Modern Warfare 2 Sales Unhindered by Controversies

Both GameSpot and GamePolitics reported yesterday that despite the recent controversies surrounding Modern Warfare 2, which is launching next Tuesday, game sales are projected to be huge.

Even USA Today picked up on the story:

"By all indicators, we anticipate Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 will be the biggest entertainment launch of all time," says Tony Bartel, executive vice president for merchandising and marketing at GameStop. "As of today, the number of pre-order reservations we've taken for the game is the highest for any title we've ever sold in our 6,200 store network."

James Brightman wrote for Industry Gamers, saying:

Ever since E3 pundits have been predicting huge sales for Activision's upcoming Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, which many believe will be the top selling title of this holiday season and possibly all of 2009.  Wedbush Morgan Securities analyst Michael Pachter, as part of his Activision earnings preview, put in his own two cents.

"We expect global sales to exceed $500 million in the first week following launch, and think that the company can easily sell 10 million units in Q4," he stated.

I think that Infinity Ward's ability to shrug off all the contention surrounding Modern Warfare 2 -- from the removal of Dedicated Servers, to the content leak, to the homophobic advertisement -- essentially comes down to a point I made in a few of my earlier blog posts: gameplay is the best advertising you can get in this industry. Publishers and franchises are to videogames what authors are to novels, and directors to movies, but even moreso.

Dropping $59.99 + tax on a game requires a much greater deal of trust in the product (and its creators) than buying a DVD or novel, or even purchasing a movie ticket. Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare has become a staple of the online FPS multiplayer experience. Many gamers, casual and hardcore alike, are likely to overlook a transgression or three in order to recreate or enhance the entire they had playing the original title.

More Modern Warfare 2 Controversy

As Destructoid reported on Halloween day, Infinity Ward (publishers of the  upcoming sequel to Modern Warfare) recently pulled an ad for Modern Warfare 2 that had been uploaded to Youtube. The reason? It was perceived as homophobic, and the outcry against it was massive.

The ad made a mock "public service announcement" calling players who randomly toss grenades in online multiplayer "pussies." Furthermore, the fake institution behind the fake PSA was "Fight Against Grenade Spam." The acronym is pretty easy to gather.

The original video has been taken down, so I can't really pass judgement on whether or not it was tongue-in-cheek enough to be poking fun at the standard player-base of Modern Warfare -- who tend to be reknowned for the sexism, homophobia, and racism they spew across Xbox Live -- or if it was an ad that was meant to touch base and connect with these players.

That said, I find myself siding with the folks who were pissed off. As someone who has played quite a bit of online Call of Duty multiplayer on Xbox, there have been times where I've felt so disgusted by other players' behavior -- or times when I was personally harassed, sexually and non-sexually -- that I've just had to turn off my console. I've experienced that attitude on this game more than I have on any other game, and I've played it far less than other online games like L4D or World of Warcraft.

It's a shame because I do like playing multiplayer, but I'm wary of ever bothering to use my headset. Communication is a vital part of the Live experience, however, you become a target for a lot of hatred both vicious and casual (which is even worse), when people can tell (or believe they can tell) that you aren't a white, heterosexual male.

It's surprising that Infinity Ward would release such an ad so very soon after the leak of their controversial gameplay in which the player briefly controls a terrorist. The "boys will be boys" mentality that reigns supreme on Modern Warfare is not something that Infinity Ward should be looking to promote in their new game. Giving a wink and a nod to homophobia to a crowd that is known for going out of their way to make the game less fun for anyone "non-standard" just smacks of terrible policy.

//Edit: Here is a link to the commercial. It is being hosted by a few Youtube users who grabbed a copy before Infinity Ward disabled the official one.

No Such Thing as Bad Publicity? A Look at a Mordern Warfare 2 Leak

I couple posts back I talked about the L4D2 cinematic trailer that was "leaked" onto the Internet. I use quotation marks because it's pretty well known that -- especially among online sources -- it's popular to say that some video was leaked in order to make it some more risque and get people to click. The truth is that many times the content was purposefully fed to certain sites before others.

In the case of the L4D2 trailer, the "leak" of the final cut just a few days before the release of the pre-order demo is fairly suspect. After all, it was all polished up and already packaged into the demo by that point, and "leaking" the trailer was probably a way of helping to drive pre-orders, since a early demo release was made available to everyone who pre-ordered the game.

On the other hand, G4TV posted a story yesterday about what I would venture to say is a more legitimate "leak." This leak showed game footage from the upcoming Modern Warfare 2 (the newest installment in the Call of Duty franchise) in which the player controls a terrorist. Spoiler warnings abound, so read at your own risk.

In the level (reportedly the beginning of the game), the player is with a group of men who murder innocent civilians in an airport. The level seems to consist primarily of capping innocent people, including the clearly injured who are trying in vain to hobble away as you shoot them in the back. This is where CNN's video ends. Based on other internet reports, after the airport killing spree, the group then exit to the tarmac where they pass a pile of dead bodies, and shoot some cops.

Then, in classic Modern Warfare style, the character you are playing is flat-out murdered in a cutscene.

This is obviously some strong stuff, and it's predictable that folks would take issue with it -- especially people who don't understand gamer culture, or even believe that videogames turn kids into killing machines. The footage itself has been removed, likely due to a DMCA take-down notice, further validating it as a real leak. Leaks like this one can pose particularly troublesome problems.

Successful advertising almost always depends on having some semblance of control over your brand's image. Whether that means directing each and every move, or just getting the ball rolling in the right direction, there is some planning that goes into it. Leaks of such charged and unsettling gameplay take away that control where it may be needed most: it's pretty easy to see how tempting it would be for news sources (especially those unfamiliar with the game industry, or even hostile towards it) to take the footage out of context. I can see it already: "Violent Shoot-em-up Encourages Kids to Become Terrorists and Kill Civilians!"

Aside from not being able to closely manage the effect the controversy may have on their image, Infinity Ward (the publishers of  Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare and Modern Warfare 2) now has to spend time and capital guarding against any further leaks before the game hits shelves on November 10th.