Tomorrow, you can play the new Call of Duty. Separately, you will also be able to play as Bobby Kotick, chief of CoD publisher Activision, in the free (well, mostly free) online shooter Offensive Combat.
Kotick’s character is called “Money Sack” and will be available for purchase of free rental in the game. Offensive Combat will also get a new map called Probetown, which riffs on the popular Call of Duty multiplayer map Nuketown.
Yeah, it’s a publicity stunt — and from a new game overseen by one of Kotick’s former lieutenants, Dusty Welch, no less. Get a new job and make fun of your old boss for profit. The American dream!
“We are taking on the big boys in a lot of ways with Offensive Combat,” Welch told Kotaku in an emailed statement explaining the new content and hyping his game. “The ‘Probetown’ arena and ‘Money Sack’ character are our way of having a little fun with known players in the industry while providing exciting content for our community as we continue our rapid growth. Bobby Kotick has always had personal passion for becoming a Hollywood player — from the early days working with Bruce Willis in Apocalypse, to the DreamWorks and Marvel deals, to today in the Call of Duty TV ads featuring Hollywood celebs instead of visceral action. In our Offensive Combat game, the ‘Money Sack’ character hits it big in ‘Probetown’. Because video gaming is the world’s biggest entertainment business, what better way to realise a personal dream than a parody and being immortalised in a game? That is if you think the Offensive Combat ‘Money Sack’ resembles him at all. What’s sweetly ironic is that he’s not a free to play fan, either.”
Offensive Combat is designed to get attention from stunts like this. It’s a free-to-play shooter supported by microtransactions (anything game-changing can be earned by in game currency if you don’t want to spend real money). Players earn XP and in-game money not just by shooting each other but then by “Pwning” them in various silly, over-the-top ways. This is not a serious shooter. It’s one where you run around in a banana suit, doing the Seinfeld “Elaine Dance” when you “Pwn” someone. Of course you’d be playing as Kotick in this game.
As for the Probetown map, it doesn’t get nuked like Nuketown. “After each ‘Probetown’ match, the alien mother ship annihilates the middle of the map with its powerful death ray,” Welch said. “But don’t read into that too much. :)”
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