Since Monday, YouTube users have been flooding the reveal trailer for Call of Duty Infinite Warfare, mashing the dislike button in what appears to be a game to see how high a number they can hit.
As of publication time, the trailer’s got 447,096 dislikes, but that number is likely to skyrocket. And Activision’s aware of it. On their quarterly earnings call with investors yesterday, one analyst asked Activision CEO Eric Hirshberg about the dislikes. Here’s what he said:
On the second part of your question related to Infinite Warfare, first of all you got to love the passion of gamers. This is an industry like no other, and a fan base like no other and we love that our fans treat this franchise like it’s their own and have such strong points of view about it. There just aren’t many entertainment franchises on Earth that can generate the kind of passion that Call of Duty can and that’s a good thing.
Secondly, of course we know that there are people in our community who are nostalgic for the boots-on-the-ground-style gameplay, and that’s why we made Modern Warfare Remastered. But we also have millions of people in our community who want to have new innovative experiences in the game each year and Infinite Warfare is going to deliver that. And the good news is this year we found a way to deliver both in one package while keeping our community together.
And while of course we see the passionate opinions online, we also look at other measurements. And the fact is, while it’s very early, pre-orders are off to a very strong start. Views of the reveal trailer that you referred to are up and in fact the number of likes per view on the Infinite Warfare reveal trailer are also the highest we’ve ever seen.
We’ve seen this in the franchise before. The reveal trailer for Black Ops II, which took the franchise into the future for the first time, had the most dislikes of any reveal trailer we had ever made at that time. And that, of course, went on to become our most successful game ever.
And right now, the franchise has never been stronger. We have more people playing Black Ops III, a game that takes place in the future with boost jumps and fictitious weapons and all the rest, than any game in our history. So what we know for sure is that if we always just did what worked in the past and never took any creative risks, we wouldn’t have a franchise. The day to worry is the day we stop trying new things.
Really, he should have just shown them this:
Comments
32 responses to “Activision Responds To The Call Of Duty: Infinite Warfare Mass-Dislike Campaign”
I’m confused, though, what is it that people don’t like about this? That trailer looked pretty awesome. A pretty natural progression on the way the franchise’s single-player campaign has been headed.
Too Sci-fi-y and COD4 remaster not sold separately. I’m just gonna buy the legacy ed from EB, use the code then return it. Thanks Activision for giving me COD4 for free.
Yeh…I doubt that’s gonna work.
Could be easier than you think:
Source: EB Games T&C Page (https://www.ebgames.com.au/terms#section-17)
18.1 Change of mind
If you have simply changed your mind and you are able to provide a valid receipt, or you are a member of our loyalty program EB World, EB Games may offer you an exchange or refund provided that the merchandise:
is in saleable condition
is unworn or unused with all original packaging and content included
is not subject to the exclusions listed below
and the exchange or refund is sought within 7 days of purchase. At times throughout the year, EB Games may extend the 7 day period to allow for gift giving periods such as Christmas.
If you are unable to provide a valid receipt and/or 7 days has passed since the original purchase date, EB Games at its absolute discretion reserves the right not to offer an exchange or refund for change of mind. In such cases, EB Games may, at its absolute discretion, provide you with an exchange to the current value of the merchandise.
EB Games is not required to provide you with a copy of your original receipt to facilitate an exchange, refund, insurance or warranty claim.
The original condition clause won’t be met. The digital code would be used. Now they have accepted returns without codes before, but that is likely on a game by game basis. PlusPlus, the whole thing is wrapped inside a maybe.
If you get a blazed attendant in the first week then maybe they won’t remember 🙂
What bushrat said. They will ask you if youve used the code. Legally what youre doing would be theft, and pretty scummy as the next owner would have their time wasted if thw code doesnt work.
I can’t speak for everyone, but that god awful cover really put me off.
I thought it was looking decent until the tiny snippets of gameplay. What gameplay you ask? All the ‘press x’ to do something cool moments. The games are just ‘run here and press x, run there and press x whilst killing some guys on the way’. I’d rather watch a movie. Still better than Battlefield 3 though where they put you in a fighter jet and then don’t let you actually fly it.
All that said though, I’m not petty enough to click dislike on a game trailer.
It’s funny because that level in the BF3 campaign was actually one of my favourites. The sound and sight and ‘feel’ of being in the cockpit was the most powerful I’d experienced in gaming, even compared to actual flight simulators. Not being the pilot wasn’t even something I resented, as the world of the RIO/WSO was something we don’t normally see or get to do.
As for quick time stuff… I dunno. “It’s just run here, activate thing, kill guys,” is pretty reductive. Even the BEST games boil down to something that’s essentially that. My problem with the CoD franchise is probably more that its campaigns have a very specific type of scripting they want you to follow, so the freedom to experiment within that is a lot more restricted. Every FPS can be boiled down to a corridor you walk through, man-shooting and activating buttons to proceed, but CoD’s hallways are… tighter. Worse is when they spend a whole bunch of time tutorializing the highly-scripted and tightly-controlled use of some cool feature like a UAV… and then you never use that feature again. Certainly not in some kind of free-form mode without the game’s ever-present guiding hand.
Or just go play The Last of us again
Bad Company 2 an Battlefield 3 were the best in the series. The game you just mentioned sounds more like a COD game, maybe you just weren’t good in the Jets like myself. I say give me an attack helicopter any day over a jet, the ground combat in Battlefield is only bested by ARMA
I was talking about the COD story modes and the BF3 single player level where you are in a jet.
People want just constant remake of the same COD game, as modern age shooter. These same people don’t want a sci-fi game, so they dislike this one. Clearly this game can’t be aimed entirely at the same audience?
Meh, I’m not a fan of CoD at all but I gave it a like because.. well.. this was a strong trailer. It was and you can’t really hide that.
That picture is hilarious!
However I understand the dislikes (and I haven’t clicked thumbs down on it myself) because I don’t care about COD Space War – I would get COD4 MW but they won’t sell it separately and I was going to get angry about that but then I saw the trailer for the new battlefield and I realised I don’t really like COD anyway!
I liked the use of the David Bowie song “Space Oddity”, really cool and a nice reference. Made the trailer for me.
I was miffed when they did the whole bundle thing which is what Im assuming most of this is pointed at. Then Battlefield 1 got revealed and now I couldnt care less.
I boycotted Modern Warfare 2. In fact i havent touched CoD in anyway since dedicated servers, lean, and mod support was removed from CoD. havent even watch game walkthroughs or trailers.
I havent touched battlefield either since 3
But you still click onto news articles about the series?
reading a news article doesnt mean you support it unlike paying for something or pirating it ( pirating means you want it but just dont want to pay for it)
“The day to worry is the day we stop trying new things.”
Gee, that was a few years ago.
Activision would probably care a lot more if they didn’t already know that just about every one of those people who clicked “dislike” will end up buying it anyway.
Dedicated servers is all I want… It’s not a big ask!
The number of dislikes matters not. They will still sell a mediocre game to millions of people.
Well. The last COD that I played was MW3. Never played the black ops, cause I hated that the first one was very poorly made to ps3, so I just passed this series.
But I Have two thinks about Infinite warfare:
1- COD 4 REMASTERED is GOD!! Guaranteed buy just because it has this one.
2- Is the first futuristic COD that actually made me interested to buy just cause the Trailer, look awesome that craft flying to the space, I really hope that the game be good, has lots of potential.
COD doesn’t make me feel any kind of passion, not even contempt. I’ve been over the series for years, since MW3. Who cares what they do?
“On the second part of your question related to Infinite Warfare, first of all you got to love the passion of gamers. This is an industry like no other, and a fan base like no other and we love that our fans treat this franchise like it’s their own and have such strong points of view about it. There just aren’t many entertainment franchises on Earth that can generate the kind of passion that Call of Duty can and that’s a good thing.”
God damn it, marketing spin makes my skin crawl.
Heh. I thought it was a very nice way of saying, “lol, outrage culture’s getting worse and worse these days, isn’t it?”
glad to see they’re bringing back the best one of the franchise… just hope to god they haven’t fucked with it…..
kind of bulshit really he says that he knows players don’t like the futuristic setting which is why the have released cod4 remastered, what I don’t get is if they released cod4 for the people who don’t like the future stuff then why have you got to buy infinite warefare to get cod4??? so ethan tho the made cod4 for them type of players who don’t like the future them players still hafto buy infinite warefare to get it, so when they say released it for people who like feet on ground gameplay its all lies cause them still gonna get the money out of you when you hafto buy infinite warefare to get cod4
Flat out stated they don’t give a sh!t about what gamers think or want because they can. Then again, the consumers’ opinion doesn’t really matter when the consumer is willing to pay the money, good or bad – from their statement about black ops. This is the codfan base we are talking about though – next to cavemen – they make cavemen look like modern geniuses.
Cod4 was fun back in the day but not worth and increased price due to bundle only.I’ll get my giggle on though if they charge for dlcs on cod4 remastered