Introduction:

To date, the Modern Warfare series has sold over 15 million copies, but conventional wisdom cannot explain why this is.  There is nothing particularly new or ground breaking about the game.  It is a first person shooter set in the modern day, something that has been done before in video games, and something that Modern Warfare doesn’t do exceptionally better than other games.  The games’ graphics, gameplay, and story are only above average¹ and do not give any hints to why it has become the blockbuster it is.  Modern Warfare’s popularity is simply without any obvious explanation.  Therefore, we have dared to dig deeper.  As entitled by our PhDs in Gamesology, we have designed and executed a legitimate, not-fake, scientifically sound study attempting to answer: Why is Modern Warfare so damned popular?

Methodology:

Three certified game analysts were each given (1) one Xbox 360 game console, (2) one copy of Modern Warfare 2, (3) one case of Mountain Dew: Code Red and, (4) one log book.   The analysts were then instructed to play the single player portion of Modern Warfare 2² and note every time a “popular instance” appeared in the game.  For the purpose of this study, a “popular instance” is defined as a totally sweet moment in which one would be forced to say “duuude” and take one hand off the controller (right or left) and fist bump one’s bro, if indeed one’s bro were sitting right next to them.

We then classified every identified popular instance into several categories based on an amended version of the Namco-Activision Popular Interactive Situations and Themes Scale (NAPIST) ³ [figure 1].  Each categorized instance was assigned a rating score using the NAPIST scale.  We then averaged all these scores to get the overall “popularity rating” for the game.

Figure 1: Amended Namco-Activision Popular Interactive Situations and Themes Scale (2004)

Popularity Rating (out of 10)	Situation/Theme
9.9	Female breasts, naked or mostly naked
9.7	Characters playing football/talking about football
9.5	Explosions, directed away or towards player
9.2	More blood than could be physically possible
9.1	Amnesiac main character discovers himself or herself to be chosen one
9.0	Player character is highly skilled and elite, other non-playable characters look on in awe
9.0	Character jumps off of tall structure or object, lands stylishly into a crouch unharmed with back to the camera, gets up, turns around, and unsheathes large sword
9.0	Thonged female ass
8.8	Unchallenging game difficulty, player feel overly powerful or skilled
8.7	Brutal, indiscriminate killings/suffering; wisecracks
8.5	Player character is with team of non-playable character under heavy fire; teammates are killed off one by one but player manages to overcome insurmountable odds and make it to the end of the level
8.1	Thinly veiled racism or homophobia
8.0	Anthropomorphized hyper-sexualized computer, i.e. hologram of hot chick
7.5	Time travel
3.0	Some other “neat” thing not having to do with boobs or shooting chumps in the face

For the control groups, the same analysis was done to three other games based on similar popularity, measured in units sold, or similar gameplay.  For the category of games with “similar popularity,” we used Super Mario 64 (Nintendo 64, 11 million sold) and Animal Crossing: Wild World (Nintendo DS, 10.79 million sold) which both sold roughly the same amount as Modern War 2 has so far (give or take 2 or 3 million, but hey this isn’t rocket surgery).  For the category of games with “similar gameplay” we used the previously released non-Modern Warfare Call of Duty title, Call of Duty 3 (Xbox 360, Playstation 3, PC; only 1.2 million sold).

Results:

On average, each analyst identified 5,234.33 popular instances in Modern Warfare 2.  When classified using the NAPIST scale, popularity rating was 8.9 out of 10, or “somewhat popular.”

The analysis of Call of Duty 3 found similar results to that of the Modern Warfare 2, with 4,586.93 identified popular instances and a NAPIST scale popularity rating of 8.8 out of 10, or “dang that’s popular.”

However, the other two control games, Super Mario 64 and Animal Crossing: Wild World, only had an average of 789 popular instances with a NAPIST scale popularity rating of 3.2, or “you shitting me, bro?”.

Figure 2. Detailed breakdown of 10 most frequent popular instances as described by analyst

Modern Warfare 2	Super Mario 64	Animal Crossing: Wild World
Non-descript middle eastern man bludgeoned to death	Character smooshed by a “Thwomp”	Characters falls into a hole
Character exploded enemy with grenade launcher, blood	Character shot by extremely large bullet with frowny face	Mosquito sucks character’s blood
Breach into a dark house, execute terrorists at close range	Realized Princess is a woman, she has breasts under her dress	Character catches a fish, probably has hook in its mouth
Character murdered Civilian buying the new Dan Brown book at an airport bookstore	Character is “burned to death,” i.e. holds butt and runs around comically	Player finds Chevre to be pretty hot for a goat woman
Character shot Slavic man in groin	Character bitten to death by giant ball/dog	Character chops down tree out of spite
Anti personal vehicle destroys suburban house character was hiding in, puppy killed	Cute walking bomb explodes in character’s face, silly!	No other “popular instances”
Character coldly murders people/cracks joke from safety of an AC130 gunship	Character eaten by giant fish/drowns
Knife murder (analyst displays the sign of the horn on left hand)	Character falls to death during footrace
Character drinks the blood of enemies/consumes Markarov’s heart	Charater shot out of cannon into mountain in Bob-Omb Battlefield
Character suffers and die from the results of nuclear blast	Oh no, that plant has teef!

Discussion

From these results, it is obvious that the situations of shooting, killing, and explosions in the Modern Warfare series significantly add to its high NAPIST scale rating and popularity of the series correlating with high sales numbers.  However, this study is inherently limited to explaining why such a high level of popularity was reached for Modern Warfare 2 (12 million units sold) while similar games, such as Call of Duty 3 (1.2 million sold) fared considerable worse.  Though this most likely reflects an artifact of the data (e.g. Call of Duty 3 would totally have sold 12 million copies, but the factory stopped after making 1.2 million because there was a blizzard and the workers couldn’t get to work.) and not because our methodology and analysis of the data was not scientifically sound.

Oddly, the NAPIST scale rating for the other “popular” control games, Super Mario 64 and Animal Crossing: Wild World, was considerably lower due to their containing negligible amount of face shooting and/or idealized slutty female sexual content.  While it is strange that such high sales would correlate with such a low NAPIST score, we are inclined to believe that the large number of units sold for these games also reflect some sort of fluke.  Documented instances of mothers buying the wrong game⁴ or evil retailers tricking consumers into buying these games when they really wanted Modern Warfare 2⁵ are just two of many potential reasons for these strange results.

However, this study does have its limitations.  New experimental popularity theories such as the Game Play Detraction theory (GPDT) need to be explored further.  GPDT, for those unfamiliar, suggests that the popularity of a game can be determined by subtracting the player’s perceived problems with controlling game play actions and the enjoyment of controlling said actions from the overall NAPIST score.⁶ However, at this time there is no such scale measuring the popularity or perceived enjoyment of game play mechanics^{7 8}, and it is the recommendation of the authors that such a scale should be developed as soon as possible.

On the other hand, there is the question of graphics and their effect on popularity.  Unlike gameplay, this is a much studied but controversial subject, so we will briefly touch on it here.  It was well documented in the 1990s that the core gaming demographic who were in their early to late teens valued “totally bitchin’ graphics” above all else.⁹ However, such is clearly not the case today, as the top selling game of 2009 was Wii Fit and that game looks like shit.¹⁰

Figure 3. Best selling game of 2009? Really?

Footnotes

¹ Actually, as a whole, the story Modern Warfare 2 was abysmal.  However, the effect of game story on game sales has always been negligible as evident in the popularity of JRPGs.

² Note: the multiplayer portion of each game was not analyzed or factored into this study.  It was objectively decided by the team that “multiplayer shooter are dumb” and therefore could not possibly have contributed to the popularity of the game.

³ Roberts TR, et al. A New Way to Determine What to Include in Games: A Scale Proven to Sell. Jrn Skeez Gm Dev. 1998; 24(2). 34-46

⁴ Xu CH, Gillani F, Ryan G. Reasons for an unhappy Christmas: The cultural gap in American consumerism. Jrn Am Con. 2003; 9(3) 206-11

⁵ Orlando Gamespot manager arrested after found repackaging Bratz: Girlz Really Rock as Call of Duty 4. Orlando Times. March 13, 2008:A3

⁶ Lutz J. Does gameplay matter? Game popularity and the theory of gameplay detraction. JAVA. 2009; 34(5) 169-84.

⁷ Unless you count Gamepro’s “Playability Factor” scale which is crude at best

⁸ Literature on gameplay mechanics in general is very limited or of very poor quality, e.g. see Cliffy B’s treatise on cross-genre gameplay, “Why “Stop & Pop” Should Replace Steering in Driving Games: Thinking Beyond The Next Generation of Gameplay”

⁹ McFly M, Brown E. Graphics and Games: The Whole Story. NEJVG. 1994; 166(2) 12-34

¹⁰ Anderson C. What Fat Housewives Look for in an Exercise Game. Jrn of Plas VG Crp. 2008. 1(2). 3-7