Call Of Duty is a video game franchise that originally started out as PC game, but later expanded to consoles. The game franchise has spawned many spin-offs, and has spent nearly 15 years as a leader in the highly competitive video game market.
Here are 24 battle tested facts about Call Of Duty.
1. Rolling Back Time
COD Black Ops was not only a huge success, it helped others regain some momentum. The game trailer featured the Rolling Stones hit “Gimme Shelter". This lead to a temporary boost in Rolling Stones music sales.
2. Modern Legend
COD: Modern Battle 3 is the fastest selling game of all time. The game sold 8.8 million copies in its first month, breaking every record set prior. In fact, the previous record was held by another game in the franchise, COD: Black Ops. It’s always good to stand on the shoulders’ of giants.
3. Money Maker
Modern Battle 3 made 775 million dollars in its first 5 days. That’s more than Avatar, the highest grossing film of all time. In fact, the COD franchise is worth more than Avatar, Titanic, and The Avengers combined.
4. Time Is Money
Not only is COD a huge money maker, it’s also a giant time sink. According to information compiled over multiple platforms, Activision found that global players cumulatively spend the equivalent of 1900 years playing the game, every day. In the real world, empires have come and gone in that time.
5. Drone On And On
Unmanned Aerial Vehicle, or UAV is a tool used to locate enemies on the map in COD. To avoid detection, players will often shoot down UAV’s. In fact, over 813 million UAV’s have been shot down across the entire franchise. Given the cost of a real life drone ($4.3 million), the cost of all those shot down UAV’s would be $3.4 quadrillion. That’s enough money to cover America’s federal budget over 5,000 times.
6. Time Is Money Part 2
So we know how much time is put into COD on a daily basis, but how much time have gamers racked up over the years? An astronomical 25 billion hours has been put into the game. That’s 2.85 million years, more time than humans have been around for.
7. Man Power
Activision has logged over 5 million players at once during the days of Black Ops and Modern Battle 2. That’s more than the population of Los Angeles. That’s more than the population of every US city, with the exception of New York. Success really is a numbers game.
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8. Life Like
COD has always mixed in historical facts with fictitious story lines for their games, including using historical figures. Lawyers of the former Nicaraguan dictator Manuel Noriega filed a lawsuit against the game for using his likeness without permission, and portraying him as a murderous kidnapper. A murderous, kidnapping dictator? That’s unheard of.
9. Razor Sharp
A research paper published in Current Biology stated that people aged 18-25 who played action-shooters like COD had faster decision making skills. Next time someone tells you to play less COD, tell them you’re working on yourself.
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10. Bear With Me
One of the longest Running COD Easter Eggs is a stuffed teddy bear. Many gamers have thought up countless theories as to why the bear appears in every game, but no one knows for sure. One theory is that one of the game producer's daughter passed at a young age and this teddy bear was her favorite toy.
11. Propagandamn!
Footage of a destroyed, battle torn NYC was shown in a North Korean propaganda film. The footage was actually a cutscene from Modern Battle 3. That’s just hilarious.
12. Focus
Researchers found that people were better at finding target images in cluttered pictures after extended COD sessions. They also found that the game also helped with spacial awareness, improving your ability to drive a vehicle. We don’t recommend you mention this when doing your driver’s license test.
13. Some Men Left Behind
Though the franchise has released a staggering 15 titles, there are four that have never seen the light of day. These include COD:Vietnam, COD: Roman Wars, COD: Devil's brigade and COD: Tactics. These games were all moving away from the standard first person shooter offering a turn based game (tactics), a third person shooter (Vietnam) and top down army control (Roman Wars).
14. Not In The Cards
COD also almost made it into the tabletop gaming realm with its very own tradable card game. Despite getting a lot of positive feedback, the game was scrapped by developer Upper Deck Entertainment for unknown reasons.
15. Go Time
In 2012, Australian gamer Okan Kaya set a Guinness world record by playing COD for 135 hours straight. He was allowed a 10 minute break for every hour of gameplay, and he was allowed to bank those breaks to rack up a few hours of sleep during the session. The rest of it was powered by snacks and energy drinks.
16. Made In China
COD has a China only version of the game called Call Of Duty Online. Players are able to modify the appearance of their avatar through microtransactions, but the game itself is free to play. The game also has its own version of the zombies mode called Cyborg Rising. Something must have been lost in translation.
17. Collectibles
COD has had many collectors’ items released over the years, but none have been as awesome as the limited edition Jeeps. Spanning several years, the COD Jeep Wranglers were branded with the COD logo inside and out. The price of DLC is getting way out of hand!
18. Lend Your Voice
The franchise has had many famous actors lend their voices to the characters. Brandon Routh, Sam Worthington, Michael Keaton, Gary Oldman, Ed Harris, Kevin Spacey, and even Ice Cube have all voiced characters in the franchise, though not all once.
19. Back To Your Roots
Though the game has veered away from its WWII roots. Robert Bowling, the creative director for Infinity Ward (a COD developer), said that the franchise could very well return to the battlefields of WWII in the future. Who doesn’t like aiming up Nazis?
20. Ghostly
Many of the games feature ghostly easter eggs. Disembodied voices can be heard in several of the games, and even ghost characters can be encountered in certain secret rooms. We won’t tell you which ones though, you’ll have to figure that out yourself. That or you can just google it, but where’s the fun in that?'
21. Hollywood
Actors aren’t the only ones who get to help bring the COD games to life. Paul Haggis, the writer of Million Dollar Baby wrote script for Modern Battle 3, while David S. Goyer, the writer of Batman Begins wrote the script for Black Ops 2.
22. M For Mature
Modern Battle was the first game in the franchise to earn an M rating, despite the game’s depiction of brutality throughout the series. The previous games were set in the past, and historical brutality is educational.
23. Collateral Damage
In the German and Japanese versions of Modern Battle 2, players cannot hurt civilians. During the controversial airport level, the player simply watches as his comrades ending the unarmed civilians. If the player kills a civilian, the level restarts. This probably isn’t a bad thing.
24. Undeadening
The super popular Zombies mode of the game zfirst appeared in CoD: World At Battle. The German zombie ending minigame was so popular, it got its own game, and has been included as an optional play mode ever since. Everyone loves zombies.
25. It's Just a Game, Man.
A middle-aged man charged round to the house of a schoolboy and throttled him after his online Mark Bradford's character was gunned down by a 13-year-old, and "lost it" when the youngster goaded him over his online end. He confronted the youngster at the boy's friend's house by placing his hands round the schoolboy's neck, leaving him with scratches and bruising. Bradford admitted the attack was "moment of madness" as the child "would not shut up". Bradford pleaded guilty to one count of assault.
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