The new Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3 already plays absolutely fantastic in the beta. But it’s also a conglomerate of pretty nasty tricks.
Lastly, I’m sitting on the commuter train watching a highly focused older gentleman stick his index finger up his nose as far as it will go to catch a stubborn booger that seems to be stuck somewhere close to the frontal lobe.
He drills and jiggles, leverages and hooks like a little miner – and while he then proudly rolls up the recovered treasure carefully into a projectile, I inevitably ask myself: How could it actually take so many millennia for someone to come up with the idea that we are related to the animal world? I mean, there are dozens of YouTube videos in which monkeys are more skilled at picking than the gentleman in my compartment. We humans are such delightfully simple creatures sometimes.
But we are also complex. We build computers, we train artificial intelligences, we study law, we understand movies by David Lynch, we face complex moral dilemmas – and we even know the correct plural of dilemma!
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 presents me with such a dilemma, because even in beta this thing is awesome! I’ve never had so much fun with a shooter beta. Modern Warfare 3 solves almost every problem of its predecessor, it plays fantastic, offers great map design and captivates me even before release in a way that the bugged Modern Warfare 2 only managed to do after tens of months.
But Modern Warfare 3 is also insidious Pretty much all the sleazy practices that major publishers have been secretly working towards in recent years are cavorting in this game. Call of Duty deceives and tricks, it conceals, inflates and manipulates its target audience into dishonestly spending a lot of money
Call of Duty shouldn’t be able to get away with this. But people are complicated – and that goes for me, too. Sometimes.
Table of Contents
The microtransaction patent
Many major publishers have learned from their past mistakes. When a few years ago EA and Co. simply clumsily slapped gambling lootboxes into their own games, the outcry of the community was great: You can’t pull our money out of our pockets so openly!
And publishers like Activision said to themselves: That’s absolutely right, we’d rather do that secretly in the future.
This is how the current era began: Big service games are much fairer on the outside, lootboxes have largely disappeared, microtransactions are almost exclusively related to cosmetic upgrades, every season brings free new content. And actually, I think that’s great! If it weren’t for the rather invisible practices.
For example, Activision registered (a matchmaking patent years ago), in which the following passage is found:
“[…] The system could, for example, include a microtransaction engine that influences matches to result in purchases. For example, the engine would match an experienced player with an inexperienced player to motivate the novice to buy weapons and other in-game items that the pro uses. […]
The microtransaction engine could likewise analyze which items pros use – and if those items are discounted in the store, deliberately match those pros with people who haven’t yet purchased the items. […] Alternatively, the engine could match a newbie with a pro based on the player’s profile. As an example, a player wants to become a good sniper, so we match him with a very good sniper to encourage the newbie to spend money on the experienced one’s equipment. “
Very important: Just because a patent exists doesn’t mean it’s automatically used Especially tech companies patent all the time in wise or unwise foresight some boom to keep the option open to build on these ideas later on. Even Activision has repeatedly denied over the years that the matchmaking patent will be used in its entirety or at all (although they continue to update it):
There’s been a lot of theories again about certain Activision patents from years ago on matchmaking systems in their games. At that time, Activision said those patents are not in use and that it was R&D. A lot of the things with the game seems tied to lag/servers.
– CharlieIntel (@charlieINTEL) December 12, 2022
But: such ideas, of course, are deeply revealing and illustrate a corporate mindset that may very well have a negative impact on Call of Duty.
How Modern Warfare 3 tricks
Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 tightens up its micro and macro transactions season after season. At the release in late 2022 there were only a few cosmetic skin bundles, with time the usual Battle Passes were added, but then the first milestone: the new Blackcell Battle Pass can only be bought for real money (no CoD-Coins), costs 30 euros and gives you additional skins, which are not available in the normal Battle Pass.
So the dichotomy between regular CoD players and Battle Pass owners became a three-way split overnight – and the math works out. Every new Blackcell Battle Pass ends up in the Steam top sellers because many players naturally want the best new content. The idea is spreading: Battlefield 2042 adopted the system for the first time in its current season, where the Black Cell Battle Pass fortunately only costs around 15 euros.
No wonder Modern Warfare 3 is continuing this trend. If the new CoD also offers six seasons like its predecessor, then a fan who wants to own all Battle Passes including the base game will spend a whopping 250 euros on Call of Duty by the end of 2025.
Pay2Win is popping up everywhere it’s tolerated
And of course the justified objection is always Mustn’t buy it. True. But it shortens the debate, because Activision’s sales tactics nevertheless become more subtle and more aggressive at the same time with each season – such a delicate cocktail needs to be problematized, after all these manipulations affect millions of people, many of them minors. And a single skin bundle with an operator like Lara Croft, Skeletor or Snoop Dogg now costs almost 25 euros, which is a lot of money.
Skin bundles now include game-relevant perks for the extraction Tarkov mode DMZ. It’s just that most people don’t care enough about it to fear a shitstorm from the developers. As with EA’s Ultimate Team, there’s been no real rethinking on the part of publishers here – Pay2Win pops up wherever it’s tolerated. Where there is no plaintiff, there is no judge.
Every season some gimmick has been introduced to lure people into the game. Activision seems to learn from tech giants like Meta or Apple: engagement is more important than gameplay, when every interaction with the game increases the chance I’ll buy something. Shortening seasons so I have to grind more, introducing limited events and daily login bonuses so I just feel constant pressure to start CoD.
With the current Season 6 of Modern Warfare 2, things are getting even more aggressive There is currently a Halloween event going on, during which I can collect Souls
from dead enemies each round to buy stuff in an event store. Skins, emblems and stuff. This is going quite slowly, except I’m already buying the expensive Vault Edition of Modern Warfare 3. Not the regular MW3, no, the more expensive Premium variant. Then I get a weapon blueprint that makes enemies drop more souls.
How much does this Vault Edition cost?
100 Euro.
The Modern Warfare 3 cheat pack
While Modern Warfare is a pretty aggressive product – and a bit of a cheat pack Various clues indicate that the game was originally planned as DLC. The multiplayer almost exclusively recycles old maps and most of the weapons from Modern Warfare 2, but instead of offering the thing for smaller money like Ubisoft did with Assassin’s Creed Mirage, even as an owner of the predecessor I pay a minimum of 70 euros
And of course Activision is baiting me again with pre-order access – a tactic that my colleague Peter critically dismantled just a few days ago.
Activision doesn’t communicate this recycling for what it is, of course. Simple recycling turns into a grandly touted return to the roots
There’s even the appropriate Eminem music playing, like back in the trailer for the old Modern Warfare 2, to massage the nostalgia buttons:
And here’s the dilemma of it all: cheat pack or not, Modern Warfare 3 is pretty darn good too – at least in beta. The recycled maps are old, but of course they’re timeless classics for a reason. The 50+ weapons from Modern Warfare 2 in addition to the few new shooting beasts in the sequel make for a sensational ensemble of guns.
All changes to the time to kill, movement and co. could have been made via patch – MW3 is technically identical to its predecessor, after all. But that doesn’t change the fact that these changes dramatically improve the game.
So what to do?
So what should we do as a target audience? Boycott Call of Duty to stop supporting manipulative microtransaction practices? Then I, as a shooter fan, miss out on a potentially fantastic game; I already had well over 200 hours of fun playing MW2, despite all the criticism. And in the end, it’s not about nuclear weapons or saving the world, it’s about video games.
On the other hand, I’m under no illusion: Activision’s profit motive, like most companies, knows no cap. As long as Blackcell passes sell, as long as tens of people put 25 Euros on the table for Lara Croft, I count on ever new tricks to stir up in me the fear of missing out on something if I don’t spend money all the time, play Call of Duty all the time.
So what to do? Can I love a game and demonize it for its trappings at the same time? And if so, what do I do with that doublethink? Can we prevent Activision from going over the top again at some point in advance – or do we ultimately have to accept that sometimes we’re just simple creatures that can be tricked? What do you think?
