How Ghosts Almost Killed Call of Duty (Despite Being Over-Hated)

In 2013, Call of Duty was on top of the world… but its then-newest release stained the franchise. In 2003, the Call of Duty series was created as Activision’s answer to the Medal of Honor franchise, even luring some of the people who worked on those games to come make its competitor. It was obviously a massive success and ended up leaving Medal of Honor in the dust. The series really soared to new heights with the Modern Warfare and Black Ops games in the late 2000s and early 2010s, becoming a cultural juggernaut that would seal its fate as one of gaming’s crowned jewels.

This era was seen as Call of Duty’s golden age. Infinity Ward and Treyarch were on a hot streak that culminated in 2012’s Call of Duty: Black Ops 2, widely regarded as one of the best games in the entire franchise. Things were really heating up as Modern Warfare 3 was the end of that subfranchise and developer Infinity Ward would move on to make something entirely new in the Call of Duty universe. Not only that, but 2013 would also see the release of the Xbox One and PS4, allowing the series to utilize new technology and push new boundaries. Unfortunately, this new generation began with quite a stumble.

Call of Duty: Ghosts Was a Misfire

Call of Duty: Ghosts was released in November 2013, first on Xbox 360, PS3, and PC, and as launch titles for PS4 and Xbox One in the subsequent weeks. Infinity Ward had spent half of the year hyping up the game as the next big Call of Duty franchise, essentially suggesting that Ghosts was a big part of the studio’s future. They hyped up their impressive fish AI, boasted about the mo-capped dog in the campaign, and made much ado about having Oscar-winning writer Stephen Gaghan pen the story for the game.

Call of Duty: Ghosts was a massive commercial success at release, selling a billion dollars worth of copies in 24 hours. However, it staggered behind Black Ops 2‘s overall sales. The game also had a very mixed reception both with critics, but especially fans. The game was review bombed by users on Metacritic with people knocking the graphics, the gameplay, and the story. The campaign for Ghosts was a real sore point for a lot of people. A somewhat overblown controversy around the time of its release centered around Ghosts reusing animations from a scripted moment at the end of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2‘s campaign made waves, with fans suggesting the developers were being lazy.

The actual story was also criticized for being nonsensical with weak characters and underwhelming writing. Given Infinity Ward was responsible for the epic Modern Warfare trilogy, it felt like a notable step back. Even though Call of Duty: Ghosts had some good set pieces, the campaign didn’t fully connect and it was hampered by a cliffhanger ending that still hasn’t been resolved to this day. Although some detractors were already criticizing Call of Duty for growing stale, Ghosts was a game where this critique was growing much louder than previous entires.

The multiplayer was also a divisive part of Ghosts. The game was slower-paced due to the fact that the maps were boring and way too big, strange design choices like making the UAV a ground-based streak frustrated fans, and the overall art direction was very muted. Everything had this gray and brown look to it, making the game feel lifeless on top of its weaker gameplay. Fans were also upset because Ghosts launched without key modes like Search and Destroy, a foundational part of the modern Call of Duty multiplayer experience. It was eventually added after release, but it seemed like such a baffling exclusion.

Ghosts‘ multiplayer had a few new innovations such as the inclusion of female soldiers and a fairly compelling new system known as Squads. Players could build out their own squad of customizable soldiers that could be leveled up for new gear and then you could fight with AI-controlled versions of them in select modes. It had potential, but needed a bit more depth to be more than just shooting bots. Squads didn’t catch on, unfortunately, and it was never seen in another Call of Duty game again.

The third and arguably most prominent inclusion in Call of Duty: Ghosts was a co-op mode known as Extinction. It was Infinity Ward’s take on a Zombies-like co-op mode where players progressed through a level with defined objectives all while fighting creepy aliens. The mode was actually appreciated by critics and see as one of the best parts of the entire game, however, it failed to retain an audience in the same way Zombies had. Given Extinction had an ending and wasn’t really endless, it killed the long term replayability for the mode. Black Ops 2‘s Zombies was also still being enjoyed by fans at that time thanks to the treasure trove of content Treyarch had released for the horde mode.

As a result, Extinction never returned to Call of Duty and future titles including 2014’s Advanced Warfare adopted Zombies as its third mode instead. One thing that Call of Duty: Ghosts did sort of plant the seed for was crossover content. Michael Myers and the Predator both appeared as playable characters in Ghosts, though only in special modes where they had unique abilities. The game was massively ahead of the curve when it came to this stuff, but Call of Duty wouldn’t see content like this again for another 7 years.

Players Rejected Call of Duty: Ghosts and it Hurt the Franchise

Ultimately, Call of Duty: Ghosts failed to make any meaningful progression for the series and fans dropped it pretty quickly. Although consoles were far more popular for Call of Duty’s userbase at the time, it did still release on PC and player numbers were rough, especially long term.

According to Steam Charts, Call of Duty: Ghosts‘ peak concurrent player count was at launch in November 2013 with 36,000 players on Steam. By February 2014, the game had less than 12k players and never rose past 13k. By summer, the game fell below 10k and struggled to consistently retain players. Strong competition from titles like Battlefield 4, a game that boasted an impressive 64-player count on consoles for the first time and stellar graphics, also likely hurt Ghosts. Although Call of Duty was selling better, shooter fans on next-gen consoles had the ability to invest their time into Battlefield 4 instead.

Call of Duty: Black Ops 2, on the other hand, launched to around 60k concurrent players on Steam in November 2012 and grew to have a peak of 70k by January 2013. The game retained anywhere from 20k – 46k players throughout its first year. Although its player count shrank after the release of Ghosts, it still held a steady amount of players between 5k – 10k during that game’s launch. By May 2014, a year and a half after Black Ops 2‘s release, the game overtook Ghosts in concurrent players on Steam. Over the years, Black Ops 2 retained a small group of a few thousands players while Ghosts tried to cling to life.

In November 2014, the series released its next game, Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare. As already noted, sales for Ghosts were already down from Black Ops 2 despite still making heaps of money. This downward trend continued as sales for Advanced Warfare were down from Ghosts by a reported 27% with physical copies. Although digital games were starting to gain some steam at this time, they weren’t as prominent as they are now so while it skews the data a bit, it still indicates a notable decrease year over year for the series.

Things bounced back in 2015 with Black Ops 3 which was the most successful Call of Duty of the generation at that time. Unfortunately, Infinity Ward’s Call of Duty: Ghosts follow-up, Infinite Warfare, took things back down. The sci-fi shooter’s sales were down 50% from Black Ops 3‘s and Activision noted by February 2017 that the game missed sales expectations due to it not resonating with players. It was a low point for Infinity Ward who was able to eventually sort of resurrect the franchise from a rough patch with Call of Duty: Modern Warfare in 2019, but the Xbox One and PS4 era was a really bumpy ride for the shooter series.

Was Call of Duty: Ghosts an awful game? Not necessarily, it’s just a somewhat mediocre one that released at the wrong time. Ghosts‘ legacy will always be that it’s the black sheep of the franchise, especially since it interrupted the golden age that fans are so nostalgic for. It was released during the best era of the franchise and wasn’t up to snuff with the quality that fans had expected. This led to it becoming a somewhat over-hated game in the series. If you look up Reddit posts about Ghosts, you’ll find a lot of people asking if it was really that bad and a number of people will say they actually dug it. There are fans of this game, but it didn’t resonate on a wider level.

The game had interesting ideas, but the new ideas and the execution of the game as a whole felt like a downgrade from Black Ops 2. This should have been a big moment for the series with the next-generation of hardware, but instead, games like Battlefield 4 were far more captivating for PS4 and Xbox One owners. Still, despite this misstep, Infinity Ward would go on to completely change the trajectory of the series with Modern Warfare and Warzone nearly a decade later.

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