The publisher is allowing gamers to be segregated

Sep 13, 2014 16:59 GMT  ·  By

Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare will be launched on November 4 of this year, and there’s a Day Zero edition which gives players access one day earlier and also delivers double experience, on the PC, the PlayStation 4, the Xbox One and last-gen consoles.

When the announcement about the option to play before the official launch date was first made, many people overlooked it in order to stare at the beautiful limited edition that the publishing team at Activision put together for the first-person shooter.

But a closer look at the concept of launching a version of a game 24 hours before the game is supposed to be available does tell us something about the relevance of launch dates and the modern gaming market.

Day Zero is only offered to those who place a pre-order for Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare, which means that the target public is mostly made up of long-term fans of the series who are eager to get their hands on it as soon as possible.

Some of them might pick it up as soon as possible to experience the single-player campaign, but most of them will ignore that altogether and will jump into multiplayer matches, trying to get as much experience as possible during the 24-hour period while it comes in double quantity.

This means that Day One purchasers of Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare will be well prepared to dominate those who jump into competitive multiplayer on November 4.

Segregation of gamers 

A two tier competitive scene might evolve for the shooter and we might even see groups choose to totally reject all those who got the game early.

If the Day Zero edition for the game is successful, and Activision will probably deliver a massive wave of ads to make sure it is, we might see even more stratification in the coming years.

For the 2015 edition of Call of Duty we might see a Week Zero edition which can be played 7 days before the official launch date as long as fans are willing to pay 10 dollars more than the normal price and I am pretty sure that the company will find a clear audience for the option.

Gamers should try and resist this trend because it segregates audiences and will make multiplayer even harder to approach for more casual players who lack the time or the inclination to play for 24 hours before launch to get extra experience.