Why Call of Duty is so successful by Chad

Hello, my name's Stefan, but I'm more known as Chad in the gaming community. (Now count the grammar mistakes in that sentence.)

Aaaaaanyways, bad jokes aside, I serve some purposes. I do YouTube videos, I play games, I go to school. I'm 14 after all. Well, you may notice the title of the Blog, so you wonder by now as you're reading this:

'What does this have to do with Call of Duty!?'

Well, I'll start, but before I do, if you're a TL;DR kind of person, I'll have a video of this up in the next few weeks, on my channel. www.youtube.com/user/ChadIsThat1Noob <--- That's the link.

And also, let me clear something up, this will be a series of blog posts tackling the biggest and best gaming franchises, with some spin offs of this series as well. Anyways, buckle your safety belt, we're going in!

Call of Duty. Ahh, it takes me back. You see, before I discovered the beauty of PC gaming, I was on the NES playing Super Mario Bros. and Contra. That was the year of 2005. I had the PC back then (See: Old PC), since 2004. But I didn't use it. Fast forward 2 years later (2007), my PC gets an upgrade and some games on it. The games? Call of Duty 1, MoH, MoHAA, FlatOut and Need for Speed: Underground 2. The first thing I played was, naturally Call of Duty. Sounded like a fun game. (I was unaware of sequels, or that PC's can differentiate in power, they were all the same to me!) And gosh, was it a damn good game! Invade Nazi Germany destroy those a**holes for creating a war! Who cares if people die just shoooooooooot! Ahh. The good old days. Anyways, after beating the game, I was like: "Is there a 2? A 3?". A few days later, my good 'ole pop got me Counter-Strike 1.6. We played the crap out of that game, 1v1 the entire time! It came the year 2010. I got a new laptop, and it was grand spankin' epic. It had some great games. The first one that caught my eye though, was 'Call of Duty 4 - Modern Warfare'. I was like: "OH CRAP WHUT IS THIS ITS ANOTHER ONE OF THOSE CALLS OF DOODYS", I wasn't that much of a speaker of the English language back then.. I launched it up and played through it.. It was amazing. Aaaaaand I didn't pick up a Call o' Doody game, ever again. Like, I have not played any other calls of doody's other than CoD 4.

But, that does not leave me out of my opinion on why it's so successful. You see, I explained the secret in that giant block of text up there. I was 7 when I played the first CoD, and 10 when I played the fourth. It may be a PG 18 game, but I saw the appeal of it. I mean I would play a Call of Duty game any time you'd give me one. Despite me hating that it's the same thing every year. Despite all MLG contests and stuff, in it's core, Call of Duty is a casual game made to blow some steam off on. And when I see someone comparing it to the 'Battlefield' franchise, it just makes me facepalm. Here's why though, Battlefield (more on that in future Blogs) is not a fast paced, casual shooter. It's more of a strategic one, it's massive, it takes patience, I mean there's huge maps to traverse with vehicles! Call of Duty on the other hand is a fast paced, casual shooter made to blow off some steam on, even the most unskilled of FPS players can play it and have fun. Because it was made to ease the new, casual gamers in to the gaming world and all it's communities. In fact, what Call of Duty is doing, despite being 60$ every year and being the same thing, is a good thing. It's what Super Mario Bros. did in 1986, it was not unforgiving it was easy on the eyes, easy on the controls, the gameplay. It was a role model for getting in to gaming. That's what, in my eyes, is Call of Duty today. I mean, for someone that barely plays games, if you recommend one of the CoDs to them, and they play them, they would be pretty satisfied. Call of Duty is a satisfying game, like getting a kill streak online, or just killing someone creatively, it's fun, it adds variety and more importantly, for the final time of it being brought up, it's satisfying.

So let's recap:

Why is Call of Duty successful?

1. It's a good, casual, fast paced game.

2. It adds variety for newcomers, while managing to keep it's old audience.

3. It's easy on the eyes, and very forgiving.

4. Despite it's community with a bad reputation, it's community has some surprisingly good feedback.

5. It's a satisfying game to play, for newcomers and old audience.

6. Despite being a casual game, it's perfect grounds for a more hardcore professional experience.

So those are the main but defining reasons why Call of Duty is so successful as a franchise and as an icon for gaming altogether. What do you think of that, Mario? Nintendo sure ruined your image.

 Also, I forgot to mention, this will be weekly. Feel free to comment with criticism, points etc. Nobody's perfect.