Published by Activision, the Call of Duty franchise have been and are still considered the most popular and successful first-person shooter (FPS) in the video game market today. One of its biggest appeals to gamers is the war time setting, which is a common theme that all of its yearly released iterations share. The question is, how exactly does Activision portray war in Call of Duty in order to appeal to its audience?
The Call of Duty franchise definitely has its realistic moments…
In order to answer this question, first we have to look at who the audience is. Most of the gamers that play the Call of Duty games are typical young adults that are likely to have a romanticized view of war due to the way war is portrayed in other media (ig books, movies) that surrounds them in their everyday lives. When they buy Call of Duty they want an experience that is realistic (gunshots sound real, places are modeled after actual places) but not too realistic (one bullet and you’re dead, no regenerative health) because that will just be frustrating and boring.
…but it also has its unrealistic moments.
Call of Duty seems to fall right in between both of these categories. On one hand it retains its realism of war by offering accurate depictions of weapon models and military equipment. On the other hand, Call of Duty sacrifices some of that realism to keep the player engaged and entertained. For example, in Call of Duty a player is able to absorb numerous bullets and still be perfectly fine as long as they step behind a wall in order to regenerate their health, but if they get stabbed or simply get grazed by a knife or tomahawk, the player instantly dies. That’s something that’s simply makes no sense in the real world.
Call of Duty’s unrealism has become a subject of memes.
Another feature that diminishes the realism of war in Call of Duty as well as in other FPS games is the ability to respawn. A player who dies simply just respawns again and again until they reach their objective. A player could just confidentially stroll into a room full of enemies with guns blazing because he knows that the worst thing that can happen is that he just does that section again. This process is then repeated until they finally manage to complete the game. Do that in the an actual war and you would just be carried out with hundreds of bullet holes adorning your corpse and in the real world there are no second chances at life.
Ultimately, Call of Duty is a video game that tries its best to faithfully recreate an accurate portrayal of war. However, Activision has sacrifices some of the realism for the sake of its player base and the franchise’s financial success. At the end of the day Call of Duty is just another video game that tries but falls short of actually being realistic in its depiction of war. Maybe someday war will be depicted somewhat realistically in a video game but at this point in time there is still a big gap between the reality of war in video games and actual reality and Call of Duty helps us see that.
A UCI Student and his Blog 