Call of Duty Developer Focused on “Casual” Gamers

Infinity Ward believes the audience that will continue to propel the Call of Duty franchise to success is not the hardcore gamer. Not the gamer who jumps on new consoles immediately, or reads gaming news sites every day, or rants and raves on forums about their favorite games. Instead, they are focusing on the more casual gamer; the ones that primarily use gaming as a way to stay in touch with their friends.

In an interview with the Official Xbox Magazine, executive producer Mark Rubin said they’ve learned that people stick to their consoles and their games, especially if their friends are not switching.

“Regardless of platform – people’s gaming habits aren’t going to change just because there’s a new platform,” said Rubin. “We have an enormous amount of players who are more in the casual game space, but they play a lot.

“It’s kind of a weird, ironic thing to say,” he continued. “They aren’t hardcore gamers, or even gamers, but they play Call of Duty every night. And those guys are going to continue to play regardless of platform. So I think not only will we continue to engage with that existing player base, but we’ll take next gen and see how far we can go with it.”

This philosophy is vastly different from what we’ve heard a lot about in the run-up to the next generation of consoles. Sony and Microsoft have gone back and forth on the idea of catering to core gamers and designing hardware for hardcore gamers. Rubin’s statement makes it sound more like they are seeking to capture the Facebook audience than console gamers. While this isn’t exactly true, it is interesting to see a developer as big as Infinity Ward talk this way. When thinking of one of the world’s biggest, most hardcore video games, I think most people would assume that hardcore gamers were the ones most invested in it. But if Rubin’s theory is true, there’s an entire market of gamers that is being overlooked.

What if Rubin is right? What if those gamers that have an Xbox 360 or PlayStation 3 and only buy Call of Duty games are really being underserved? His statement makes me wonder if developers have been ignoring this market all these years while Infinity Ward has simply been feeding their addiction, building that brand loyalty. If Infinity Ward identified this audience years ago, while competitors like Dice were focused on more “hardcore” gamers, it’s possible that they have developed a die-hard audience that can never be snatched away.

If Infinity Ward and Call of Duty have identified their target audience and have been eyeing them all along as their primary focus, then they could easily continue to win the annual first-person shooter war against Dice’s Battlefield series. In addition to that, they may even be able to fend off newcomers like Titanfall and Destiny. Time will tell, but Infinity Ward is very confident they have the right formula to win the war.