Call of Duty

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About

Call of Duty is a first-person shooter video game series owned by Activision and developed by Infinity Ward and Treyarch. In the series, the player assumes the role of an infantry soldier set in various settings, from World War II and Cold War to modern times and the near-future.

History

The first Call of Duty (shown below, left) title was released for the PC on October 29th, 2003. In the game, the player controls an infantry soldier fighting in World War II. The game also offered a limited multiplayer mode, which supported up to eight simultaneous players. Call of Duty 2 (shown below, right), released on October 25th, 2005, featured several new multiplayer game modes, including “deathmatch,” “team deathmatch,” “search & destroy,” “capture the flag” and “headquarters.”

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On November 7th, 2006, the game Call of Duty 3 (shown below, left) was released for the PlayStation 2, PlayStation 3, Wii, Xbox and Xbox 360. The single player campaign takes place during the World War II's Battle of Normandy with British, Canadian, Polish, American and French Resistance forces.

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Modern Warfare Series

On November 7th, 2007, Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare (shown below, left) was released, which was the first of the series to contain modern equipment and many new multiplayer features. It was also the series that skyrocketed the franchise's popularity, leading it to become Activision's next cash cow after Guitar Hero. Following the commercial success of Modern Warfare, a sequel (shown below, right) was released on November 10th, 2009, following by a third installment on November 8th, 2011. It was from this point on that annual releases have been made in the franchise itself.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare

On May 24th, 2019, Twitter user @LongSensationYT tweeted "Call of Duty 2019 is called… Call of Duty: Modern Warfare. I'm not joking"^[14] (shown below, left). Kotaku editor Jason Schreier then tweeted confirming the story was true (shown below, right). He later went on to tweet that it would be considered a "soft reboot" of the Modern Warfare series.^[15] The news was confirmed by Eurogamer.^[16]

Twitter user joked about the news by saying that the next Call of Duty game would be called Modern Warfare: Call of Duty (shown below, left). User @GameOverGreggy tweeted he had no problem with the name, as reusing a name was a common practice in film (shown below, right).

Black Ops Series

On November 11th, 2008, the prologue to the Black Ops series Call of Duty: World at War (shown below, left) was released, taking place during the Pacific Theater and Eastern Front of World War II. On November 9th, 2010, the video game Call of Duty: Black Ops (shown below, right) was released, in which the player controls a special forces operative during the 1960s Cold War. The game was followed by the sequel Call of Duty: Black Ops II on May 1st, 2012.

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Ghosts

On February 7th, 2013, Activision announced that a Call of Duty game was in development for release in the fourth quarter of that year. On April 29th, a mosaic was placed on the Call of Duty website that would populate with additional tiles when users logged into the site with their Twitter or Facebook accounts, revealing the following image:

On May 1st, 2013, a teaser trailer for the game Call of Duty: Ghosts was uploaded to YouTube (shown below, left), which garnered upwards of 11.7 million views and 42,000 comments within the first five months. On May 21st, a gameplay trailer for the game was shown at the Microsoft Xbox One conference (shown below, right).

Reception

On November 11th, 2011, The Telegraph^[6] reported that the Call of Duty franchise had sold over 100 million copies of its various games. By March of 2012, more than 40 million monthly active players had been logged according to Wikipedia.^[1] The Battlefield first-person shooter series is often compared to Call of Duty, prompting the creation of many comparison videos between the two.^[1]^[3]

Many YouTubers have built channels showcasing Call of Duty gameplay videos, in which they demonstrate exceptional skill, playing techniques or humorous commentary.

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Parodies

The series has been the subject of numerous parodies on YouTube. On January 31st, 2009, YouTuber schac5 uploaded a Call of Duty parody by the sketch comedy group The Whitest Kids You Know (shown below, left), gaining over 6.5 million views and 9,900 comments in the next five years. On May 10th, 2010, YouTuber Moozipan Cheese uploaded a video listing 100 criticisms of the game Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 (shown below, right). In the following four years, the video garnered more than 1.95 million views and 15,000 comments.

On January 13th, 2011, YouTuber TryHardNinja uploaded a Call of Duty: Black Ops version of the song "Grenade" by Bruno Mars (shown below, left), which gathered upwards of 6.67 million views and 19,700 comments in the next three years. On December 16th, 2012, YouTuber ilhugueny uploaded an animated tribute to Call of Duty: Black Ops 2, featuring a parody of the song "Gangnam Style" by the Korean pop star Psy. As of October 2013, there are over 490,000 search results for the keywords "call of duty" and "parody" on YouTube.^[7]

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Noob Tube

"Noob Tube" is an Internet slang term used in various first person shooter games to refer to the attachment of an under slung grenade launcher to assault rifles. When Call of Duty was released in November of 2007, the under slung grenade launcher attachment was labeled a "noob tube."

Ramirez, Do Everything!

"Ramirez, Do Everything!" is a catchphrase and image macro series referencing a character from the first-person shooter video game Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. Image macros typically feature a centered picture of Sergeant Foley, a non-playable character in the game, with the word “RAMIREZ!” on the top line, and an order of some kind on the bottom line.

Tango Sucka

"Tango Sucka" is a catchphrase that originates from the unknown Arab OpFor faction in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. It used in place of the more common “Tango Down” to indicate a destroyed hostile but in a more condescending tone.

Call of Duty Dog

The Call of Duty Dog is the nickname given to Riley, a German Shepherd character who was featured in the official trailer for Call of Duty: Ghosts during Microsoft’s Xbox One conference in May 2013, which went viral due to the strange, yet simple, addition and adding something unusual to the ridiculed reveal.

#XboxOrWeRiot

#XboxOrWeRiot is a Twitter hashtag that was launched on June 16th, 2015 in retaliation against a marketing exclusivity deal between Sony and Activision for Black Ops 3 and future CoD titles on the PlayStation 4 and a switch to the console for competitive gaming for the series in hopes that the deal would be canceled.

Trust me PS4 kids you don't want Xbox players switching, our pub players make your best "comp team" look like campaign bots #XboxOrWeRiot
— MLG Grizzly™ (@GrizzMLG) June 16, 2015

Infinite Warfare Reveal Trailer

On May 2nd, 2016, the reveal trailer for Infinite Warfare was released and was met with overwhelmingly negative reception by the gaming community. In less than five days after it was first uploaded, the trailer has accumulated over one million dislikes and is currently the 2nd most disliked video on YouTube at over three million dislikes.

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CheyTac Intervention

The Intervention was a sniper rifle that made an appearance in the Call of Duty titles Modern Warfare 2 and Call of Duty Online. Due to its major presence in the Major League Gaming scene, the gun has been featured in numerous Montage Parodies.

Underage Presence

Though it has predated Call of Duty's current popularity in other FPS's, the franchise was also infamously known for the amount of young children playing the game, often with microphones and foul mouths.

DeAndre Ayton's Sponsored Tweet

On June 20th, 2018, NBA prospect DeAndre Ayton tweeted what was intended to be a sponsored post for the next Black Ops game, but it was clear that Ayton or the person running his Twitter simply copied text from an email negotiating the sponsored post (shown below). The tweet was screenshot by user @Forkparker,^[10] who gained over 2,000 retweets and 10,000 likes.

The gaffe caught the attention of sports and video game media outlets, including Kotaku,^[11] USA Today,^[12] and SBNation.^[13] Ayton deleted the tweet and posted a more typical sponsored tweet that day (shown below).