This week saw Activision reactivate the online multiplayer servers for several Call of Duty titles on the Xbox 360, and in a matter of days they have attracted over 200,000 people all eager to relive their glory days in the blockbuster shooter. As someone who also grew up as the series’ greatest successes were taking over the world, I’m half tempted to join them.
Servers have encountered a few capacity problems at the time of writing because so many of us are trying to jump into online lobbies first constructed over a decade ago. It still seems the halcyon days are still being recaptured, though, if you don’t mind the occasional hacker or odd problems that occasionally cause matches to spontaneously implode of their own accord. To most, this price is well worth paying. It’s hard to overstate how nostalgic some people are for Call of Duty.
Back in 2021, a few friends and I made a habit of jumping into Modern Warfare 2 a couple of times a week. Often we’d struggle to find games and would resort to custom lobbies, but we still managed to spend hours playing our favourite childhood shooter with admittedly worse accuracy. We’d use it as an excuse to catch up after work, capture clips for cringe-inducing montages, and just have a good time. It recaptured moments of our youth previously thought lost, and all through the lens of a video game still available on modern platforms. Activision fixing the servers, or at least making them functional, is allowing thousands more to do the same without compromise. Call of Duty was a game we grew up with, and couldn’t avoid as teenagers because it was so culturally dominant. Things were so different back then.
When you look at Call of Duty today, it has become a live service obsessed with seasonal updates and battle royale with a yearly reskin taking the place of each annual release. Yes, there is a new game each year with a new campaign and new mechanics, but we’ve got to a point where this now blends seamlessly with the existing experience instead of changing up for the better. It instils a mundane status quo, and one it seems many fans like me have abandoned in favour of games like Fortnite or Apex Legends. That’s not to say Call of Duty isn’t worth playing these days, but it actively hinders itself whenever it tries to be different. The focus is on keeping us invested in Warzone instead of taking risks, and that’s a bummer.
Back in school, the speculation and anticipation for each new Call of Duty was palpable, and there was a passing of the torch leading up to every November as we tried our best to reach max level on previous games before moving onto the next. This cycle began with the original Modern Warfare and ended with Black Ops 2, with roughly half a decade of my youth circling around a single game that brought me and my friends together.
I was one of those weird teenagers who played other games and would come into registration each morning talking about Final Fantasy and Metal Gear Solid. I also didn’t have a lot of sex. While I wanted to be a contrarian who didn’t enjoy Call of Duty, I knew it was worth putting aside my weird biases to have fun with my friends. It was a blast, and I have to imagine the majority of folks now jumping back into Call of Duty’s older entries had the exact same experience.
I have to wonder if Activision is looking at these current numbers and comparing them to the popularity of Warzone, most likely conjuring up ways to weaponize our nostalgia in the name of capitalism. Part of me just knows that I’d chomp at the bit for an updated release of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2’s multiplayer, especially after the campaign was brought back to life with such amazing results. If anything, I’m surprised it took this long. With thousands happy to play a game from decades ago instead of live service behemoths chasing new trends, it seems there is an inherent value to going back to the basics in service of reliving the past.
Call of Duty might have been the clichéd popular game when I was a teenager, but it was also the game that very few could measure up to. It dominated classroom chats and late nights huddled up by the television, either on split-screen or with a scratchy mic in private lobbies dedicated to petty insults and quick-scoping. Video games were simpler back then, and have evolved to fit where technology has advanced and how as players our everyday habits came to shift alongside them. Maybe I’m just getting old and don’t want to admit it.