Activision Publishing CEO, Eric Hirshberg, stated in the company’s quarterly earnings report that the 420,000 dislikes on Infinite Warfare’s trailer show the passion Call of Duty can generate.
Hirshberg’s exact quote: “First of all, you’ve gotta love the passion of gamers. This is an industry like no other, and a fan base like no other, and we love that our fans treat this franchise like it’s their own and has such strong points of view about it. There just aren’t many entertainment franchises on Earth that can generate the kind of passion that Call of Duty can. That’s a good thing.”
To some degree, he is correct. There are a lot of people out there who care so much about Call of Duty, they’ll spend their time disliking trailers to show their dissatisfaction. We aren’t talking about one dislike; we mean people that will create different accounts just to send another dislike Activision’s way.
Hirshberg continues: “Secondly, of course we know that there are people in our community who are nostalgic for the boots-on-the-ground style gameplay, and that’s why we made Modern Warfare Remastered. But we also have millions of people in our community who want to have new, innovative experiences in the game each year, and Infinite Warfare delivers that.”
Again, Hirshberg is correct. When the rumoured title ‘Infinite Warfare’ popped up on gaming websites, fans were split on whether they wanted space combat or classic WW1/2 fighting. According to the likes to dislikes ratio on this trailer, only a quarter of fans care about “new, innovative experiences”. There is clearly some form of mass disliking going on with this Call of Duty trailer, it was only a week ago that a lot of people were welcoming space combat.
Hirshberg goes on to talk about the Black Ops 2 trailer: “Call of Duty: Black Ops II had the most dislikes of any reveal trailer we had ever made at that time, and that of course went on to become our most successful game ever.” People may have disliked Black Ops II’s trailer at the time, but it was nowhere near on the same scale as Infinite Warfare’s dislikes. Personally, I don’t think a lot of the dislikes have anything to do with the gameplay. I believe the horrendous cover of Space Oddity made a lot of people dislike the video…
You can watch the infamous Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare trailer below.
