I am not here to report the news, as I am aware that all of you know the situation. In case you live under a rock and don’t know what I’m talking about, I will quickly summarize what has happened. This past Tuesday, the next Call of Duty title was announced, Infinite Warfare. With it came a trailer that portrayed the timeline, the future (again), and the setting, Space. Yeah, space. If this isn’t enough to make you mad, then you just wait. Along with the new title, Infinity Ward will also be releasing the long awaited remastered version of Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare. Great news, right? WRONG. In order to play Modern Warfare, you must first buy Infinite Warfare, and then the $20 expansion that will contain the game. Despicable.

Now just to clarify, Call of Duty used to be my favorite franchise. Every year come springtime I would wait for leaks like a madman and try to guess the next title; Nothing beat the hype. This feeling has slowly faded while Call of Duty has become Halo. Since Modern Warfare 3, every single call of duty title has taken place in the future. This has disappointed many people, which was clearly represented by the amount of dislikes that the Infinite Warfare trailer has received on YouTube. With that being said, the Battlefield 1 trailer was recently released and let me just say, WOW. Dice swoops down to save the day, going back to World War I.

Activision’s CEO of Publishing Eric Hirshberg commented on the dislikes by saying,

“… of course we know that there are people in our community who are nostalgic for the boots-on-the-ground style gameplay, and that’s why we made Modern Warfare Remastered. But we also have millions of people in our community who want to have new, innovative experiences in the game each year, and Infinite Warfare delivers that. And the good news is, this year we found a way to deliver both in one package while keeping the community together.”

I’m going to try to remain calm while making my counter arguments. First, the fact he used “new, innovative experiences each year” as the reason for pushing even further into the future does not make any sense to me. Dice is currently making a game from World War I that looks completely fresh and full of these “new, innovative experiences.” I understand that fighting in space seems like a new experience, but Call of Duty is losing it’s identity. Developers who find sustained success are those who communicate with and listen to what gamers want. Secondly, how is charging $80 for the remastered version of Modern Warfare “keeping the community together?” It’s not like both games share servers, the game is completely separate. What you are doing, Mr. Hirshberg, is force feeding space combat down the throats of gamers who have clearly had enough of the future. What he really meant to say was, “Cod 4 is so much better than Infinite Warfare and will probably outsell it, so we’re just going to make you buy both.”

With all of this said, I would personally like to thank Dice and EA for listening to gamers and really taking a huge leap. Making a World War I game is extremely fresh, and I’m super excited to see how it plays. Maybe one day Activision will start to listen…