For all its flaws, capitalism is at least a fairly simple economic system. You make something for X money, and sell it for Y money. As long as Y is bigger than X, you make a profit, and thus win capitalism. However, humanity has found a way to complicate things: Kickstarter. Essentially, this flips the system on its head. You sell for Y money first, then make for X money. For struggling artists or independent creators trying to get ideas off the ground, it’s a neat idea. For a blockbuster franchise likeCall of Dutyto take advantage of this system is a disgrace.
When I heard Call of Duty was getting a board game, I’ll admit I was a little curious. The creative name, Call of Duty: The Board Game, is surely enough to sell anyone on it. I love board games based on existing properties, because they often try to shoehorn in rules and references that don’t always fit. I have a Jaws game, The Queen’s Gambit’s game (it’s not chess),The Simpsons, Rear Window,Black Panther,Stranger Things, Squid Game, two differentJurassic Parkgames, two different Sherlock games, and despite only seeing the first Fast & Furious movie while not particularly caring for it, I’m eager to try the Fast & Furious game. The player pieces are cars! You steal a truck, or something! How silly.
Related:Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 Is A Sickening Exercise In Manufacturing Consent
I haven’t played Call of Duty for a few years now, being one of the weirdos who was in it for the campaigns more than the online play and the freedom to call people slurs. But still, the board game intrigued me. How do you make something like Call of Duty into a board game? There are military board games, but they tend to be more tactical, closer to an RTS game than the FPS arcade action of Call of Duty. When I headed over to the website to check it out, all I was greeted by was those green bubble letters.
To be clear, I think Kickstarter is a great idea. It’s similar to how artists used to have patrons, leading to the Renaissance. Obviously the 154,367 RPG 5e systems, 346,765 card games, 128,535 indie visual novels, and 453,178 board games where you play as a vampire are not the second coming of the Renaissance. However, the system does allow people with ideas, talent, and no money to leverage these first two categories into being paid upfront, resulting in art being created that otherwise never could have existed.
But as a series with a 20 year history, backed by a large corporation, Call of Duty has all the money and exposure it could ever need. It is taking advantage of a system designed to help artists who just need a break. It’s also abusing the trust of its customers by asking them to pay upfront for a product that should be relatively simple. All you need is to make the components, put them in a box, ship that box to stores, and sell it. It’s exactly what Call of Duty does millions of times a year with disks in video game boxes. It has the infrastructure to do all this easily. Why are we being asked to front them the money?
What you have is the biggest video game in the world telling customers ‘We’ve made a board game. Well, kinda. We’re going to start making a board game in a few months, but only if enough of you give us the money upfront. All I can tell you right now is the box looks like this (box art subject to change)’. It’s taking oxygen away from people who might need Kickstarter to survive, since I imagine the game will be heavily promo’d on the site, all to ensure it has the widest profit margin possible with the fewest overheads, at the expense of its most loyal fans.
Call of Duty is not the only one using Kickstarter when it has no right to. Two years ago,The Witchergames announced some tie-in comic books, which were also sold through Kickstarter. That too wasa shameful attempt to take advantage of customer loyaltyby making them pay up front, both increasing the prestige and rarity of the books while reducing costs from producing surplus. It has also become the norm in board game circles, but given Call of Duty makes significantly more money than the average board game company, it should also be held to a higher standard.
This whole affair should embarrass Call of Duty, but it won’t. The game feels like a cash grab, and selling it via Kickstarter while currently revealing nothing about it only makes that much more obvious. It’s not the worst thing Call of Duty has done recently, but that’s not exactly a high bar either.
