Water is wet, and Activision Blizzard, one of those notorious corporations shoving racial and sexual inclusivity down everyone’s throats, remains fixated on ESG and DEI mandates.
They’re so hellbent on “diversity and inclusivity” that every Activision dev team has its own DEI officer to make sure everyone’s on the same page, aka forcing their liberal, feminist agenda onto consumers.
The Call of Duty franchise? Yeah, that lost its edge and relevance ages ago. But despite ditching its original fanbase for a younger, more retarded demographic, it’s somehow more profitable than ever for Activision.
Why? Microtransactions, of course. Last time we touched on this, we skimmed over Activision’s half-assed attempt to pander to Black culture with their Black History Month in-game trinkets, right alongside their fake “representation” in the form of commercialized operative packs featuring Nicki Minaj, Snoop Dogg, 21 Savage, and, just for kicks, an operative with vitiligo.
Because nothing says diversity like corporate cash grabs and pandering to a very niche disease.
We’ve already talked about how Activision Blizzard reintroduced the “Firecracker” operator bundle to celebrate season four of The Boys TV series, but not without shrinking her ass cheeks compared to her original look, because heaven forbid they leave that untouched.
And let’s not forget the Pride Month stunt, where they pushed free pride-themed weapon skins, turning your deadly arsenal into rainbow-flag-waving billboards.
Oh, and of course, they didn’t stop with just the standard LGBT flag, nope, they threw in the trifecta of lesbian and transgender options too, because what every Call of Duty player really needs is a reminder of sexual identity while killing people indiscriminately.
I’ve been pretty vocal about my disdain for the franchise, especially with Black Ops 6 on the horizon. Now that Activision is owned by Microsoft, another progressive juggernaut, the next Call of Duty release is set to hit their crumbling Game Pass service on day one.
Conveniently, the Game Pass price mysteriously went up not long after this announcement. Shocking, right?
The last few Call of Duty releases have been a joke from a story perspective. The games have become a cash-grabbing shell of their former selves, obsessed with selling themed cosmetic bundles and operators with a focus on diversity and inclusivity.
Apparently, pandering to Black culture means tossing rappers into a first-person shooter about modern warfare. And just when you thought it couldn’t get more ridiculous, Treyarch’s Black Ops 6 is raising the stakes with the introduction of the franchise’s first non-binary operator.
Activision recently dumped a ton of info on Call of Duty: Black Ops 6, including details on the various gameplay modes, maps, and operators. And, of course, they couldn’t resist using this opportunity to inject more gender ideology into the game, introducing an operator named Volta Rossi as the poster child for their latest progressive push.
In a blog post, Activision introduced Volta Rossi, a member of Crimson One, a CIA operation launched to track down the Rogue squad.
Rossi is described as a “street-smart rogue with a blue-blood pedigree” who ditched the cushy life of aristocracy to become a HUMINT specialist, using their connections with the Luttazzi family to gain “unique insight into Avalon.”
Sounds fancy, but really, it’s just Activision’s latest attempt at shoving their virtue-signaling agenda down players’ throats, all in the name of diversity and inclusivity, even if it means butchering the creativity of franchises like Diablo and World of Warcraft with lazy censorship.
Remember how they changed quest names in WoW because they were “sexist” or “inappropriate”? Yeah, that kind of brilliance.
As for Rossi’s design? It’s a visual trainwreck. You can’t really tell if it’s a disfigured man or a hideously ugly masculine woman, the latter being more likely, given the square jaw and bug-eyed appearance.
Naturally, the character description sticks with they/them pronouns, making sure everyone knows that Rossi is non-binary, the first for the franchise while all other operator bios stick to traditional he/him or she/her pronouns because it’s hard to tell the difference between men and women in modern video games so they have to spell it out for us as to what we’re supposed to call such characters.
It’s no surprise Activision held off on this reveal until two days before the game’s release. If they’d dropped this info earlier, it would’ve stirred up way more backlash.
The game’s sales were already expected to take a hit, with Xbox and PC players getting it “free” through Game Pass, while PlayStation users are stuck paying full price for yet another reheated mess.
As usual, they’re hoping to rope in fans with promises of a “revitalized” Zombies mode, banking on nostalgia to pull back longtime players who’ve long since moved on from this annual cash grab.
Treyarch, after repeatedly disappointing fans with its Zombies mode since Black Ops 4, has ditched the bland open world presented in Modern Warfare III in favor of returning to round-based roots.
But of course, they didn’t actually revert the formula. The mode still relies on progression systems and operator weapon loadouts, a mechanic first introduced with the poorly received Cold War.
This means players can start with customized weapons instead of the classic starting pistol, killing the mystique of the mystery box and its random weapon drops ultimately making the mode far easier, simplistic and more inclusive.
What used to be a fun, challenging experience is now just a way to farm camouflages for weapons, stripping away key elements that made Zombies so thrilling in the first place.
That being said, Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 will sell. Unfortunately, every Call of Duty game does. But there’s a glimmer of hope Modern Warfare III (which was essentially a glorified DLC sold as a full game) saw a 38% drop in sales compared to Modern Warfare II from 2022.
In fact, it performed so poorly that its usual spot as the year’s top-selling game got snatched away by Hogwarts Legacy, marking the first time since 2008 for Call of Duty to be dethroned.
Black Ops 6 is certain to meet a similar fate, especially with Microsoft’s Game Pass allowing Xbox and PC players to skip buying the game outright, which will dent its sales.
Plus, 2024 has been a big year for indie titles like Palworld from PocketPair, which has sold over 15 million copies, and China’s Black Myth: Wukong, which moved 10 million copies in just three days and has since topped 20 million globally.
As for Volta Rossi? Nobody’s going to be rushing to pick that operator. For a lot of people, Call of Duty has lost its relevance. The franchise isn’t targeting us anymore. It’s become one of the rare, glaring examples of a “woke” ideology infiltrating a commercially successful series, even if its annual sales are starting to fade for the time being it’s still commercially viable for Activision Blizzard.
