Please chill out about Modern Warfare 3 (and unreleased games)

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 is coming. The game hasn’t been formally announced yet, but we’ve already received a number of teaser trailers, and Activision Blizzard bigwigs have alluded to the next industry-stomping Call of Duty title in no uncertain terms.

Even Infinity Ward creative strategist, Robert Bowling, has let us know that Modern Warfare 3 is on the way, recently tweeting in the wake of the massive Kotaku scoops and leaks:

“A lot of hype & a lot of leaked info on #MW3, some still accurate, some not. To avoid spoiling the experience, I’d wait for the real reveal.”

So… Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 is coming. We know this.

But even faced with little to no official or final information, gamers are already getting riled up about the next title that is sure to dominate the gaming landscape when it’s released at the tail-end of this year, lamenting that Modern Warfare 3 looks like ‘more of the same’ and ‘dated.’

This is extremely frustrating, especially for a game that hasn’t been announced yet, let alone released!

The most offensive pieces of ‘evidence’ that people are pointing towards to back up these claims are supposedly leaked images of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, ‘revealing’ in-game scenes from the title. Scenes like this one:

And this:

The most ‘egregious’ of the recently leaked images (again, of a supposed version of Modern Warfare 3) is this scene, featuring what looks like a network of sewers, or a flooded underground tunnel:

Why is this image so odious and ‘samey’? Because it has a gun similar to a weapon found in Call of Duty: Black Ops.

Don’t most first-person shooters have similar weapons to one another? Don’t quite a few action games include a sniper rifle of some sort, with the PSG1 (the weapon pictured) acting as a firm favourite amongst game developers for inclusion in their titles? Just because it’s included in another first-person shooter doesn’t mean the entire game is going to be the same as the last one.

Call of Duty games are now known as the holiday blockbuster releases of the year, and we all enjoy them for what they are – hectic rollercoaster rides that take you from one action setpiece to the other without respite. I’m not debating the fact that the formula is now stale and there need to be drastic improvements to the franchise to bring the singleplayer campaigns into relevance, but I’m personally not counting out Modern Warfare 3’s solo offering based on leaked screenshots and unconfirmed information.

I ask that you do the same.

The Call of Duty series has sold tens of millions of copies, with the latest entry to the franchise, Call of Duty: Black Ops, selling well over twenty million units in record time! I would hazard a guess that a good chunk of those gamers actually enjoyed both the multiplayer and singleplayer portions of the game, so even if Modern Warfare 3 is ‘the same’ as previous games, millions of gamers will still enjoy it.

So… please chill out about Modern Warfare 3. It hasn’t even been announced yet. It’s only releasing way later this year, most likely during the traditional Call of Duty ‘early November’ window. And these allegedly leaked images we’re seeing are presumably early, in-development shots, in some cases using pre-existing art assets from other Call of Duty games.

And maybe relax about unreleased games in general, too. I understand it’s fun to discuss the latest rumours and pieces of speculation on games that are still months and years away from release, and I also understand that this passionate dialogue can, in some cases, inform on-the-fly development decisions as game studios keep an eye on what their fan base is saying about their upcoming game, but the conversation stops short of being constructive when the fans rip an unreleased game to shreds based on leaks and hearsay.

Please chill out, and rather look forward to exciting upcoming games with cautious optimism, rather than unbounded pessimism.