for developers to please people.

Do you really think developers don't give a fuck about Call of Duty? You are wrong.
We don't know the full story. I'm sure most developers are blindsided by higher ranks and maybe a few of them know what's going on, and if they talk... oh lordy.

Call of Duty Season 4 Reloaded coming out today will fix things, but how deep?

Halo Battle Royale will be a thing, and when that happens, COD will be in trouble.

They will wait until people find issues with Halo, fix most things and release a new version of the game. The esports side of things will get harmed once again because money speaks over experience, and the vicious circle will continue to run.

Honestly, this is just another episode of Black Mirror.

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