The President of Tripwire Interactive John Gibson has ruthlessly claimed that Call of Duty has ruined a whole generation of gamers, in an interview with PC Gamer he gave his opinions on the state of the FPS genre and singled out the Call of Duty franchise.
Here are the highlights of the interview about the state of first person shooters:
“I think that single-player shooters are getting better, I think they’re finally coming out from under the shadow of the Hollywood movie, overblown “I’m on a rail” linear shooter. I’m talking about Call of Duty-style shooters.
“On the flip side, I’m really discouraged by the current state of multiplayer shooters. I think that, and I hate to mention names, because it sounds like ‘I’m just jealous of their success,’ but I’m really, I feel like Call of Duty has almost ruined a generation of FPS players.
“I know that’s a bold statement, but I won’t just throw stones without backing it up. When I was developing Action Mode [for RO2], I got a group of people that I know that are pretty hardcore Call of Duty players. And my goal was to create something that was accessible enough for them to enjoy the game—not turn it into Call of Duty, but try to make something that I thought was casual enough but with the Red Orchestra gameplay style that they would enjoy.
“And we iterated on it a lot. And just listening to all the niggling, pedantic things that they would complain about, that made them not want to play the game, I just thought, “I give up. Call of Duty has ruined this whole generation of gamers.”
It seems that John Gibson is angry that Call of Duty has become so popular that gamers expect all shooting games to be as similar to Call of Duty as possible and that anything different is not as good. Fair play to Gibson for creating something different in Red Orchestra 2 but to single out a franchise as the demise of all gamers seems a bit strong.
I know it is popular to attack the CoD franchise and for good reason in some cases but the prime reason why the Call of Duty games are so popular is because they are dumb fun, something that you are not going to get from a realistic shooter, so I’m not entirely sure why he is complaining. Maybe he should make a casual, accessible shooter and then we can see how well it would do compared to Call of Duty.
What do you think of Gibson’s comments? Do you agree with his claims? Let me know in the comments below.
