This World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria commercial is everything wrong with gaming today.

This 30-second commercial for World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria has been blasting me in the face everywhere I look, from TV to website banner ads to pre-video ads on YouTube. And it's everything wrong with game marketing today.

Why does a trailer for one of the biggest games in the industry neglect to feature any actual gameplay footage? The intricate cinematic isn't even using World of Warcraft's in-game engine. I understand it's hard to convey a great video game through a non-interactive medium like television, but surely we can find a way that includes any of the game at all?

And it's not limited to WoW. Beginning perhaps with Halo 3 in 2007, live-action and cinematic TV commercials for big-name game releases have become the way to go.

I'm not saying these commercials are bad, per se. But it's embarrassing that we as an industry are so ashamed of the quality of our gameplay that all our marquee titles go out of their way not to show what the actual game looks like. And what's worse, gamers embrace these "cinematic" trailers. This one for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 starring Everyman Gamer Jonah Hill and zero gameplay footage is considered by its top YouTube commenter to be "probably one of the best trailers ever made for a shooter game."

Maybe it's because developers realize that what the games actually look like is a huge turn-off to casual audiences. Back to World of Warcraft, would you want a sizzle trailer on national TV featuring this?

From the first page of Google image search results for "mists of pandaria gameplay"

First-Person Suckers: Seven Ways to a Next-Generation FPS

Call of Duty (2003)

Something has stunted the growth of first-person shooters. In the era of the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, FPS games released this generation have made baby steps to distance themselves from their predecessors. They still wet the bed. The Call of Duty and Halo franchises need to be thanked for the last three core gameplay enhancements in the FPS genre. They were:

• Regenerating health
• Aiming down the sight (iron sights)
• Dedicated buttons for grenades, melee attacks, and shooting

These have become staples. The problem is these mechanics were introduced last generation. Gameplay-wise, nothing new has been implemented during the days of the PS3 and Xbox 360. With this generation in its twilight years, the FPS genre needs a new horse to step up and introduce an original core gameplay mechanic.  FPS veterans know even "new" innovations like perks and killstreak rewards were originally found in Counter-Strike server mods.



Halo: Combat Evolved (2001)

Gaining experience and unlockables are just measures to ensure players come back for more, which is what good gameplay should do. This generation has only made FPS games more addicting by borrowing elements from MMOs, and previous shooters like DICE's Battlefield series which made its debut in 2002, ten years ago. Addiction drives sales (ask a crack dealer), but it used to be addicting gameplay that kept bringing players back. The future FPS needs to be laced with original gameplay, not just unlockables and experience points.

The Importance of the High Score

[Note by Jake: This is my first step towards expanding A Capital Wasteland to multiple writers. Introducing Jordan Parker!]

What is better than the high score?

The pursuit of the high score.

Good, but I can do better.

I applaud anyone who has run through a Call of Duty campaign on the Veteran difficulty.  For the non-initiated, the tag-line for this extreme difficulty reads: You will not survive. The tag-line is 100% accurate, and almost to a fault. Anyone who has done a Veteran run in any Call of Duty game will tell you that there are certain areas that you end up dying, reading a famous quote and respawning, over and over again. 

My personal favorite from Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2:

“In war; truth is the first casualty”
-Aeschylus

This cycle of game overs and respawns continues as you push up through the hail of enemy gunfire to trigger the next checkpoint, only to be maimed again and again as you trudge through the endless corridor of combatants.  There is no style in a Veteran run in Call of Duty. There is no glory in a Veteran run of a COD game.  There is nothing about it that will make you replay that last level. The only thing you feel when “Checkpoint Reached.” appears is relief, and you are thankful that you will not have to do that again.

Finally...

If Call of Duty was a test, there would be no right answers, the teacher would merely ask you to fill in all the blanks and give you full credit for finishing. The only way to further your experience is to play through the game on a harder difficulty. A game like Call of Duty doesn't ask you to correct your wrong answers and get better at the game; it doesn't encourage you to discover strategies for getting past tricky parts  It just lets you respawn until you manage to trigger the next checkpoint. Here's the rub: after you've beaten the game on the hardest offering, what else can you do?