14 DAY TRIAL // Various analysts have pointed out that the Call of Duty franchise, the Guitar Hero games and World of Warcraft account for about two thirds of the revenue of Activision Blizzard. We already know that the music genre is in free fall and that the number of Guitar Hero titles launched in 2010 will be severely reduced. There's also no sign of World of Warcraft slowing down.
The big question now is whether gamers really need to play, in 2011, a Modern Warfare 3 game that does nothing but build on the ideas offered by the first two iterations in the series, delivering another single player element built around the same characters and a bigger, quicker and more furious multiplayer component, with a few tweaks thrown in for good measure.
What made the first Modern Warfare a success was the move out of World War II into modernity, ditching territory that gamers had covered a hundred times, and the way it depicted war as part spectacle, part drama, with firefights being the equivalent of the big tirades in old plays. Modern Warfare 2 attempted to add more drama to the mix, to put the foot down on the message and deliver an over the top experience. It managed to offer pretty much the same feelings as the first game, minus the initial thrill of the novelty.
Modern Warfare 3 needs to be a reinvention of the entire concept to get anyone really interested. The rumored move to space, with a more futuristic theme, might be an interesting proposition as long as it's not something like Gears of War. Even more interesting might be to use the name recognition of Modern Warfare to look at conflicts which are less explored in videogaming, like the Cold War battles in Korea, the drug hunting in Columbia or the invasion of the Granada.
These are little known engagements that can be translated into focused single player experiences and complemented by a new approach to multiplayer, less focused on the progression and the tweaking and more preoccupied with offering ever changing tactical challenges.