Hating on Call of Duty is a sacred pastime for most gamers. As much as people loved and adored the series when Modern Warfare came out, most of them hate it at least twice as much now, and that was before the Trailer for Infinite Warfare was released. Now, we’ve reached a whole new unprecedented level of hate.
Just take a look at the YouTube trailer for the game. It’s already amassed an incredible 1.77 million dislikes, easily making it the most disliked trailer on YouTube and the fourth most disliked video overall. It might not reach Justin Bieber’s number one spot anytime soon, but it’ll probably replace Rebecca Black’s “Friday” for the number two spot by the end of the week. And it’s done all of that in less than 10 days.
For comparison’s sake, take a look at last year’s Black Ops III reveal trailer. It has over 5 million more views, 90,000 more likes and about 1.7 million less dislikes. Those numbers help to put in perspective just how outrageous the reaction to Infinite Warfare has been. That’s not to say that the reaction is unwarranted, just that we’ve really never seen anything quite like it before.
If you watched the Black Ops III trailer, there’s also one other thing you’ll likely have noticed, it was way better than Infinite Warfare’s. In all of this, the one thing that Activision did most wrong was put out a trailer that just wasn’t very good. It’s busy, loud, shaky, confusing and overall just doesn’t look or sound very good. What Activision did was give gamers the ammo they need to shoot them with, and EA provided them with the guns.
EA’s Battlefield 1 is another reason why the hate for Infinite Warfare is so overwhelming. For many gamers, it represents everything that Activision has done wrong. The trailer looks visually stunning and sounds great too, but most importantly, the game is set in the past, where gamers have been begging to go for a long time now. Virtually everything Activision has done wrong with Infinite Warfare, EA has done right with Battlefield 1, and you know if gamers are so strongly supporting EA, then they must be doing something right.
To be completely honest though, the trailers for each game aren’t as bad or good as their likes and dislikes suggest. The Battlefield 1 trailer has at least a million more likes than most of the best trailers on YouTube and Infinite Warfare has about 1.6 million more dislikes than even the worst. The real reason that they each have received so much attention is that gamers have turned liking and disliking each into a competition and a game. The comments sections are riddled with things like “Back for my daily dislike,” and “Let’s see how many dislikes we can get!” Many users it seems are determined to get the Infinite Warfare trailer up to at least 2 million dislikes with people celebrating each time they hit another 100,000.
Of course, not everyone is hating on Infinite Warfare. The trailer does have over 300,000 likes already and according to Activision CEO Eric Hirshberg, “the number of likes per view on the Infinite Warfare reveal trailer are also the highest we’ve ever seen.”
Not all of the hate is aimed towards the trailer though. Many people are also extremely angry about the Modern Warfare debacle. When it was announced a couple weeks ago that Modern Warfare Remastered would be offered alongside Infinite Warfare for $20 extra, reactions were mixed. Many people were excited to play a remastered version of arguably the best COD game ever, but others saw it as nothing more than a marketing ploy to book Infinite Warfare sales.
Most people assumed that Modern Warfare Remastered would also be offered as a standalone game sometime in the future. As of now though, Activision says that “you must own Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare in order to get Call of Duty: Modern Warfare Remastered,” providing another point of contention for gamers.
In fairness, Infinite Warfare could turn out to be a great game that just started off with a really bad trailer. Infinity Ward is taking a chance by bringing the series into space and it just might pay off. They are the ones who first introduced us to modern warfare after all, and plenty of people thought that was a mistake to begin with too. Don’t forget, a couple big time game designers and writers from Naughty Dog were on board for this game as well, so there’s a good chance the story at least will be a whole lot better than it has been in the past. The game might not be going where most gamers had hoped, but it certainly is taking a chance and going somewhere new.
According to Hirshberg, it isn’t all bad news for Infinite warfare. He told investors that despite all of the dislikes, “pre-orders are off to a very strong start.” He also reassured investors by reminding them of the Black Ops 2 reveal trailer, saying it “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 went on to become our most successful game ever.”
At the end of the day, gamers as a whole just love to hate. It’s easy enough for them to find something wrong even with a really good game and trailer. Now when you throw in the fact that it’s a COD game and that it really just doesn’t look that good, you’ve got a recipe for disaster. Not to mention, having Battlefield 1 there constantly adding fuel to the fire certainly doesn’t help either. Infinite Warfare is facing an uphill battle from now until the game’s release on November 4, and it’ll have to be pretty great then if Call of Duty wants to keep its place atop the FPS throne.