Ok so It's been a couple years now since the MW2 fiasco and I, as well as others, have noticed a huge shift in how CoD games are marketed pre-release. Starting with MW2, IW purposely witheld alot of information from both the PC and Console CoD communities. Since then we've seen Treyarch do this with Black Ops and I'm expecting IW to do the same with MW3. You may be asking why. Well, I think I have the answer. I could be wrong but you be the judge.

It's a marketing strategy that works. They purposely and strategically release small bits of info at a time because they know we will innevitably attempt to fill in the blanks ourselves. The problem is we, as a customer base, take too hopeful an attitude toward our speculation. Essentially convincing ourselves we want this game long before we even have near enough information to know if we will actually enjoy playing it.

Say what you want about the indy and mainstream industries. You may hold the position that indies are the next best thing or the position that they're a waste of time. You may hold similar opinions on the mainstream games as well. It doesn't matter. Whether you're looking forward to the next CoD game or are openly denouncing any interest in it, the fact is that 4 out of every 5 people openly uninterested in the next CoD game will STILL buy it within the first week of release. This is what Activision and IW/Treyarch are counting on. They know we will hype it up for ourselves so they don't have to. If they leave out a feature we want, and we only assumed it would be there due to our own speculations, they did NOT lie. They said nothing about said feature, we just assumed it would be there. And the hopeful assumptions are where most of the self-hype stem from.

Now don't take my words the wrong way. I am not trying to bash MW3 or hype it. I personally am not interested in it as of now. That may change in the near future as more information is released. But this time I'm taking a much more realistic approach to my speculation. I've learned that this marketing strategy of theirs is much like a game of chess. We're assuming they'll move their rook into position, so we move our bishop to defend. But then they move their knight for the checkmate completely catching us off guard in the process. We can't just assume the best and we can't assume the worst. We seriously need to wake up and look at every bit of information released from more than just the hopeful angles. Read the board and think more than 1 or 2 moves ahead.

If you genuinely are looking forward to MW3 and want to buy it, than by all means do so. I'm not going to tell anyone which games they should buy. I'm only here to help everyone make a more informed decision. We're all different and we all want different things from our games. I may not like MW3 but that doesn't automatically mean that you won't either.

Agreed. As I've said in my thread, I do believe MW3 may even sell more than BF3 on the PC. Gamers as consumers are often idiotic and always falling for the same tricks, so a CoD made by IW will sell, even if it comes with IW.net v2.

No one thought Tony Hawks would fail and look at that game. At some point you can only sell consumers the same thing before they just get tired off it.

Agreed. However, I believe it will be a few more games in the franchise before things take a dramatic drop.

Be easy now. Just because it is not your cup of tea, doesn't mean people are idiots for buying/playing it.

Gamers in general, not just PC gamers. And it is true, me and a great part of the analysts think gamers are idiotic consumers. Why? They fall for the same tricks and often allow themselves to be abused, not defending their rights as consumers. So gamers are the cashcow that does not stop giving because they are the most idiotic of consumers.

Yes, most of us are stupid, just like addicts. You know something isn't good for you but you still buy it, just like MW2 was. Gamers rarely have will power.

I already preooordered it. deeeeerrrrrrrrrrrrppp.
Cant wait to have the same blank with different skins and sounds

MW3 will be a success because it's trendy. It doesn't matter if it's a good game or a bad game. It doesn't matter that it's been the same game for years with little bits put in and big bits taken out. It's marketed well and all the cool kids are doing it. It really doesn't matter what they put out at all. Eventually CoD bashing will be trendy and people will do that too. I imagine this will be the angle DICE uses with BF3.

When I heard JD2020's comment on innovation a while back, I was pretty quickly peeved. But then I look at Homefront and Brink and the way the general community received them and I start to think he's right about some things. In the end, it won't be the devs/pubs that kill off new games and ideas, it will be the community at large.

I can't tell anyone what to do. If you want the game than you want the game. End of story. The point of this post was to express an idea that maybe we shouldn't convince ourselves we want a game before we know anything about it.

Great example: Treyarch was touting Mod Tools for Black Ops. We got so excited that we convinced ourselves we wanted the game for the Mod Tools despite the fact that the only information about them was that they were coming. We had no idea how versatile the tools would be, what you could or couldn't do, whether we could run mods on unranked servers or not... etc. Now the Black Ops mod tools have been confirmed for Tuesday I think and Black Ops has already been updated with a Mods section on the main menu. So now it's clear that mods will only run Client side. No server side mods. This could mean a couple things, off the top of my head at least (without looking at it from a few more angles).

A) Mods on servers would have to be downloaded and run by all players in the server, configured identically amongst all of them.
B) More likely is that Mods can only be run in Private Match, and maybe combat training but I doubt it.

So, there you go. The most likely scenario as of now is that we will only be able to run our mods in a P2P private match.\

There is also the possibility that, when they say mod tools, they mean we can customise weapon skins on the client side and thats it. Much like with CS:S where everyone else in the server sees the stock weapon, even when spectating, but the viewer model is customised for the person using the custom skin.

So alot of us got ourselves excited and now it seems the mod tools we're getting aren't nearly as versatile as we thought. And it isn't Treyarchs fault either. They never said anything about any of this. We just assumed we would get more, convincing ourselves that we could run our Pro Mod, eXtreme+ mod or Zombies mod on an unranked server and it would be great.

What we need to stop doing is filling in the blanks with hopeful speculation and pretending like its fact.