COD DOA (Premium)

When I first started down the path towards my writing career, my mentor Gary Brent told me about his strategy for being productive: He would reward himself for completing some milestone—a project for a class he was teaching, perhaps, or a chapter or section of a book—by playing videogames. It was a simple system: Get some writing done, play videogames for a little while.

This first came up while we were working on an update to a Microsoft Excel book that he had written for the education market. Strictly speaking, the first book we worked on together was about Visual Basic 3, and that was my entry into writing as a potential career. But he had previously written the Excel book alone and the publisher needed an update for whatever the then-most-recent version was. And so we worked on that together as well, with me in a decidedly minor role.

That book didn’t resonate very much with me, but I was happy to work with Gary, and I have a very specific memory of the discussion we had about his work/reward system: He would play through individual levels of the Id Software game Wolfenstein 3D each time he completed a chapter. In those pre-Internet days, that meant that finding all of the secrets—each level had some number of secret areas full of additional health and treasure, and in some cases access to secret levels—was a lot more difficult than it would be today.

As a lifelong gamer, this appealed to me. Plus, videogames evolved very quickly in the early 1990s as sideway-scrollers like Jill of the Jungle and the early Duke Nukem titles gave way to the 3D games pioneered by John Carmack and Id. By the time Gary told me about his system, Wolf 3D had been replaced by DOOM, and even more impressive games like Duke Nukem 3D (from 3D Realms) and Quake were just a year away.

This sounds obvious, but given my recent experiences with the latest Call of Duty game, I feel like I need to spell it out: The reason Gary’s system made sense is that it rewarded work with fun. Games could be—can still be—challenging, of course, but they’re inherently fun.

Of course, there’s a fine line between challenging and fun.

This reminds me of the theory my wife and I have about international travel, in that there are different degrees of difficulty in traveling outside the United States. For example, Canada is the easiest because it’s very, very similar, and most people speak the same language. The easiest places to travel in Europe are the UK and Ireland, because of the shared languages. The most difficult places to travel, overall, are probably in Asia, where the languages and customs can be so different from what we’re used to. And so on.

The sweet spot, for us, is western Europe, countries like France, Spain, Italy, and the like, where there is a degree of difficulty, mostly from a language perspective, that is, for us, surmountable. That’s what makes it fun to visit these places: They’re the right combination of being different from home but also just challenging enough.

Video games are similar. And there have been games over the years that are so difficult that they’re almost not fun. Shadow of the Beast, a classic Amiga title, was a great example of this. More recently, Cuphead falls into this category: It’s such an engaging and delightful experience, except that it’s also maddeningly difficult and will unfortunately turn off the very non-gamers who would otherwise be attracted to it. That’s a missed opportunity.

I’ve written about my experiences with various videogames over time elsewhere, but the short version is that I moved on from the Id-type 3D shooters to Halo briefly, and then to Call of Duty. And starting with Call of Duty II, which was a launch title for the Xbox 360 in 2005, I’ve never looked back: I’ve been pretty much only playing Call of Duty ever since.

What that means, however, has changed over time. With the early COD titles, I would finish the single-player campaign first and then move to multiplayer, where I would typically play only a single game mode called Team Deathmatch. In this game mode, you’re on a team of about 6 people and you play another team on a single map until the time expires (say, 8 to 12 minutes) or some score is reached.

When Activision released Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare in 2007, the multiplayer component—which is correctly seen as an entirely different game—began evolving rapidly. For the first time, there were killstreak rewards, where you could get a UAV, which revealed enemy positions, or airstrikes and attack helicopters when you racked up specific numbers of kills without first being killed yourself. More dramatically, it was for the first time possible to level up via experience, and in doing so unlock new weapons and weapon capabilities. There were also perks, another new feature, which became unlocked over time. And so on.

COD 4 multiplayer was … hard. And by waiting months to begin playing it because I wanted to complete the single-player campaign first, I had handicapped myself terribly because so many of the other gamers—including my son, who stepped me through the confusion—had been leveling up, learning each map, and evolving along with the game. I was stuck behind, and it took me months to catch up.

I did catch up. But the lesson I learned was to play single-player and multiplayer side-by-side. And that multiplayer had become far more important to me than single-player, though I did thoroughly enjoy the Modern Warfare and, later, Black Ops 1-3 single-player campaigns very much. Over time, multiplayer became COD to me, and in some cases, I literally ignored single-player.

During this time, each COD title also ratcheted up the difficulty in multiplayer with an ever-expanding set of weapons, weapon capabilities, kill (and then later score) streaks, perks, and more, all leading to exponentially more complicated and vaster load-out possibilities, not to mention prestige modes as one leveled up. I maxed out on prestige each time it was possible, reaching what’s called Prestige Master, at which point you could zero out and go back to the beginning. Which I also did many, many times.

Unfortunately, whether you’re talking about Star Wars movies, the New England Patriots, or, yes, COD titles, the good times come to a crashing end. And in COD’s case, there were signs of problems over the years. The World War II titles that started the series gave way to Modern Warfare and then Black Ops series that, again, were routinely excellent, at least through the first three games in each. But Activision started losing the script, with new attempts at new series each falling flat.

Call of Duty: Ghosts, from 2013, was the first such failure: The multiplayer was excellent, indeed I still consider it one of the best ever, but the single-player campaign never amounted to anything, and Activision pulled the plug on future titles. Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare, from the following year, was even worse: The single-player and multiplayer games were both terrible, and this was the first time I simply continued playing an older title instead. Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare (2015) was even worse still, with the same results: There was no series, and I kept playing an older title.

In recent years, there have been some high points. Call of Duty: WWII, from 2017, marked the first time I played a COD single-player campaign through to the end in years and the throwback multiplayer was excellent. Call of Duty: Black Ops 4, from 2018, was even better and represents a multiplayer apex of sorts for the entire franchise. And it is notable, I think, that there wasn’t even a single-player campaign.

But the past two years have been the most problematic in the history of COD, at least for me. With multiple failed series-to-be behind it, Activision went back to the well again in 2018 with a reimagined Modern Warfare title, imaginatively named Call of Duty: Modern Warfare (not be confused with COD 4: Modern Warfare). And this was where they really started to lose me.

Unlike its predecessor, Black Ops 4, COD: Modern Warfare presented a bland color palette with a sea of dull browns and grays replacing the HDR explosions of color. Worse, the multiplayer was horribly difficult, even for me, despite my many years of experience and, dare I say, a certain level of expertise at this sort of thing. Modern Warfare was so hard that it wasn’t fun. It was so unfun that I did what I’ve done in the past: I just played older COD titles instead.

This year, Activision released Black Ops 5, or as they convolutedly call it, Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War, another “back to the well” release that I nonetheless welcomed because BO4 was so good. But no. Cold War suffers from exactly the same problem as did Modern Warfare. It’s so hard that it isn’t fun.

Faced with an unprecedented problem—for the first time ever, two COD titles in a row just weren’t fun to me—I decided to stick it out. And despite the horribleness of this title—from a multiplayer perspective, that is—I forged ahead. It started horribly: As with Modern Warfare, I started off with a negative K/D (kill-to-death) ratio, meaning that my in-game character was killed by enemies more often than I killed others. To be clear, this is untenable: The only metric I care about in COD is K/D, and the higher the better.

In Black Ops 4, for example, my overall K/D is currently 1.6. That means that I’ve killed 1.6 enemies for each time I’ve been killed. Literally, it’s 160,381 kills vs. 101,042 deaths over two years. My highest kill streak is 24 kills in a row, and I average 17.55 kills per game. That’s what “fun” looks like statistically.

I don’t have Modern Warfare installed right now, probably thankfully. But in about a month and a half of Cold War, I’ve racked up a K/D of 1.07, or 1.07 kills for each death. This game doesn’t provide the same stats, exactly, but I’ve eliminated 4205 enemies, so I must have been killed about 3930 times. My highest killstreak is just 13 kills in a row, and I’ve averaged about 14 kills per game. So that’s what “unfun” looks like statistically.

There’s a lot more that goes into this. For example, in addition to only playing Team Deathmatch, I also only play the most difficult variant of this multiplayer game mode, called Hardcore Team Deathmatch. And in games like Modern Warfare and Cold War, this means I’ve spent entire games where most of my experience is me running around a corner, hearing a bang, and being dead from some enemy I never saw. Over and over again.

Brad and my son have both told me that the problem with these two games is that they each use something called skills-based matchmaking (SBMM). And if you look up this topic, you’ll find that I’m not the only experienced COD player who is complaining about it. The problem, simply put, is that if you’re good at these games, as I am, you will only ever play against players who are just as good. And that means you have to be in top form every single minute of every game. You never get a break with even a couple of goony, inexperienced players.

And that, folks, is literally the definition of unfun.

Please don’t get me wrong: I don’t want to coast through games and just annihilate everyone. That wouldn’t be fun either. But in previous COD games, there was a mix of elite, normal, and inferior players in every game. It was, if you’ll pardon the ridiculous nature of this claim, more like real life. But whatever. The bigger point is that it was … wait for it … fun.

I didn’t want to spend a third year in a row playing the same old game yet again. And so I’ve tried to slog it out. And this is how it goes: Every once in a while, I’ll have a breakout game in Cold War, where I have the highest score in the game, on either team, and I’m featured in the “Best Play” video at the end of the match. I’ll get a K/D like 2.12, with 36 kills (now called eliminations) and 17 deaths, and I think, OK, I’m over the hump. And then the very next game I start out 0 and 10 and just quit out of frustration. And then I head back to Black Ops 4, my tail between my legs.

And that is not fun.

So I’ve come to the realization that Cold War, like Modern Warfare before it, will never be fun and that trying to play this game is in direct opposition to the system Gary used. Thus, I need to move on. So yeah, I guess I’ll hang out in Black Ops 4 a bit like the little sissy that I am, and I look forward to Activision releasing the remastered version of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 multiplayer that never happened last year for some reason, or a coming remastered version of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3. Maybe I’ll swap in COD:WWII a bit too.

But I feel like Activision is never really going to fix this issue, and that COD 2021, whatever it’s called, will just have the same problems. And that I need to branch out. The good news is that I’m already starting to do this in small steps via my Living with Game Streaming series, which lets me try not just new gaming services, but also new games. This is overdue, I know. Believe me, I know.

And heck, maybe I should just thank Activision for curing me of my Call of Duty addiction. They’ve made the games so terrible that I don’t even want to play them anymore.

So thanks, Activision. And seriously. Go F yourself.