Clans: The Unsung Heroes Of The Shooter Genre
Clan gaming started to take off last generation on consoles with Socom: US Navy Seals. Prior to that it was primarily a PC affair with Counter Strike and the Quake series leading the way. Since the dawn of online shooters we have seen many bad shooters and few extraordinary ones. The games that are successful now a days are the ones that have a perfected formula balancing of both, singleplayer and multiplayer. Few examples of this, perfect harmony if you will are Call Of Duty 4: Modern Warfare and Uncharted 2: Among Thieves. They gave you a very indulging experience in the singleplayer and the multiplayer was amazing with almost never ending fun. To this day people still play Call Of Duty 4 and some even prefer it over the newer Modern Warfare 2.
There are some games that are bad, if at most mediocre shooters and don’t deserve to sell more than to recoup their losses. Like Socom: Confrontation, FEAR 2: Project Origin, 25 To Life on the Playstation 2, and Socom 2. All of these games sold very, well despite being mediocre at best. Why you may ask? Because of clans, clans are what sold those games, the developers promising amazing experiences and jaw dropping visuals to boot but in the end they were either clones of their predecessors or horrible games in general. Some like, Socom 2 was followed by another iteration in the series only a year later! Everyone bought both of them up and some were sad that they picked up Socom 2. We see this happening even now, year after year Call Of Duty series releases another title and people keep buying it up because they want to compete in the online. There are probably hundreds of people out there who haven’t even played a single campaign mode since the Call Of Duty debuted onto next gen systems. Which is sad I found the campaigns to be the most enjoying part of COD4 and WAW. I’m sure people will buy Bioshock 2 not just for the name, but for the online.
I may hit a nerve with some of you out there, but I believe that the only reason that Halo 3 and all its iterations survived was because of the heavy online and clan support. Halo Wars had very little clan interaction if any at all, it surely didn’t sell half as many as Halo 3. Halo 3 was the first next gen title to promise amazing multiplayer and to this day is still one of the top played games in the country. It is the premier game for tournaments for MLG and Gamebattles. Lets not forget the ONLINE ONLY games that are 100% based around clan support, like Warhawk, M.A.G and Socom Confrontation. They had their good points but they weren’t worth the full price of admission.
Well, there’s not much more I can say. For as long as there are clans there will be crappy shooters that try to rob gamers of their cash. As long as good games keep making money with the same old formula over and over again it will continue the vicious cycle. I would love to tell you that there is not going to be a crappy bug ridden online game like Quake Wars: Enemy Territory ever again but that’s not going to happen. So, who wants to go play me in some Bad Company 2 Beta! Haha!
Anthony (ShadyDevil) DeCicco
Short URL: http://thegamershub.net/?p=3098
Posted by AnthonyD
on Jan 29 2010. Filed under Editorials.
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I wouldn’t group Socom 2 in with the “mediocre” category. I think it was a great game compared to the competition that was out during it’s prime. Good points though.
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