When a friend of mine linked me to this story, my immediate instinct was that this was something akin to the the meltdown between Phil Fish and Marcus Beer. That is, I figured that someone from a commentary standpoint, such as a reviewer or critic or someone on a web show, had made a broad criticism against the CoD fanbase and was receiving backlash. However, it turns out that it’s Infinity Ward’s own Mark Rubin, the executive producer of Call of Duty: Ghosts. As he recently said to OXM:
“It’s kind of a weird, ironic thing to say. They aren’t hardcore gamers, or even gamers, but they play Call of Duty every night. And those guys are going to continue to play regardless of platform. So I think not only will we continue to engage with that existing player base, but we’ll take next gen and see how far we can go with it.”
I get what he’s trying to say. He means that a lot of the people that play Call of Duty don’t play anything other than that, and they’re going to want to keep doing so enough to get a next gen console to continue. However, Mr. Rubin may have seriously shot himself in the foot here, depending on how the CoD audience takes this statement. Some players take their status as ‘hardcore’ or not very seriously as it is, but to go so far as to say members of his audience aren’t gamers at all is pretty outlandish by even the most modest of scales. Generally speaking, if you play games, you’re a gamer. If he’s pissed off enough CoD players with this quote, it could possibly hurt the game’s reception.
I guess we’ll all find out November 5th.
