From the very first teasers of this year’s Call of Duty, Activision put an emphasis on the Modern Warfare campaign. This was going to be a grittier, darker, and more mature campaign, they said; one with greater effort than ever before to tell a compelling story. On the whole, most critics would agree that they did deliver on this promise. However, it seems that a majority of the game’s audience didn’t actually care about it at all.
The Call of Duty: Modern Warfare Campaign – Rates of Completion
When you complete the Call of Duty: Modern Warfare campaign, you earn the “Tea Time” trophy/achievement. As a result, at least on the PS4, we can look at the global trophy data to see what percentage of players have actually got it. As it turns out, the rate of completion for Tea Time is just 33.1%; barely one-third of the game’s audience. The completion rate for “Out of the Fire,” awarded after beating the campaign on Realism or Veteran, is just 2.4%.
On Xbox One, the rate of completion for the Tea Time achievement is actually slightly less than on PS4; at present, it’s sitting at 31.54%. While Activision and Infinity Ward may have pulled out the stops for this year’s campaign mode, it unfortunately seems as though a majority of the Call of Duty audience have little to no interest in the mode. Rather, the vast majority of the audience are likely to be solely interested in multiplayer.
It’s hard to tell what Activision will make of this figure. It’s possible that such a low rate of engagement for such a major investment may result in Modern Warfare’s campaign being something of a one-off. For the gaming market in general, it certainly made sense for the developers to make a more mature, better-written story; after all, since the success of God of War, many studios have been seeking to cater to the audience which that game proved was out there. Unfortunately, it seems that on the whole, that audience didn’t have much crossover with that of Call of Duty.