One of the actors from Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 didn’t take kindly to a joke about the game from God of War actor Christopher Judge. The Call of Duty franchise is a totally juggernaut and has sustained its commercial success for 20 years without any notable flops. While some games perform better than others, the franchise is consistently at the top of the best selling games list each year and maintains a healthy player base on an annual basis. Despite this, it has had some issues in recent years with some games feeling rushed and are showing signs of wear due to the annual release cycle.
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Last month, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 was released and there were a lot of criticisms leveled at the game’s campaign. Some reports came out that claimed Sledgehammer Games was forced to revamp its single player last summer and make a new one from scratch in 16 months, resulting in a new story with new missions. As a result, there are a ton of sandbox missions utilizing the Warzone map. The campaign itself takes about 3 – 4 hours to complete, if not less if you are skipping cutscenes or blazing through the gameplay. As a result, the campaign got historically low review scores. During The Game Awards, God of War actor Christopher Judge made a joke about how his acceptance speech last year was extremely long and noted that it was actually longer the Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 campaign. However, some people who work on Call of Duty didn’t find this joke very funny and found it in poor taste.
Actor Barry Sloane who plays Captain Price in the new Modern Warfare games took a jab at Judge stating the God of War actor “writes all of his own material” and is “talented”, but capped it off with a clown emoji. Some developers also weighed in noting it was disappointing to see a game made fun of at an event meant to celebrate games and the developers, especially when it has been so documented that the game had a troubled production.
Ultimately, it is unclear if this was a joke written by Judge or by someone else. There weren’t many other deprecating jokes about other games at the event, so it did seem a bit out of place. Of course, things like the Golden Globes and the Oscars notably have big segments where they joke about the celebrities and films that released that year, but the gaming industry is in a much more sensitive place with tons of crunch, layoffs, and other factors that have resulted in some problematic releases.
