Recently, the gaming industry unlocked the social media landscape as a focus group. Infinity Ward, developers of last year’s smash hit Call of Duty 4; have set up their own Twitter handle and have begun to solicit ideas from gamers.
Call of Duty 4 is a wildly popular game, selling over 10 million copies across three platforms (as of June 2008) and counting. It continues to be among the leaders of the pack in Xbox LIVE play, ranking third in the last reporting week. The game was released November 5, 2007, yet over 14 months and one sequel (Call of Duty: World at War) later, it still ranks in the top 5 most played games on LIVE. In addition, Microsoft recently reported that LIVE reaches 17 million people, so being in the top 5 most played list proves this game is a smash hit! Infinity Ward says that there have been over 10 million unique users to use the Xbox LIVE service alone and that doesn’t address those that have played on Playstation 3 (around 4 million) and PC. The game was also showered with critical praise. Call of Duty 4 received an average of 94% on both consoles and 93% on PC. End of the year awards and nominations were plentiful: Game of The Year, Best Graphics, Best Action Game, Console Game of The Year, and the list goes on.
Call of Duty: World at War went back to the franchise’s previous developer, Treyarch (Call of Duty 2 and Call of Duty 3), but the title was not received as well as the Infinity Ward version. The sixth installment sees Infinity Ward holding the reigns once again, likely back in the modern setting; so, what they’ve done is launched their Twitter account at http://twitter.infinityward.com/. Here, developers pose open questions to gamers in the hopes of getting some responses. 6,202 followers later, Infinity Ward are inundated with requests and suggestions for their first two questions: “What are your top feature requests for the Modern Warfare 2 community site?” and “Name one thing you'd like to see in Modern Warfare 2?”
Building Buzz and Reception
In addition to soliciting fan’s opinions, there’s a deeper reason for Infinity Ward to do this: to create buzz. There is little to no information floating around about Call of Duty 6. Gamers know the game exists (its critical reception practically assured a follow up after all), but little more. A presentation on in-game advertisingteased the script (on Twitter no less). Infinity Ward set this up and let it spread virally, and sure enough, it made the biggest gaming sites; 1Up, Joystiq, Kotaku. Working with technically-apt gamers plays into their favor as well, as gamers jumped on the opportunity to try to get their ideas across. The page has 6202 followers and the questions have received over 80,000 answers. And while “Armoured bears should be available after a 20 kill streak” doesn’t necessarily help the developers, the reality is most posts were serious. It’s very possible we see some Twitter originated elements in the final game. mentioned it and weeks later Robert Bowling
Updates and Interactive Media
There has been an interesting shift from message boards to Twitter. This is a new avenue to communicate with gamers and stay in the loop for Infinity Ward and game developers in general. Game companies have long relied on the message boards to create an open forum for feedback, as I’ve personally seen in our work with 2K Sports. Developers of the latest iteration of the leading NBA franchise, NBA 2K9 rely heavily on their forums for feedback and suggestions. The complaints, issues and concerns section allows users to post their problems to be heard by developers. These issues, are looked at by the design team and updates released. Gamers are able to affect the game and improve features following a title’s release.
2K also instituted and interesting feature, “The Insider,” using their Living Rosters feature update the rosters and the season goes on, creating players that may have popped out of nowhere, and updating players ratings based on how they are performing. So, no more getting beat by Stephon Marbury on the Knicks, and maybe there’s a chance JaVale McGee, of my hometown Wizards, will be a force as the updates keep coming. Another area on the forums providers players a chance to discuss the ratings and give the developer feedback, arguing that one 10 rebound game doesn’t make LeBron James a 96 rating in rebounding or how many points Kobe’s shooting accuracy should increase for scoring 61 points.
It’s this wonderful feature that makes games a unique medium. Viewers can’t write Zack Snyder halfway through Watchmen and tell him that the movie needs more Dr. Manhattan. That situation is impossible. However, if an issue causes a game to crash, it can be fixed. Because the medium is interactive and updatable, developers are willing to reach out online and solicit reactions. Games exist to give people what they want to play. This enables the producers and developers to enact a bit of revisionist history about their product. What doesn’t work can be fixed and what does work can be amplified. No other media area can boast that kind of claim.
Are we seeing a paradigm shift in the way that companies solicit opinions from gamers? No, right now we’re seeing each platform work simultaneously. Infinity Ward still maintains their own message boards which Compete.com assesses have over 40,000 UMVs. Like the Call of Duty shotgun, Infinity Ward is simply going for a scattershot approach here. This is classic statistics, make the sample size as big as possible and you’ll have the most effective picture of what the people want. This is one battle that Infinity Ward doesn’t need one side to win.