Rising Order of Operations, Part IIA: a primer on the FPS, its evolution, and my sordid Call of Duty career
Last time, we discussed Universal Paperclips, a minimalist idle/clicker game for browser & phones. Now, let's talk about not entirely, but also sorta, different. And first, a primer before the explication.
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The lineage of the first person shooter genre begins, as all great things do, in hell. Sure, there was shooting, and there was being a first person - which is to say, inhabiting a digital body and seeing as it sees, moving as it moves - but DOOM made it visceral and immediate. Much has been said on the topic (see Tim Rogers & other DOOM YTers), but still it must be said - DOOM made the shooter into a country, and we've lived there for decades now.
The oft-crowned king of the series, Halo 2, is sometimes considered the best example of what we'll call the Early era of FPS multiplayer match. Set forth by the first of the dynasty, the parameters are...
- you are a Person
- other players are other Persons
- you are on a given Map, or set playing field
- you start with a simple, but competent weapon OR you start with a weak-ass shit weapon OR you can choose from a very limited set of starting weapons & abilities OR you start with nothing
- on the map, there are other Things, like weapons, power-ups, ammo, etc. - the stuff of Shooting in the First Person ("I Shoot")
- you "spawn" at a given location, or a random location
- you attempt to complete the objective, which is traditionally to kill and be killed, and hope you (and/or your team) do more of the former than the latter OR you defend a location OR you attack a location OR some other goal, for yourself or your team
- when the objective is complete, or the time runs out, the match is over, then a winner is declared
"Legal actions" is a strange term I used up there, huh. But listen: in basketball, you must dribble, and in baseball, you must follow the trace of the diamond, and in football, you can't run off the field and then back on. In Quake or Halo or Team Fortress, the legal actions you can perform are not monitored by umpires, but absolutely created and made manifest by the game. Imagine if, when a player attempted to travel in basketball, his legs and arms would not cease the dribbling; or, if a defensive end tried to sneak a little illegal touch during a deep throw, his hand stopped short of the other's unknowing body. You cannot cheat, except by, well, cheating by means of external programs and code that break these rules.
And amid all this order-made-manifest, the map and items are also codified in fairness, or at least an interesting unfairness. Those player respawn points have been placed by the designers to ensure newly-revived players won't massacred within seconds of rebirth. Items are put in locations that are either fairly located or, if not, interestingly located, so as to create an uneven but interesting tension between players. These items are picked up, used, and can respawn, allowing for another round of players racing for them, creating another interesting encounter. I mean, it's a fucking rocket launcher - I'm going to make a beeline for it every time - and so will every other right-thinking idiot on the other team. Same goes for a double-damage boost, or the ammo resupply.
You are enticed to consider these options as you move through your objective, clashing with enemies at given flashpoints in the map, hopefully considered by thoughtful & loving designers. Yet, of course, there are infinite angers directed at developers for choices considered to be "unfair," such as bad spawns or poor placement or a map without "flow" that ensures players can play towards their objective in a fair manner - these complaints can be considered and then implemented , or ignored entirely, not unlike the changing rules of a sport from season to season. Fairness in combat, above all, because if it's available to all, then it is fun for all.
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The originating objective was, as you might imagine, to shoot from your first person at other first persons, doing it more than the other players. Then, you could do so in teams. But any idea worth doing demands complication, and the genre provided, creating what we'll call the Middle era.
In Team Fortress, a mod for Half-Life, teams were comprised of different roles - like the heavy gunner or demolition man. Before, and during, a game, players could choose a class alongside other players choosing classes. This is how you end up with 7 snipers and no medics, but in theory, this creates specialization. I was good at demolition and grenade jumping, and I used my explosions to attack the other team's fortress.
In Unreal Tournament, you could play capture the flag, that rudimentary "sport" of preteens on hot summer afternoons. Fight your way to the enemy's flag and bring it back to your flag, while defending your flag from the other team. The thrill of snatching the flag and dashing through gunfire back to your base can only be matched in horror by seeing an enemy in the distance dash off with your flag, preventing your scoring. Then, a mad pursuit happens wherein both flag carriers must evade death, but neither can forever.
UT also had domination, which involved multiple points that must be held - by held, I mean a team must reach point A and stand on it for a given time, thus granting them ownership of it. With multiple points to conquer and defend, players had to consider when to move forward and when to hunker down, when to venture for a powerful weapon, and when to use that weapon to take a point.
Half-Life also spawned another mod, Counter-Strike, a more "realistic" kind of FPS. Again, you played in teams - the terrorists and counter-terrorists (it came out in November of 2000, YEESH) - but with set objectives per map. On one, the Ts attempt to plant a bomb at several possible locations, while the CTs try to kill them first or, if the bomb is planted, defuse it. On another, CTs try to infiltrate a location to retrieve and escort some dumb-as-shit NPC hostages to a safe location, while the Ts try to stop them. CS has other game modes, including Deathmatch, but bombs & hostages were a complication players wanted. 
Complicating this further was the design of the match. In CS, a match was not one long event, but a series. Indeed, a "game" consisted of several "matches" - so if the Ts blew up B bomb location this round, you don't get booted to the next map with a fresh slate. Instead, you moved to another iteration of the same map & teams. The FPS went from the single-event football to the series style of baseball. And, to make this work, player do not respawn in a match, instead having to wait to come back at the start of the next match.
As such, the relentless churn of Deathmatch turns into a story of survival and perseverance, as you work with your team and call out enemy locations, working your way toward the objective, or nobly defending your own objective by careful camping and aiming. Death always felt like a slap, but a small one, on the stern upper arm, a reminder for you to think more tactically next time, or to shoot better. Because, as per its "realistic" design, your Person dies when shot. Sometimes it takes a few hits, and sometimes it takes one, but you're not some space lord. No, you're a Person.
CS added one more important complication to the genre, though, and it is a complication that is relevant to our ultimate topic: capitalism (it is both the complication, and the topic, yes).
This flow of cash across rounds, which is dependent on the player's performance, is a new complication, yes, a brand new sort of metagame of spending, saving, and choosing atop the bedrock of the First Person Shooting. You have to know the map and its flow, the long hallways and the sneaky tunnels, in order to decide between the MP5 or the Steyr Scout.
You must also know thyself, for while the weaponry of CS might be variously weak and mighty, the hand that wield it is what matters. We haven't spoken of gunplay much yet, but let us briefly say: in the Early era, guns had different damage effects and firing rates, but you point and you shoot. Famously, the strategy guide for the final boss of DOOM in PC Gamer suggested you "run around the Cyberdemon and shoot it." In multiplayer scenarios, this is of course more complicated, as a Person moves differently than a code-souled enemy, but still - you lead your shot, then shoot, doing the invisible and instantaneous trigonometry and momentum math between your eye and index finger. This is not to say the Early era was uncomplicated, as the artistry of a well-aimed Quake rocket can attest, but it was still a rocket launcher you were wielding in hell or on another planet, or whatever the fuck. Sure, you can get a shotgun or a BFG or a sniper rifle, but the FEEL of the gunplay in these early games was distinctly game-y. That's not a bad thing!
In the Middle era, though, the more complex engines allowed for, oh shall we say, some OOMPH. For Unreal Tournament, they chose the evolutionary path of diversity in gunplay. You had no assault rifles, but instead, a gun that shot saw blades, or one that arced a glob of acid, or the flak cannon, which is sorta like a shotgun. Except each weapon had a secondary fire, and the flak cannon ejaculated a fiery hot ball of shrapnel that exploded with such a delicious sound. Ok, there was still a sniper rifle, and a minigun was basically an assault rifle, but c'mon - the shock rifle! The primary fire is a laser, the secondary fire was a slow-moving electric orb, and if you had an ounce of joy at your heart's heart, you knew you had to shoot a laser into the orb. And your reward was a big ol' blue explosion.
At the apex of this complication stands CS and its arsenal. Each weapon has a unique feel, one of weight and heft, recoil and distance, the crosshair bursting and retracting at variable rates. Its designers, who were first modders and then properly employed developers, focused on this "realistic" aesthetic in the gunplay. The faction-specific main assault rifles - the M4 and the AK47 - seemed comparable, but the feel varied wildly. The M4 was a tad weaker, but the recoil was more tame, and with the optional silencer attachment, any beginner could wield a properly destructive weapon. The AK, on the other hand, bucked like a pissed off cat in your hands, limiting you to only 2-5 shots per burst, lest it go absolutely celebratory, cackling bullets into the skybox; yet, it was powerful as hell, and in the proper hands, it could surgically remove heads from bodies.
Much could be said of the rest of the cast, like the legendary AWP sniper rifle that could one-shot anyone, or the M249, the expensive machine gun that only insane men used. Each had a distinct feel, based in a coded "realism," which is of course, not real. But by invoking the word, one can understand why CS punishes the spray-n-pray approach. This is a game of tactics, both in considering the map, your opponent, and the objectives on the large scale, and then considering your positioning, your weapon choices, and how to control the wild beast you've just purchased on the small. It can be absolutely demoralizing to lose, but thrilling to win, in a way it's hard to describe without leaning into sports metaphors. CS, as you'd imagine, developed its own eSports leagues, rising for several years into the FPS throne. 
It didn't hurt that CS 1.6 was still a mod for Half-Life 1, which could be acquired for a sawbuck or two. And even CS Source came as a freebie with the seminal (and again, routinely cheap) Half-Life 2. CS:GO, the full rebuild and enhancement of CS, was released in 2012, which doesn't sound like it was a decade ago, but it is, and it came with a host of changes, yadda yadda. The point is, this is what the FPS world was like.
See, even with all these systems, CS is still, in its DNA, a fair thing. Every player starts with the same things. Sure, you could have a cosmetic that makes your gun look different, but until CS:GO in 2012, only you would see that change. And sure, every PC ran the game at different settings. But there was no added benefit, or advantage, or anything on an individual basis, when you begin. Tabula rasa, every time. This the key point I want to invoke - even if you became richer and better equipped over a series of matches, you had no advantage outside the game, nothing but your knowledge and micro-movements of the finger.
But any idea worth complicating is worth further complicating. And in 2007, it hit a point of complexity that had been attempted before, but not like this, and never to be un-done: they added numbers.
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Call of Duty did not start in 2007. No. It began in the boom of WW2 shooters in the early 2000s, and it was pretty damn good. You landed in Normandy, got an empty rifle in Stalingrad, and made your way toward Berlin. For a few games, you - in a single-player campaign - inhabit this historical Person, and the immersive experience of war smeared itself on your invisible self. In the loading screens between deaths, you'd be presented quotations from thinkers across the ages, on war, and you'd ponder. Then snap back into the action at some arbitrary checkpoint, this new birthplace you'd likely begin from again and again, as you tried to survive a wave of Nazi attacks. 
It was pretty good! And there was MP in there too. It's fine.
But 2007 came around, and Modern Warfare was on the table. It was not WW2, not the World War. No - it was here, and now, a tale of the contemporary bloodspilling across the middle east. 6 years out from 9/11, 4 out from the invasion of Iraq, and a year out from the beginning of the "surge" which was also an ethnic cleansing, some game devs made murky heroes from the special operations soldiers. Much has been said on the campaign, so I shant say anymore.
It was pretty good! Like, great! And there was MP in there too. And it was different.
MW1 (we're going to need to use these variables from here on out, as it is get soooorta gunky otherwise) was not just an FPS. Yes, you were a Person, and yes, you joined a team or played as an individual. Yes, there were objective modes, but yes, your primary verb was still TO KILL and the object was still OTHER PERSONS within the game. But the selection of weapons, of gear, of attachments for those weapons? Those were no longer contained within "the game" - referring to the match, the map & experience of spawning, living, shooting, dying - but within a metagame, fueled by Experience Points (XP). 
They made COD into an RPG. Each match, you gained XP by completing achievements, like getting 500 kills with a SPAS shotgun, or by completing objectives and winning the game. But you got XP for doing, really, anything of consequence: each kill not only popped up the player's name and their means of death in the gamelog (as has always happened), but you'd also note a +100, this little jolt of endorphine, just for you. Good job, the game says, on killing that game, as if the act itself wasn't enough as a reward. This helped the game stand out, as otherwise, it would be a snappy, twitchy, but otherwise kinda unremarkable FPS.
The flow of COD, regardless of XP, is fast. You can load the game up, get into a Team Deathmatch game, and start shooting within a few minutes. No need for finding a server, or gathering your mates, nor waiting in a match for the shotgun to spawn in that one spot and maaaybe you'd beat the MLG pro dweebs to it, or maybe you wouldn't, and you'd get blasted; no, in MW1, you're in and firing and reloading and most importantly, getting that sweet XP. You have levels, and with each level, more guns are unlocked for your use. And your guns - as you use them and get more kills, more headshots, and more of the former & latter in various circumstances and combinations - had levels too, requiring you to use them for a bit before their feel-altering attachments revealed themselves to you.
The experience became laden with the number, the Number, which must always rise, must always accumulate. The capitalism of CS was rudimentary - payment for services, if you will, like a butcher paying a farmer, and a cook paying the butcher, and the diner paying the cook - but here, we have True Capitalism. Because it is always growing. It is eternal growth, these levels, this bevy of numbers thrown at you, not unlike staring at a real-time table of stock exchange values, bouncing around the grid. It is the same pleasure as in a Final Fantasy game, in which you unlock Firaga, and you see the number rise from the graphic mess you cast upon the enemy - you see the number, and it is higher than it was with Fira, and it is good to you, that is larger. It must be larger, and MW1 was eager to please this commandment.
I must confess, I didn't play much of MW1's MP modes. I pirated the game in college and only played the campaign. But in 2009, when MW2 came out, I was employed and single-ish, and I was living in a 3rd floor apartment on 33nd street, in BALTIMORE, of all places. The apartment had 1 AC unit, in a window, across the floor; in summer we baked and broiled, unable to cool down. In a match of Starcraft 2, which was also in that zeitgeist, my roommate and I were attempting to GET GOOD, watching videos etc, and were in the middle of a match, but his PC was so hot, it fried. Mine had a monitor, which would frequently read 3 digit numbers of terrifying value, and I ignored those numbers and my roommate's tragedy to play MW2.
I found the gameplay too twitchy at first, dying quickly and unable to find a Person to Shoot. But something about it still clutched my hand, and after a bit, I was able to find enemies in the field, little moving Persons in tan textures against a tableu of tan, a game of finding Waldo in a crowded field. I ranked up. I achieved.
And since then, I've played every yearly release, but for the two WW2 ones - I've had enough of WW2 for a lifetime. Each year, I'd buy the game, feeling mixed things about the problems of it, which shall be detailed below. But there simply is no game that combines the meta- and micro-game of leveling & shooting quite like COD. Indeed, it is a yearly fascist RPG release, one that has hit the top of the charts annually and with great consternation & fanfare. Moreover, it has left its metagame imprint on every FPS that dares touch the market, and other genres too. Everything's an RPG now, thanks in part to COD's metagame. 
Over the last ten years, I reached my own point of disgust with the series with 2018's Black Ops 4, which included a Battle Royale map, but was laden with the gnawing bloat of microtransactions and season passes, and this constant demand that you must give them more money, and now there is no limit on how much they want from you, they simply want more. I hated that feeling, in a world of games which were excellent and good. I declared I would never buy a COD again, even going as far as putting reminders in my calendar for the next year. I was certain.
Yet, here we are. I buckled and bought 2019's Modern Warfare & 2020's Black Ops: Cold War (that's Call of Duty: Black Ops: Cold War, in full) in February, on some idle, tipsy Thursday night, almost a full year into the pandemic. I did it because they were lauded, but also, because I am weak and without conviction. I am the meat to be ground through the grinder. And into it, I was ground.
For the last two months, I have been playing these games, as well as the added features of Warzone, Zombies, and Special Ops. I have played the entirety of the MW campaign, and I won't say anything more on it than, it is one of the most juvenile and brain-dead plots that express a nauseating worldview that should be stomped into the dirt fully but rendered in some of the most astounding graphics & spectacle. I have put my time in, and here as I write this, we are approaching the end of Season 2, and entering Season 3.
I have thoughts. They shall be expressed in the following post.
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