Rising Order of Operations, Part IIB: an explication of Call of Duty 2019 & 2020

Last time, I prepared you for what I thought, showing the history of the FPS' evolution as a genre which emulated the even plane of sport, and how 2007's Call of Duty added an RPG-like progression system that changed all of it. Now, let us speak on the two most recent games, and how they are both more and less than a clicker game for your phone. Is that too revealing? Oh well.

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It is helpful to think of Call of Duty not as a game, but as a platform. And then, forget thinking about it like a platform, because that's insane corporate blather, and instead - consider it like a casino. If you're just playing Warzone, the battle royale mode, it's free, but if you want the rest of the business, it'll cost you a cool $60. That's a standard price for a game, and it rarely goes on sale, but there's so much in there! Right?

With your $60, you're welcomed into the grinder. Every action in campaign, in MP, and in Zombies, in Warzone, all of it grants you XP, glorious Experience Points. You quickly hit level 5, then 10, things begin to unlock - new weapons, bombs, tools of Shooting in First Person. You rank up your weapons, you hit achievements, all these aspects of your Person are increasing in their quality and variety. More and more options unlock for you, so you can create a build that works for your particular style of movement, of Shooting. You can create Custom Classes, as it were. 

This is the primary innovation that MW1 brought to the genre in 2007, and it has become the core of the COD experience. All that XP unlocks more guns, and using those guns gets you gun XP, which unlocks more attachments for that gun, and using those attachments or performing certain tasks unlocks customizations for those attachments. For example - you get the AK74 very quickly. You use it, and it levels up, unlocking a red dot scope - all the easier to view your enemy Persons through than the default iron sights built into the gun. But - ugh - you don't like the dot. It's not easy to see. You want a crosshair. Well, you gotta use the dot for 50 or 100 kills, then you'll get a crosshair. And then, with more shots & kill & precise kills, you get different crosshair varieties, ranging from useful squares and crosses and circles to the goofy smiley face or mustache. 

So much of COD revolves around this unlocking, giving you more and more. In the past, weapons had a handful of unlocks, but now, a decade on, that's not enough to get a gamer juiced up, to keep them grinding away. No, there are 55 levels for each of the primary guns, which means 55 unlocks of various aspects. Ten different front grips, over a dozen scopes, various barrels and stocks and magazine styles. Each bumps certain stats up and down - of course they would - like reload speed, aiming speed, but other esoteric aspects too, like time from sprint to aiming, which is different than sprinting to firing. 

For some, this granularity has its appeal. The military-sim guys loved 2019's MW for the fantastic gunfeel, giving its the semblance of Shooting. Those guys get off on it. They adore it. So much so, that they kept the streak going in 2020's BLOPSCW. Whether that's because they saw its popularity, or because the games were being integrated into Warzone together - that's hard to say. But 55 levels of unlocks, creating thousands of possible builds, without even mentioning cosmetics like skins and stickers and lil' dangling attachments, like buying a keychain for your phone (but it's a gun, the gun has a keychain). 

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But what if - what if these unlocks aren't there for any design reason, other than to be there. A widget to obtain. For the simple pleasure of entering a field through a Person and Shooting other Persons is not enough, not in 2021, and it has not been in a decade. For some, maybe - Halo purists cling to the idea that they want a clean experience without progression. But they're not in a dorm room anymore, shoulder-slamming their buddies. They're adults, parents, busy, and the progression, the grind, suggests that you are doing something worthwhile. See, my M4A1 now has a silencer - isn't that cool? Haven't I done something, a thing of merit? 

I'm sure someone could do the math and find a median point for all the weapons, creating an arsenal of sameness in fire rate, in range, in reloading speed. I mean, with nearly a dozen ARs, how different can they be? In Counter-Strike, each weapon had a personality, was a distinct entity in a firefight, with its personal crackle and echo. Each assault rifle had a feel, and unique benefits, drawbacks. You couldn't get burst first on an AK47 nor a silencer, just as you couldn't make a Desert Eagle into an auto-pistol.

But in COD, everything's fungible, mutable, infinitely personalizable. A whole game of custom license plates & license plate holders & bumper stickers. Adornments on metal, ad infinitum.

This is being harsh, though. Some guns really do need a specific kind of scope, and having this variety allows you to find the thing that truly works for you, and then work it to your pleasure. I like the circle-with-an-X scope, the 1.37 magnification, nothing too deep, but something to let me focus & proper-Shoot. I like the jungle-mags - two mags taped together, for quick reloading - because it doesn't have any debuffs, though it isn't as fast or magazine-stacking as other styles. I like the damage barrel, and don't understand why you'd use anything else. I like blue-ish skins, I like the stupidest keychains, and I get by.

Of course, outside the weapons, you unlock perks - fifteen power ups that change how you play, of which you can select 3 by default - as well as wildcards, which allow you to take extra perks or carry two primary weapons or to put an attachment on very slot of your weapon, or just carry double the grenades. You unlock different player characters, these Persons you inhabit, and there's no difference with them other than the cosmetic, but you pick one you like, why not? Why not, indeed? In COD, there are treasures of power, and treasures for their own sake

And if the game was this, and this alone, that'd be pretty darn good. I'd like it quite a bit. I have liked it quite a bit, grinding the terrible shotgun in MW3 to its highest level, earning a gorgeous golden skin for it. It was a personal mission, one that allowed me to advertise: See, I got really good with a very bad weapon. It was a funny joke, for me. But now, that is not all the game is - there is more, and this more is where it gets gross.

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Consider: what if you're in love with the AK74. It's great! You feel like a real commie. But yeah, it uh. Takes a while to level up. You could do a few things, though.

1. Use one of those double XP tokens the game gives you. Or you can buy some! From the store! For real money! But don't get the XP token - get the Weapon XP token. And yes, when you use it, it activates only for a limited time - 15 min, 30 min, 45 min, an hour - and what's that? Yes, it countsdown in realtime. So the time between matches, that XP timer is still ticking down. Hope you don't have some bad matches, or your internet craps out!
2. You could wait for a free 2XP weekend. They do them frequently, but let's hope you're free when it happens. Otherwise, tough!
3. You could buy a BLUEPRINT, and get something super sweet instead.

Ah, blueprints. The thing that turned me off in 2018. These are pre-customized builds for weapons, which come with a custom skin. These can be cool! You can find an interesting build, along with a unique skin - sometimes created by community artists, who get a portion of the profits from the sale.

Yes, sale! You buy these with real money. Well, not real money - that'd be gross. You exchange your real money for COD Tokens. And you use those to buy blueprints, or player skins, or custom bullet trails - like what if it was lightning? Purple lightning? What if you had an anime girl on your bullet shield? What if you had wicked hair? You can't see it, but others can! 

The exchange rate is easy to follow - $10 is 1000 COD points. And let's say you buy a blueprint. Something cool and blue and glowing. For 1500 COD points. Wow. That's expensive! But it's fun, for you! And you equip the blueprint, and it is great - you've paid to unlock attachments you wouldn't see until two or three dozen weapon levels deep in the unlocking process! You're suddenly equipped with a better gun, one with a damage+ barrel and a more precise scope. 

It's pay-to-win, that boogeyman of the sensitive gamer. But amid all the attachments and customizing, that infinity of customization churning below the flurry of XP raining down around you -- does it really matter? Do you even look at the weapons other Persons use, or the player model? Not really. If anything, some argue, these dumb cosmetics make you more visible and thus, more vulnerable to Shooting. And sure, that might be true, but for several skins in Warzone, that hyper-real BR mode that's free to play, that are pure black & small, perfect to hide in the brush & shadows. It's been in there for months, and they're just now addressing it. 

So you can pay for progression, which sorta defeats the point of the game, which is progression. This isn't to say the gameplay or combat isn't good - it is! MW has a tactical, slower feel, and BLOPS:CW has a snappier, arcadey feel. Some prefer the former, some the latter, but really, it's best to prefer the latter, as MW hasn't received any major updates of late, and likely won't in the future. In fact, for the first two weeks that I owned the game, the XP system in MW was entirely busted - the devs were entirely silent on the issue. This is a major game, a mere year & change after release. Millions of copies sold. And it's broken for weeks, without notice or update, under the stewardship of a billion dollar company. 

Because these come out every year. Every year. This is a key thing to remember: Activision, the parent company, needs these games to come out every year. Like football games, warfare is required to evolve annual by the whims of that faceless legion - shareholders. 

So you have this bottomless progression for weapons, as well as your overall level progression. But you eventually can max out the weapons you care about, and your player level, unlocking all perks & scorestreaks & more. What then? 

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Then, there's more to unlock.

In previous CODs, when you hit max level on your player or a weapon, you could PRESTIGE. Which is to say, restart entirely. You'd lose all that you'd gained - for weapons, that's all attachments, and for your account, that's all the unlocks you'd gained, thus returning you to the default gear. In exchange, you'd get a lil' icon, saying that you prestiged once. Yes, "once" - you were expected to do this again & again. Many did! Historically, I would hit it once, and then be done. 

Now, COD don't do that. No one's quite that dedicated anymore, not to self-elimination, a wiping of all that you had done. Now, you keep leveling. Why? 

Because of your Battle Pass.

Yes, for a cool 1000 COD points - or was it 1500... - you get an extra meter to fill, another bucket to dump time and finger-presses into. 100 levels of it, in fact. Along the track of it, you get skins and dumb shit, like mix tapes for your vehicles, letting you pump the Beastie Boys as you drive the very bad Jeep. You can even unlock skins for characters, which unlock further missions you can do - like use this character to shoot down 10 spy planes - which...unlocks a variant of that skin. 

Do I sound insane? Is this insane? It feels insane. 

The only saving grace for the Battle Pass is that it hands you bits of COD points as you go, to the point that it pays for itself. If you want to spend a few dozen hours and max out that Pass, yes, it's essentially free. And there's the other trick - they get you to play the game to get your money's worth. It's not a significant amount of money, and if I didn't "get my money's worth" by ranking the Battle Pass to max, that's fine. I'm an adult man. But if I was a kid who saved to buy that Battle Pass? I'd be nervous and sweating. Because that savings isn't like cash back in your hand, no no - that's just your COD points, returned to you, so you can buy the next Pass. 

The Battle Pass lasts two months. There will be six of them, and then it's done. MW had 6, and BLOPS:CW seems to have six.

The seasonal stuff keeps new maps & weapons & skins & other stuff cranking out. There's even a story happening, which I guess is cool. But also, I don't care. The writing is the hottest trash you can smell. Why would I care where Adler is? He's just the Kurt Russell clone I use because I'm trying to unlock a mission of his...to wear another color of a skin. He's gonna be wearing a blue ski outfit. Some part of me wants that blue ski outfit, so he is who my Person is.

There are so many plates that spin as you Shoot in First Person. None of this is mentioning the banners or icons, which are also bound to completing certain tasks. Nor the new PRESTIGE system, which gives you banners or icons when you hit certain levels beyond that first PRESTIGE. 

And this has only been a discussion of the MP mode, competitive multiplayer. There's the co-op Zombies mode, which has a whole other universe of unlocks and cosmetics, including things as miniscule as different crosshairs of slightly eerie color. That has a long-running story, that dates back to the first Zombies mode in 2008, and the game keeps talking when I am trying to survive a zombie onslaught, a thing I didn't think I would want to do in a game again. Especially when my teammates are just pubbies - those randomly matched with by the game - and they are bad, and they fall down, and then we fail, and they never want to escape early & get some extra XP. Do they not know this is about XP? 

The XP in Zombies is shared across regular MP, as with your weapons, as is the same in campaign, I am told. I haven't played it. We're not talking about that today.

But does this feel like a creeping dread? Or a world to inhabit? For sixty bucks, plus another sixty or so, you can happily Shoot Persons, and zombies, for a year. After that, you can keep playing, but a new game will be out. That'll be another $120 bucks - wait, no, $130, because of the next generation pricing. And you know the quality will vary, and slowly decline over that year, and you know that all those things you bought to make yourself look good, all those attachments that made the AK74 feel like yours - all of this is ephemeral, all of this is casino cash.

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If you don't want to engage with this stuff, you will be told about it anyways. When you start the game, you get a daily message, which has regularly been an advertisement for a skin bundle. The shop sits at the far right of your main menu, always there, always a new notification icon blinking, but all the icons are always blinking. This UI is the phone of an inattentive person, who has several hundred thousand unread emails, a person borne to invoke anxiety in those who glance the notification bar.

When you make a custom class, when you try to select a weapon, the blueprints icon is there, always reminding you of the variants you could have. Wow, that one looks like it's on fire. Wow. You cannot escape the messaging. The game even gives you a free bundle sometimes, which you have to scan for in the shop, and then press SQUARE TO CLAIM, as if it's a tax credit. You will get blueprints just by playing in this way, and they will remind you, Hey - look at this skin. See how many attachments are unlocked by using this? Man, how convenient this is. 

It is constant, this bombardment of BUY BUY BUY would be egregious in a free-to-play game, which Warzone is, to be fair. But here, close to $75 bucks into it - it feels bad. No one likes to be sold to, yet we all sorta do. That's how advertising works. That's how this whole economy works. Things are made, and we're explained their purpose and appeal in various ways, then we buy the things, sometimes for the right reasons and often for the wrong. Here, they go out of their way to try to bleed you a bit more, to make it feel even more wrong. It's not a great feeling - it's a bad feeling.

And I don't like that bad feeling, that sense of, "Why am I doing this," particularly when the model within the game is one that is old but updated - the Shooting from the First Person - with a progression model layered on top of it that would put World of Warcraft to shame. 

(And isn't that actually the originator, the Patient Zero, of this trend? 17 years ago, Blizzard mastered the art of the number growing through repeated action, attaching it to story at times and sometimes to a sense of character growth, but often, for no one and nothing. A trinket, maybe. That's all.)

The grind, they call it, from zero to sixty. The grind, which rubs the corners of an experience down to left-trigger -> right-trigger, ad nauseum. Which is pleasing, but that pleasure, amid all this unwanted commerce, embedded into the hamster wheel that, if you are a fan of the medium, you've experienced before...it needles you. It pricks. 

And any right-thinking mind might ask, What am I even doing here? This is consumption and excretion, biology writ upon game mechanics. Kill and be killed, all to evolve - into what? A guy wearing a blue ski suit, carrying a gun with a night-vision scope? Is that it? 

All of this takes on a predatory aspect when you consider that, among the millions of copies bought, some where purchased by or for persons with propensities, with habits, with that gnaw - addiction. Games aren't drugs, and mechanics aren't narcotics, but this does feel a bit like gambling at times, and even I feel that tug, that gnaw. It is compelling, and not in a good way. At least with other grinding games - Diablo, Monster Hunter, etc. - there is some joy in it, and you're not being needled into buying more. It is what it is, and you know it, and get that. This is, something else. 

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When a game is so rotten in its exterior design, with such a golden core of shoot-shoot, it shouldn't make you feel like, "Jesus christ games were a mistake." It shouldn't make you feel kinda filthy for playing it. I don't think that's right, nor is it a meaningful and long-lasting strategy. If a game repeatedly highlights how temporary it is, how all progression is loss, how all things fade, this decay and entropy built into its design and metagame and marketing...then what are games at all? 

But can another game do this in a meaningful way, that's not exploitative, not filthy and miserly? Is such a thing possible? 

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Next time, I'll discuss a game that might involve an increasing of numbers, but in a good way: Warframe.