Call of Duty receives undue criticism among the gaming community.

Hello there, Con. I asked for the first round to be acceptance, but I suppose the debate will just go a bit longer. Ah well. The first thing that struck me about your argument is that it was not divided into concise, clear points. As a result, responding will be a bit difficult. Next time, could you please break it into, say, a paragraph per main point? I would be very thankful. Firstly, I will be stating my platform. The Call of Duty Franchise is a long-running series alternately developed by Treyarch and InfinityWard, and released by Activision. They are First-Person shooting games with a heavy emphasis on multiplayer being fast-paced and crazy, but keeping single player a factor as well. The first game in the series (simply titled Call of Duty, released in 2003) received a 9.3 score from IGN (1), and the latest one (Call of Duty: Ghosts, released a whopping 10 years later in 2013) got a still-respectable 8.8 (2). Any series that has run for that long in the ever-changing gaming environment, and maintained that level of quality, is one that we should at least take note of. I will use my remaining characters to respond to your many points. "Call of Duty has suffered from a lack of innovation in the past couple of years. If you look at the past few Call of Duty games they are all pretty much rehashes of the previous game, with shorter campaigns different maps and less guns." Fair enough, Call of Duty (hereafter referred to as CoD) is getting formulaic. But I have a question for you. When a system is working, why would you change it? Consider, for example, the Metal Gear series (thought by many to be one of the greatest game series of all time). Metal Gear Solid 1, 2, 3, 4, and (coming soon) 5 have all retained a stealth style. Has anyone gotten angry over the fact that all the games involve cardboard boxes and cover, CQC and a 3rd person perspective? "The campaigns for me are a massive problem because they are short and do not really bring anything to the table and as I have mentioned are ever shortening." This point is an interesting one to me. Many times when critics review the CoD games, they mention that the singleplayer campaign, while not the longest possible, is a fun and engaging one year in and year out (despite being a tad formulaic, but I already covered that.) I personally enjoyed CoD MW3's singleplayer mode immensely. But don't take my word for it, go and watch any of GameSpot or IGN's reviews on recent CoD games (BO2, MW3, Ghosts, MW2 especially), and you'll see that they tend to enjoy the singleplayer mode. "However I will not go into much further detail on the mater, unless requested, due to the lack of Call of Duty players who actually play on the campaign and purchase the game for this reason. Although I will say that even fans of Call of Duty seem to dislike the campaign which is a serious problem." But let's continue here: There are games (DoTa 2, TF2, World of Warcraft, Star Wars: The Old Republic) where there is absolutely no singleplayer whatsoever! Does this make them horrible games? I would argue no, no it does not. The singleplayer can be crap (or even non-existent) and the multiplayer brilliant (Left 4 Dead, Halo 4, etc) and the game will still be considered one of the greats. "If you look at Call of Duty as a franchise it started with Call of Duty 1. Call of Duty 1 is clearly a clone of counter strike in my opinion." I had to do a bit of research into that one. Call of Duty 1 was not actually considered a CS clone, or even replacement. It was taking a shot at Medal of Honor, which was a dominant game name at that point (and still has a pulse, somewhere). In fact, the codename for CoD was "Medal of Honor Killer" before it got its iconic title. (3) Comparing CoD to CS is fair, as both of them are FPS's, but I think the differences outweigh the similarities (no regenerating HP, heavy multiplayer-based gameplay before CoD even thought about trying to make that it's main selling point, etc). (4) If anything can be said about CoD, it is that it was a copy of Medal of Honor (which is very similar in style and tone). Both games had very high points (Medal of Honor: Vanguard is one of my all-time favorite PS2 games), and dueled for around eight years. The difference was in the multiplayer. Look, Microsoft took the idea of Windows from Apple (though legally, see (5)), but that doesn't disparage how amazing Windows XP was. The argument that it is a ripoff of anything only proves that Activision is full of capitalists (a debate for another time.) "Anyway, despite this Call of Duty 1 was a good game for its time and at that time in 2003 the gaming community were on board with it." Agreed. "At this time the gaming community was unlike it is now dominated by actual gamers, today it saddens me to see gaming dominated by teenagers and pre-teens looking for some fun rather than a dedicated intellectual and community fanbase it had previously...." To conserve characters, I cut out the rest of that quote. The claim that this generation of "gamers" are not "true gamers" is a sketchy one at best. It seems that your primary concern is that gamers are too fixated on one game... or is it that they are not passionate enough about their game? Those seem contradictory in terms. I consider myself a CoD fan, and have a blast playing it. But I also play Portal, Bioshock, Half-life 2, Gran Turismo, WWE2k14, Team Fortress 2, DoTa 2, and on and on. Not all are multiplayer, and not all are even shooters. Am I a "real gamer"? And consider the facts (6): The average age of a U.S. "gamer" is 30, and only 32% are below the age of 18. Console bestselling games are Action, Shooter, and Sport, while PC takes RPG, Strategy, and Casual. Perhaps by "console gamers", you mean "people who like action-y games". But is that really fair, to claim that "People who like action-y games" are less "gamers" than you? I don't think it is. Perhaps with age, CoD loses it's luster and more thoughtful, insightful, strategic games take effect. Perhaps that is truly the heart of this issue. But what do I know? I'm not a "true gamer", not if I enjoy action-y shooters. Not according to your argument as I understand it, Con. I apologize if I sound harsh, but I am simply attempting to get my point across in an effective manner without passing the character limit. I thank you once again for your time debating me. I eagerly await your response. (1) http://pc.ign.com... (2) http://uk.ign.com... (3) http://www.ign.com... (4) Note: Watch this video and you will see exactly what I mean. While both are "realistic" first-person shooters, there are plenty of gameplay differences. www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y3B3FLaqchsR06; (5) http://www.howstuffworks.com... (6) http://www.theesa.com...