Front Burner - A game of war: Call of Duty turns 20

Episode Date: November 3, 2023

Iconic first-person shooting game, Call of Duty, is one of the best-selling video game franchises of all time. As it turns 20, the Washington Post’s Gene Park joins us to talk about its enduring cultural and societal impact. For transcripts of Front Burner, please visit: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/frontburner/transcripts Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday.

In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization, empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. This is a CBC Podcast. Hi, I'm Damon Fairless. If there was a Mount Rushmore of top-selling video games, tourists would flock there to see four faces. Well, three faces, really, and one shape. Mario.

It's me, Mario! Pikachu from Pokemon. Pikachu! Pika pika! Tetris. That'd be the shape. And Captain John McTavish, a.k.a. Soap. Soap is arguably one of the most iconic video game characters of all time. From one of the most iconic video games of all time, Call of Duty, or COD. COD's marking 20 years since its first release.

We get dirty, and the world stays clean. That's the mission. Now, if you don't play Call of Duty, it's a first-person shooter that often mirrors real-world battles, sometimes in places like Syria and Afghanistan. To say the game's big is an understatement. It's sold over 425 million units over the years, bringing in over $31 billion. And the company that makes it, Activision Blizzard,

was just sold to Microsoft for $69 billion. And beyond the money, it's had a huge impact on gaming, on culture, politics, and more. So that's what we're going to talk about today with Gene Park. Gene writes about gaming for the Washington Post. Hey Gene, thanks so much for coming on FrontBurner. No, no problem. Thanks so much for inviting me. I'm very excited to be on this program. All right.

So, Gene, tell me about the origins of Call of Duty. Where did this game come from 20 years ago? Yeah. So, Electronic Arts had a series called Medal of Honor. And Medal of Honor was started on the PC to kind of really evoke Steven Spielberg's Saving Private Ryan and Band of Brothers and really turn that experience into a digital experience. France, a travel guide for lovers. Visit the inspiring Eiffel Tower, sacred Notre Dame Cathedral.

But so many developers really were upset by, you know, the creative control that they had under EA. So they decided to jump ship and they went over to Activision Blizzard to start a new studio called Infinity Ward. And as part of their new jobs, they wanted to make basically a Medal of Honor competitor. they wanted to make basically a Medal of Honor competitor. Now, already by 2003, there were already so many shooters that were kind of mimicking and trying to evoke that World War II feeling. So Call of Duty was already kind of facing an uphill battle, especially given that they were going against their own old IP. So that was kind of where Call of Duty really started.

It was really to kind of compete against their own creation, basically. Not a great gamer, I hate to admit it, but I do remember playing Medal of Honor. And I think it's probably worth pointing out for folks who maybe aren't gamers, just that first-person shooter is that idea that you're going through this, you know, really quite complex world. You've got a gun or some sort of weapon in your hand. You're seeing the world through the point of view of the character you're playing and you're basically you know dealing out uh damage to bad guys right absolutely yeah so medal of honor uh had a famous level where you basically recreate the invasion

of normandy stay with me and we'll get through this you gotta take that beach and uh you would see that experience in first person. You would leave the boats and you would hit the beach and you'd be behind these little barricades and in the trenches as bullets and explosions are whizzing by you. So it really, really feels very immersive. And I remember playing that back in the day and I was like, wow, this is just like Saving Private Ryan.

And so one of the things, though, as you said, there's kind of this departure point from that era of games. We went from those like Saving Private Ryan, World War II, I guess, reenactments or, you know, remountings of certain missions in that era to things like with Call of Duty, the conflicts that really parallel modern wars in places like Syria, Afghanistan, even like, you know, sci-fi battles in the later editions, right? Absolutely.

So yeah, as I mentioned already, even by 2003, the World War II shooting market was already pretty crowded. So by Call of Duty 3, so that was Call of Duty 1 that took place in World War II, and that would showcase like different perspectives. You'd be a U.S. Allied Forces soldier, and then you'd be a British Allied soldier. And then that kind of went on through Call of Duty 3 and that was already getting kind of old.

So Infinity Ward knew that they had to pivot and really, really make a splash. And that's when Call of Duty 4 Modern Warfare came along. And from then on, the game industry just changed forever. And how big are the crews working on these games? Massive. Call of Duty 1 started with a 27-person team. As of 2022, Call of Duty is now being worked on by several studios in Activision Blizzard and with at least 3,000 people working on the game.

Wow. And do you have a sense of like just even a rough figure? What are we talking in terms of sales or copies sold? They would sell about maybe 20, 30 million a year. And that usually would mean that that would be the best selling game of the year. In fact, Call of Duty is a Call of Duty game has been the best selling game of every year, except for maybe two or three years since Call of Duty Modern Warfare, actually in 2009. maybe two or three years since Call of Duty Modern Warfare, actually, in 2009. The highly anticipated Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 video game hit stores at midnight. Activision Blizzard's CEO says sales of the company's game could surpass the top Hollywood films of 2009. This is a big industry. There's a lot of games. There's a lot of competitors for this. What made this game stand out?

a lot of competitors for this. What made this game stand out? Yeah, it really, Call of Duty 4 Modern Warfare really, really stood out in terms of how tightly controlled it controlled. There was really no game, even Halo,

which was such a blockbuster franchise back in the day, that really didn't control and feel quite as good as Call of Duty Modern Warfare. Even when I played it, I was like, I've never played a game this smooth this tight before it just felt good to play it just felt good to run around it felt

great to shoot um and then they they revolutionized how multiplayer games are created uh where they would add like little prestige marks uh that would really uh inspire repetitive play. So you just want to keep playing over and over again to get bragging rights and get more equipment and get more aesthetics and everything. And that became the business model for online games moving forward, even to today. The influences continue to felt today.

It's just a very, very addictive formula that they really landed on and really came out perfect. So there's a few things that you said so there's the game control so like it feels like you're immersed in the world just the the mechanics or the physics or whatever of the absolutely operate in the world and then there's what would you call prestige what do you call it oh prestiging so if you if you like level up in the game and you hit the max level you can prestige and you get like a little a medal i guess a medal of honor haha and uh it would showcase on your name and it would show the other players look look at how much i played the game and look

at how good i am at the game you know oh okay so there's like a uh a social yeah there's a social aspect to it and that that was really the key and you know that's how games like fortnite were able to kind of continue that and really really enhance like build upon that social aspect of it which is why which is why multiplayer is so important because you know multiplayer video games now are considered you know the poker nights or the bowling nights of the modern day where you just get together and just hang out with friends but then also there might be a social aspect where you want to go online and you're able to have bragging rights to your own experience.

I was wondering about maybe getting into some of the details of gameplay a bit and some of the missions because you know, they really are a standout and they've had a big social impact sometimes. So maybe before we go into some of the specifics of the missions, I think we've laid out pretty well what a first person shooter looks like, but could you just kind of broadly speaking, kind of give me a sense of the way Call of Duty presents battles? Like, you know, when you shoot someone, do people appear to suffer as they die or they're civilian casualties? Just kind of generally, when you shoot someone, do people appear to suffer as they die or they're civilian casualties? What just kind of generally what's the gameplay like in that respect?

Sure thing. Uh, these are usually very large pitch battles. Um, the soldiers just kind of go down dying. There's no really extended like death animation. You just kind of like, Ooh, and then they fall back and die. There are absolutely civilian casualties as well, and we can talk more about specific scenarios. But in that case, they kind of go down as well.

But it's really, really large pitch battles, and you're not really focused on one thing or another. If there is a significant death, for example, in Call of Duty Black Ops, there's, uh, there, there's a character that looks like Fidel Castro and Fidel Castro would kind of die closer to the camera.

Um, but that's because it's a, it's an important story event, uh, that's happening. So I want to talk about, uh, the civilian casualties a little bit. So in the, in the 2009 release, there's this one controversial mission called, uh, quote unquote, no Russian. So in that mission, you are an undercover CIA asset working along or purported to be working along with Russian terrorists. You're in an airport. And maybe you can take it through. Tell me about it so it's it's it's a it's a moscow airport um and you yeah you're basically an undercover cia agent and then no russian comes from the terrorist leader telling the group because no one is supposed to know that they're they're actually kind of baiting an attack right

they're pretending to be not russians and right they enter through uh the security gate which you might call it consider tsa and they are heavily armed security gate, which you might consider TSA, and they are heavily armed in body armor and have heavy machine guns. And as a player, you are told to basically spray your bullets into a crowd of innocent people in an airport. And at that moment, it was very, very shocking in 2009. You know, this is just 10 years after Columbine.

And as I understand it, the developers really wanted to kind of showcase, you know, the humanity behind this evil. It's actually a little bit journalistic where it's like they're trying to showcase, you know, the levels of depravity to it. And they don't want people to like kind of turn a blind eye to kind of the evils of humanity. And what better way to showcase that by forcing you to be in that seat. And, you know, again, play act that play act as a terrorist, you know. So just to clarify, is that is that how the developers were kind of justifying that mission within that release? Yes, absolutely. That was that was absolutely how they justified it, because they just really want to showcase and put the player in to understand the evil. kind of justifying that mission within that release? Yes, absolutely. That was absolutely how they justified it because they just really wanted to showcase

and put the player in to understand the evil, you know? Did that go over well? Obviously, there was a lot of mainstream controversy about the shooting, but I think a lot of games journalists really admired the courage, I guess, or bravery it would take to kind of do that. It really pushed the boundaries of video games as

an art form to kind of showcase that, you know, what levels of human suffering can we actually show in a video game that is acceptable and can have impact. You spent a lot of time thinking about video games in, you know, quite a nuanced way. Do you think the average player got that? wants to wait do you think the average player got that out of it that's a that's a tricky thing right uh media literacy is is a huge topic of today and i think uh i think that that message might have gone over a lot of people's heads you know i think a lot of people kind of misunderstood call of duty modern warfare as a pro-war game as but when you really look into the text it's actually quite anti-war but it's pretty tough to see when you, when there's so many explosions and dead bodies flying everywhere. Right.

Right. The fog of digital war. Yes, exactly. Okay. So I want to talk about another mission. There was the release last year and there's a part in it where you're in a Texas trailer park, residents pop out of the trailers and you're, you're supposed to quote unquote deescalate.

But the way that your character does that is by pointing a gun at these civilians. So I know you played that. What went through your mind when you're de-escalating, so to speak, that way? It's terrifying. I did play that mission. And there was also another similar mission in a Syria-like environment in the prequel to that game. Again, Modern Warfare. They rebooted modern

warfare once in 2019 um again you're meant to de-escalate by pointing a gun at the civilian and at the at the uh so-called terrorists and it's terrifying to see like you know like a woman pleading for for their lives and it's it's very upfront and so the game series has gotten a lot of criticisms for depicting the depicting, especially brown people in other countries. And so I think Call of Duty has really tried to kind of balance that by adding a lot of characters from those cultures also in Hacken. So if you know, you're also a police officer who's a border patrol soldier who's also Mexican, who's also doing these things. So again, they kind of try to both sides by trying to make sure that at least there's some representation on the quote unquote good side of things, right?

One of the things that has been done over the development of this series is incorporating fictionalized versions of real-world conflicts. So I'm thinking in a recent version, there was this mission where you're supposed to guide a missile to assassinate an Iranian general in a fictitious country. He's named in this mission General Gorbrani in the game. It's a pretty obvious version of the extrajudicial drone strike of Qasem Soleimani, who was ordered killed by Donald Trump in 2020. The character looks a lot like him.

He's got a white beard. So I guess I'm curious, tell me more about how Call of Duty uses real conflicts in its storylines. Yeah, it feels like they try to use these conflicts to kind of, again, showcase, really put yourself in the shoes of showing the horrors of war. But again, it can very be misinterpreted as being pro-war. There was a sequence in the original Modern Warfare, again, in 2007, that was very striking

in which you are in this big bomber plane and you're just dropping bombs on a town full of terrorists. But the way these pilots speak to each other, it's like, okay, target acquired, target killed. It's very cold and distant.

And it's kind of meant to... That was really kind of the first mainstream depiction of that kind of meant to kind of, that was really kind of the first mainstream depiction of that kind of warfare in a popular culture. And it really helped people's understanding of what that is. So I think they're really trying to continue that. That's why the recent modern warfare games

take place in an area that's really, really pretty much like Syria. So what kind of worldview do you think missions like that General Gourbani assassination one or some of the other ones that mimic real world conflict encourage? I feel like the perspective is this is the world that we live in now. Call of Duty developers have been very, very careful about not being too political. careful about not being too political. I remember I asked a question for another recent Call of Duty that depicted Ronald Reagan very, very accurately and vividly in the game.

And Ronald Reagan was the one kind of calling the shots in these missions. And so I asked Activision Blizzard, you know, like there's been a lot of relitigating the legacy of Ronald Reagan, right? And kind of looking at Ronald Reagan and his impact on conservative culture throughout the decades. So I wanted to ask them, you know, what kind of considerations did you make in terms of depicting Ronald Reagan?

And that question was simply not answered. It really, really feels like that they're kind of trying to kind of avoid taking a stance on things. I'm sure what they will say is we're trying to showcase the horrors of war, you know? In the more, you know, in most iterations of this game, like people are playing kind of a Navy SEAL type special ops tactical operative.

Absolutely. The Modern Warfare 2019 had a sequence that was just like, you know, meant to make you feel like SEAL Team 6 assassinating Osama bin Laden, right? And those kind of soldiers have a particular place in the American psyche. Do you see these characters

as influencing the way people who play these games see themselves? Is there any influence there? Absolutely. I have no doubt. You know, the military, the U.S. military uses

Call of Duty as a recruitment tool. You know, Call of Duty is made under the advisement of the U.S. military. So obviously, it has that very, very strong perspective, at least in terms of fetishizing military

might and technology. So I have no doubt that it's sort of numbed the public perception of military and warfare, which is interesting because, again, going back to 2007 and Modern Warfare, that game came out when the public was already kind of numb to the effects of

war in the Iraq war. And they've already been pretty skeptical of the war. So Mono Warfare came out. And that's why, again, that message was so strong. I just want to go back to that point about the US military using Call of Duty as a recruiting tool. That's nothing new, right? No, nothing new at all. Yeah. What can you tell me about that? They offer training and they offer a lot of insight and they offer, you know, peaks into the kind of technology they're using. Do you have a sense of whether this is effective or not, this kind of recruiting strategy within games? I believe it's fairly effective, which is why they keep doing it, right? You know, the Wall Street Journal recently also had a story about kind of the headline was the secret deal that put a real rifle in the

Call of Duty about how Remington signed product placement deal with Call of Duty. And it's obviously very, very effective. You know, you ask any kid these days and they can rattle off a number of gun models. Same as me. So much of my knowledge about guns comes from Call of Duty and Medal of Honor and these games and and my ability to recognize uh different different ways they fire and so the military has always used these types of games to train their recruits in terms of situational awareness and and responsiveness and also again to kind of like saturate them in this this fog of war so they understand it and you also see that the military uses uh video game controllers in many of their equipments especially with drones and its submarines obviously we know that the

ocean gate submarine uh had a video game controller but i also wrote an article about how that is very commonplace within you know high technology equipment such as u.s navy submarines and the reason why they use those controllers is because so many of the recruits and the troops are familiar with that user interface. It's very natural to them because they grew up with video games. So it's not even just that they're using video games to help that, but they know that video games have already trained them in other ways too. So they're adapting to the needs of gamers, basically. to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization, empowering Canada's entrepreneurs

through angel investment and industry connections. Hi, it's Ramit Sethi here. You may have seen my money show on Netflix. I've been talking about money for 20 years. I've talked to millions of people and I have some startling numbers to share with you. Did you know that of the people I speak to, So there was that kind of, Create a financial vision together. To listen to this podcast, just search for Money for Cops. I think that it's definitely inconclusive, if not clear that there's not a correlation there. But I guess what I'm curious about in terms of the impact of games on people is, is there, if not, you know, causing people to go do these things, but is there an effect?

Is there an emotional effect? Is there a mental effect of playing these kind of games? Yeah, there have been studies about how it does kind of raise some aggression within players, but never to the effect where it might actually, you know, lead to action or anything like that, right? Right. But, you know, probably the more concerning effect is theings, uh, during the Microsoft Activision Blizzard, uh, uh, hearings here in the U S, uh, that there's about a million players of PlayStation on PlayStation who only play Call of Duty. Um, I have so many friends, I actually have so many girlfriends who complain that their boyfriends are doing nothing but playing Call of Duty, you know? Um, so there, there, there's probably more something to that, to, to more, more to that impact in terms of just how much engrossing it is, you know. So maybe not mass shootings, but like mass discontent in people's romantic lives.

Yeah, mass discontent and, you know, isolation maybe. So Gene, what's going on with the franchise now? I know there's a new release coming out next week, but where do you see Call of Duty going in the future? this game appears to be depicting a plane hijacking um and that is going to be the quote-unquote no russian uh uh version of of this year basically so again call of duty is kind of taking something that really happened in the past that's really kind of culturally been saturated they're going to throw it out front in this high fidelity uh depiction of a horrific event we have no idea how it's going to play out. Maybe it won't even play out.

But the Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 definitely teased that that's going to happen. So we'll have to see how that goes. And also, you see how in the multiplayer aspect, which is the most popular aspect of Call of Duty, most people don't even play the stories. The no Russian parts that we just talked about

are often ignored because the really, really habit-forming part of Call of Duty is playing online with your friends. And that part, they've really kind of tried to blunt the impact of the realistic war depictions by adding characters and events that are seeping in through other parts of pop culture. are seeping in through other parts of pop culture. So most famously recently, you can play as rapper Nicki Minaj. And Nicki Minaj, her own voices and her own idioms into the game. And it makes it very fun and carnival-like. And so Activision Blizzard has said that this is kind of an intention to make Call of Duty more fun and more entertainment, to kind of soften the image that they've had over the years of being this very self-serious military simulator.

And that it really is kind of forming into a form of digital laser tech. So they're really, really trying to soften the image and make it just more fun and more sci-fi again, or just more zany and more abstract and kind of remove again that fog of war and just see how silly video games can be. Right. Okay, Gene, thanks so much. Really appreciate talking to you. Thanks so much for having me.

That's all for today. This week, Front Burner was produced by Rafferty Baker, Shannon Higgins, Joyta Shingupta, Lauren Donnelly, and Derek VanderWijk. Sound design was by Mackenzie Cameron, Will Yar, and Sam McNulty. Music is by Joseph Shabison. The senior producer is Elaine Chao. Our executive producer is Nick McCabe-Locos. And I'm Damon Fairless.

Thanks for listening. FrontBurner will be back on Monday.