Call of Duty and Information Cascade
With the recent release of the newest game in the Call of Duty video game series, the Call of Duty franchise became the “biggest entertainment launch ever,” surpassing even the Star Wars franchise in revenue. This video game franchise has become a phenomenon that most people have at least heard of. As the CEO of Activision correctly stated, “Call of Duty is more than a game. It’s become a major part of the pop cultural landscape.” Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, the most recent installment, was given a rating of 8.5 by Gamespot, a very reputable video game review source. Comparatively, Uncharted 2 and Battlefield: Bad Company, two other video games were given ratings of 9.5 and 9.0 by Gamespot, respectively. However, these two other games have not had the same success as Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, despite being more highly rate. This leads to the question, what makes the Call of Duty franchise so much more commercially successful?
Information cascade seems like a logical cause of the immense popularity of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare. In fact, both types of information cascade seem applicable to the video game. As more and more people bought any of the Call of Duty games, the general trend is to follow the crowd The assumption is that if many people are buying the game, then the game must be a good game, so even more people purchase the game. This trend extends to the multiple games in the video game franchise. As the first couple of games gaining a large following, the more recent games already have strong reputation and therefore sell more and more copies. Also, the more people that play, the more value there is for each individual. The primary pull for these games is the multiplayer option, so if there are more players, the quality of the multiplayer function is increased. Also, if your friends play the game, you are much more likely to buy and also play the game because you and your friends can play together. This strongly increases the value one extracts from the game.