Believe it or not, years ago, Call of Duty was a mil-sim. From landing on the beaches of Normandy to scaling the dusty, war-torn streets of the Middle East, it was the gold standard for combat simulation. Fast forward to 2024 and everything has changed. In fact, Charlie Intel just claimed that “Call of Duty is not and will never be a mil-sim,” and I think the lion’s share of the fanbase would agree. I mean, how can it be when we’re tasked with leveling up weapons to the backdrop of King Kong Fighting Godzilla, and now the latest weapon skin bundle and event themed around Squid Games? It’s all a got a bit… silly.
Of course, I get it. Marketing is king, and Call of Duty is a business that needs to stay relevant. But Charlie Intel’s recent claim has me contemplating whether it’s actually crossovers I hate or the type of crossovers Activision keeps insisting on doing.
There’s no doubt that Call of Duty has had some of the most absurd crossovers seen in gaming recently. The IPs hardly ever feel appropriate for the game; Attack on Titan, Godzilla, Nicki Minaj, Cheech and Chong, and now Squid Games events. And Don’t even get me started on last year’s The Walking Dead zombies event not taking place in the Zombies mode itself.
For however much you agree that “Call of Duty is not and will never be a mil-sim,”it’s also definitely not Fortnite. It’s not a meta-verse. A franchise started with epic stories of WWII and then transitioned into modern narratives with some of the most memorable characters in gaming history isn’t something I want to see combo’d with anything and everything for marketing reasons.
Otherwise, Call of Duty is likely to continue the same identity crisis the franchise has been dealing with ever since Eren Yeager and Lionel Messi reached the ranks of Captain Price. When things like this happen in the game, it makes it much harder to take the matter of the Cold War and Russian Ultra Nationalists taking over the world seriously.
So what I’m suggesting here, Activision, is, please, if you want to do these crossovers so bad, let them be about the characters that can actually handle a gun and are relevant to the shooter genre like John Wick and 007, not some random show about players surviving tests for a prize.
