Tag Archives: Call of Duty

New Call of Duty to Be Set in Vietnam

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The official announcement of a Vietnam Call of Duty game was a long awaited confirmation of a rumor which had been simmering for months prior.

It was officially announced today that Call of Duty: Vietnam will be the next installment in the Call of Duty series, according to VentureBeat.com.  Call of Duty Vietnam, which will be possibly the biggest name among historic military tactical series to set a game in Vietnam, is among only a small group of such games set in Vietnam.

Call of Duty: Vietnam which is expected to be released on PC and all major consoles—including the PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 and Nintendo Wii—may help to boost the popularity of historic tactical games focused within the context of the Vietnam War, according to one view among industry analysts.  Seven years ago, games with this particular historic focus were all but nonexistent.  In 2004, however, the release of Shellshock: ‘Nam ’67 from Eidos Interactive for the original Xbox console marked the first video game console release of a Vietnam game, and was was followed shortly thereafter by the release of Conflict: Vietnam for the PlayStation 2.

One reason which can be easily cited as to why it took until now for a franchise with the popularity of the Call of Duty series to release an entry set in Vietnam or for why it took until 2004 for any Vietnam game to reach home consoles is the political controversy surrounding the war effort.  While it had been less of a challenge to portray the war in movies in the past without creating too much of a climate for controversy, it was more of a challenge to do the same for a tactical game in which the player must assume an active role in a war effort toward which many were strongly politically opposed.  That political tension, however, appears now as though it is becoming less of a factor in the context of historical tactical games.

Rob Troy and The Ant Farm Use Eminem to Market Modern Warfare 2

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Rob Troy with The Ant Farm ad agency in L.A.

Rob Troy, the executive creative director at The Ant Farm – a high-profile ad agency in Los Angeles – managed to reach new heights of advertisement efficiency as he succeeded in using a commercial to inspire an emotional connection between the gamer and the game. In this case, Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2, a game that would sweep up the competition in its modern combat genre, had the passionate lyrics of marshall mathers (aka Eminem), to help it make a lasting impression; after all, just the breath-taking visual effects, or the wicked arsenal of weapons couldn’t move 15 million units all alone. Without Mr. Troy‘s commercial vision, Activision Blizzard probably wouldn’t have gotten near their current reported earnings: $1 billion.

The goal was a hard sell: draw in a larger audience than the original by guaranteeing a bigger and more bad-ass experience. At the M16 game marketing conference, Troy and his team revealed their reasoning behind their brilliant publicity generator. They explained how they began collecting artwork, animated scenes and portions of the script several months before the game’s November release, which they then strung  together into a series depicting furious combat. They speculated that many American gamers would feel like they were defending the Land of the Free, since much of the action is set on U.S. soil.

Some of the footage used in the ad depicted a massacre

Considering the record-sales of the game, it’s plain to see that this somewhat stereotypical assumption was indeed, 100 percent correct.