Bad Company 2 taking shots at Modern Warfare 2 marketing

You might remember a viral internet ad that was done for Modern Warfare 2 sometime back. The ad in question involved the National League Championship pitcher, and professional dreamboat, Cole Hamels as a Fighter Against Grenade Spam. It turns out that F.A.G.S. was a hit with some, but most people found it offensive and juvenile for some reason...

So needless to say, when EA released their own ad starting CC Sabathia, star of a a well known professional baseball team based in New York metropolitan area, I was ready to put on my "Simpsons did it" hat. As it turns out, EA and the boys at DICE have a good grasp on satire.



Apparently EA and DICE are so confident of Battlefield: Bad Company 2 they are willing to directly call out Modern Warfare 2. I personally think their product is good enough to go head to head with the FPS giant, but what do you think? Let us know over on our forum

With new MW2 map pack announcement, it all becomes painfully clear...

Fresh off our show about Activision, the company gives us another reason to dislike them. When Infinity Ward announced the PC version of Modern Warfare 2 would not support private servers and wouldn't be releasing the development tools to the player created content community there was an outcry. These are both things that have been staples of the PC first person community and have been responsible for games living long lives beyond their console based siblings. One of the biggest factors that Activision and Infinity Ward sited for this changes was fairplay. The new IW.net was promoted as a place where people could play without worry of cheaters and hacks. Unfortunately, the game itself has many issues that can be exploited without the aid of additional programs, leading to what can be equated to state-supported cheating. So with the general failure of nearly every goal that IW.net set forth the most cynical of us are now having our point reinforced daily.

Activision, feeling my job as a video game industry muckraker and general loud mouth is too easy, announced it's first map pack for Modern Warfare 2 today. G4tv.com reported today that the new map pack, which includes 3 new maps and 2 recycled maps from the original Modern Warfare, will be released at a price of $15. That's right folks, the same thing that Valve and other companies often give you for free, Activision is charging you for. But not only charging, charging you 1/4th of the game's original value. A game who's multi-player has been fundamentally broken since day one.  It seems that the move to 100% IW.net was nothing more than a ploy to require all content come directly from Activision, and of course, at a price.

Maybe it's just the person I am, but I would think a map pack like this could be a "Thank you for making this the best selling game of all time" or "We're sorry the game has been broken and exploited." These maps could have been an olive branch for Activision to it's customers in a time that they really need it. I'm not sure if they read what people are saying, but the gaming community isn't really happy with them right now. But instead, of fostering goodwill with the very people that keep them in business, they decided to twist the knife and gouge for a few more dollars.

It seems that Activision is hell bent on alienating the fans and developers of one of the most popular franchises of all time. Just remember though, Battlefield: Bad Company 2 has tanks, destructible environments and is releasing some free maps shortly. Not saying you should stop playing Call of Duty games and jump onto Battlefield, I'm just saying...