The creators of Call of Duty have finally found an answer to a growing problem in the COD franchise. The only income a company used to make from creating a video game was the initial sales of the game itself. Call of Duty games have traditionally released in November, just before the holidays. Activision and other COD makers would see a huge increase in sales at the end of each year, but that’s about it. So how can video game makers continue to squeeze money out of gamers all year long? The answer: supply falls.
First introduced in Advanced Warfare in 2014, Supply Drops allowed the player to play the lottery to “win” better weapons, cooler camos, and stylish virtual gear. Sledgehammer Games, the creator of AW, put this feature into the game as an added bonus for players who played a lot (and earned ‘keys’ to open supply drops with each match played), or spent real money on “COD”. Points”. Each opening of a supply drop produced three items of various rarities. Players can use their virtual ‘keys’ or COD points to open a common (lower chance of getting a rare item) or rare (higher chance of getting a rare item) supply drop. to get a rare item.) With each opening, players received items to further customize their character or weapon to show off to their friends…and that’s why the Supply Drops were so successful (and honestly, pretty brilliant). Video game creators tapped into the competitive and somewhat immature minds of gamers Players can now bypass the arduous task of getting 250 headshots for a rare camo by buying more COD points It took time and skill out of the equation to money exchange, so cash poured in.
The supply drops were so successful that Treyarch and Infinity Ward, the creators of Black Ops III and Infinite Warfare respectively, continued the trend. Call of Duty franchise creators could now continue to earn revenue throughout the life of the game, rather than just when a person buys the game from the store. According to Activision’s Q4 2016 earnings call, the company earned an additional $3.6 billion through in-game content sales (mainly from COD: Black Ops III and Overwatch). That is incredible!
However, some players might say that supply drops are ruining the game. I agree, especially for the new CoD game, Infinite Warfare. In Infinite Warfare, weapon variants, or different (and statistically better) versions of weapons, make playing public matches that much more frustrating. For example, Erad used to be one of my favorite weapons in the game. I played with the common (base) variant, and was pretty good at it… until I came face to face with a player who had the (rarest) legendary variant of the weapon, called ‘cyclopean’. It literally fires a LASER BEAM instead of normal bullets. I didn’t have a chance. I was instantly killed by the same player over and over again. I got so frustrated with this match that I ended up not using my original Erad variant ever again. I knew that if I wanted to stand a chance of winning firefights, I needed legendary weapon variants, which are pretty hard to come by without opening supplies.
Supply drops are a hot topic in the Call of Duty community. They have been a huge hit for video game creators as money has never been more plentiful; however, they give an unfair advantage to players who spend more money. I like the old days of CoD4 where the only way to get the rare camos was to play and hone your skill, not by buying rarer items.