With the recent release of modern Warfare 3 and Battlefield 3 combined with the even more recent and predictable announcement that yes there is another Call of Duty game on the horizon I got to thinking...

No not about how stale the modern militarily shooter genre is or how angry I am at the bros and ten year olds in England that keep yelling at me about how weak my game is but how much I love the Call of Duty series existence. no that isn't sarcasm and I have never spent my money or anyone else s on a Call of Duty game ever...in fact I've played Black Ops on a rental and that's it.

Now as much as I'd like to explain why I love CoD's existence I have to take a moment and address the gimmick of this article. Pokemon hasn't had a major release all that recently so it isn't exactly topical but what have people said about Call of Duty lately? That they should do something? That they should stop making the same game again and again? What are the main detractors to Pokemon? That they should stop making the same game again and again? Now granted that's a very minor thing to have in common but the main take away is that both series are getting stale and it feels like the same game with different Pokemon to collect or in the case of CoD now a days different Perks/weapons/attachments/etc to collect all over again by leveling.

Why hasn't either series made any drastic changes as late? (This doesn't count the new killstreak system in CoD or the story twist in Pokemon Black/White)

Simply because they don't need to and people rarely take risks when they don't need to. Whenever a new CoD game or Pokemon game arrives on store shelves it sells gangbusters and you know what? That's good...would you rather the Video Game industry turned into the Comic Book industry?

Actually that's a bad example seeing as how the Comic Book industry is now trying to take risks in the hopes of revitalizing their industry...actually they aren't...but that's a discussion for a another time on another site. The fact is that some games or properties in general are made exclusively to make money. This isn't a new thing every medium has their various Cash Cows and they can't always be as interesting as The Dark Knight or Uncharted 2. Here is a good set of properties that you've most likely spent a few minutes arguing about how stupid they are: Micheal Bay's Transformers, Twilight, and last but not least Call Of Duty. If the money that a studio makes from any of these "stupid" properties helps to get some new original IP made and shown to a wide audience then is it not worth it? Not every property can be the pinnacle of gaming but can't we let these stale games be used to greater end?

Extra fun fact storytime...

I'm guessing you've played Arkham City, did you like it? Well in that case you should send a thank you card to the Playboy Mansion....

Let's trace Arkham City back to Hugh Hefner shall we? What do you think got Arkham Asylum made? Perhaps it was any of those two Nolan films, why did those Nolan films get made? probably because people knew who Batman was, why did the mainstream know who batman was? The Burton movies most likely combined with the Adam West TV show...

This brings us to the big link, why did they green light that show? Probably some executive thought it a good idea...and that executive was in the company of Hugh Hefner during one of his crazy comic book parties (read:not joking in the slightest). At this party they were watching the old 40s serials and crazy old Hefner had actors dressed up as comic book characters saying phrases commonly used in 60s comics at the time.

Side Note: I know this from a special feature on a dvd except for some other certain facts I gleaned from a tumbler blog when I was googling how to spell Hugh Hefner.)

So basically you have this guy: