Modern Warfare seemed to attract more excitement and discussion than Infinite Warfare. In that moment, it’s arguable the first-person shooter, as a big budget, mainstream concern, crossed over into the nostalgia industry.
In music, this happens all the time with bands. At some point, touring becomes not a way to test and celebrate new material, but to appease long-running fans who just want to hear the hits. Sure, they’ll still grudgingly buy the latest release and may concede there are one or two good tracks, but what they really want is that 180g vinyl reissue of the group’s classic album, complete with unreleased tracks and limited edition art card inserts. Eventually, fans of legacy rock acts don’t really want the music anymore, they just want to be young again.
The big question surrounding Modern Warfare is: do people want it back because they miss the purity of what it offered, or because they’re nostalgic for a past that involved Modern Warfare and games like it? Or perhaps it’s that old story about true epoch-shattering innovation coming from comparatively small teams working on brand new projects. Far Cry, FEAR, Stalker, Bioshock, Thief – it’s hard to imagine a new first-person shooter really grappling with the whole meaning of the genre in the way these games did.
Maybe, you know, people don’t want to go online and fight in the same way they once did. Maybe people are sick of the respawn treadmill, sick of voice chat insults, sick of the conflicts they see on the news being turned into a pantomime of honour – of duty. Tastes change, audiences diversify, kids grow up. Sometimes you listen to those albums you once liked, that really spoke to you, and suddenly they seem full of self-pity and crass, processed emotion. Maybe this isn’t a crisis, maybe it’s just maturity.
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