No, but what it tells the developers (or at least the publishers) is that what they're doing is working.
Which lets them continually do the same as people imitate the product (such as Homefront), creating a monotonous and poor medium.
But this isn't anything new at all! There's been several phases where a single genre was more dominant than others. There's been a boom of:
- Platformers (caused by the success of the original Super Mario Brothers and later the first Sonic game, which started a whole craze of "cool" hipster mascots all on its own); also something of note were Action games that were largely inspired by the first Zelda
- Point and Click Adventure games on the PC (during the 90s, mostly through games made by Lucas Arts and Sierra)
- Fighting Games (due to the popularity of both Mortal Kombat and Street Fighter 2)
- J-RPGs (a little harder to pin-point, but you'll notice there were many more J-RPGs during the SNES and Playstation generations as opposed to today)
- and of course, the modern boom of FPS games
Point being, certain genres being popular (and even imitating popular games) is perfectly normal. If anything, one could make the argument that this is a good thing, because people that like this sort of game have more to choose from.
With a negative impact of the game industry in general and I think we can both agree that it doesn't set up a good face for gaming in general.
Good business? Fine, but have some care as well.
Good business in the sense that getting more customers is the primary goal. And since they still seem to outsell each other each year (for now anyway), we can conclude that yes, it is good business.
Look at Homefront. I even provided that example I believe.
Please, stop being so hung up about Homefront like it was the only bad game that exists. One single bad game is going to do nothing in the grand scheme of things.
Or where DLCs started overriding expansions and how charges were pressed -- how content was held back even though it was created before release so that it could be sold as a DLC.
Now we're moving away from COD and moving to the topic of DLC, which is a different can of worms altogether. COD wasn't even the one that started it. It was Bethesda and their infamous horse armor, which everyone falls over backwards to praise for Skyrim, despite the fact that the Elder Scrolls series is largely unchanged at its core too. A double standard.
Don't get me wrong, Skyrim is a fun game. But if COD gets critiqued for "never changing period", why isn't Bethesda getting similar flak, even a little bit?
COD is only a miniscule problem compared to the ACTUAL problems, of which the way DLC is currently handled is one of them (and even THAT is not the biggest).
Which is understandable -- but no one seems to have peaked the slightest interest in the subject and thus there's little need to elaborate what came before has fallen on deaf ears.
And how could they if you don't present any arguments, atleast in short form? Even someone that is interested in discussion won't filter a massive thread for your posts.
Then what isn't of great design?
Something that doesn't appeal to anyone. Similarly, great design can be measured as something that appeals to a variety of people.
It doesn't need to be a game -- virtually ANYTHING can be entertaining, it's just that games (oh hey, I remember saying this previously on the CoD thread) are of higher quality and should have standards beyond what is currently presented as the head of the market. Call of Duty does not pertain to the title of "Triple A".
Keep in mind that the only thing that gets reported in news outlets outside the industry (if at all) is the fact they keep selling ridiculous amounts, even more than movies like Avatar, which seems to present a rather good picture actually.
As for AAA, that depends on your definition. THe term is used more to signify a game made by large publishers, with large dev teams and big popularity (all of which apply to COD), instead of the actual "quality" of the game.
Oh, and I've even explained how imbalance could be seen -- the snipers. The snipers. The snipers.
An even smaller problem, seeing as balancing seems much more relevant to the competitive side of a community, which will almost always be in the minority.
The industry has problems. But COD is the result, rather than the cause.
