Call of Duty: Black Ops is now out, leading to more than 1 million players enjoying it at the same time on Xbox Live for the Microsoft home console soon after launch and probably leading to Activision preparing extensive press releases about the huge sales numbers posted in the first week.
And already fans and commentators alike are talking about the
Call of Duty video game which will arrive in 2011, wondering whether the game will be again a first person shooter and whether Infinity Ward or the newly formed Sledgehammer Games will be creating it.
It's the same blockbuster culture which spawns rumors about Iron Man 3 immediately after the second one debuts in movie theaters and speculates on possible casting options for the next Batman.
It's normal for any entertainment form to generate some products that are better reviewed than others and that gain a larger following among consumers.
But it seems to be that there are less true blockbusters in video gaming than in movies or in the realm of television series and their impact among gamers and the general public is too big.
The game oriented media and the fan forums talk so much about
Call of Duty and
Halo that they manage to both put a lot of pressure on the developers and to create too high expectations about the upcoming titles in these series.
The combination of expectations and pressure means that developers need to both serve more of the same in order to keep the fan base happy and deliver some innovation in order to keep the series ahead in terms of innovation.
And one of the results is that the games try to do impressive scenes, like Black Ops' prison break level, but fail to create new and surprising mechanics to match the themes and the visuals, resulting in very nice gaming experience that involve the gamer less and less.
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