As stated in the textbook MediaMaking popular culture is something (person, place, or thing) that is in mainstream media. A highly anticipated video game, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, was released this past November. The video game is a first person shooter that takes the United States Military along with several other militaries worldwide and unleashes world war three in the process. Within 24 hours of release of this game it sold 6.5 million copies in the U.S. and in the UK. It grossed in $400 million in that amount of time. With it surpassing $1billion dollars in 16 days of the initial release date. The previous game, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, sold 4.7 million in 24 hours with a confirmed copy of 22 million since its release and the first game, Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, in the series sold over 13 million by May of 2009 (Wikipedia).
Before the second game was released a television commercial was made with celebrities to help promote the game. The television commercial included basketball star Kobe Bryant along with late night comedian and talk show host Jimmy Kimmel. Before the third installment of this game that recently came out there was another television commercial involving celebrities. In this commercial it starred actor Sam Worthington and actor/comedian Jonah Hill. What does this show? Well, it uses the revised social learning theory/observational modeling theory, which is actors in mass media are so attractive that audience members want to be like them, therefore actors can influence behavior simply by existing to their attractiveness (Grossberg). Since the game is rated mature, which means you must be 18 or older to purchase the game, so the demographics are from 18 to 35 but parents purchase the video game for children under the age of 17.
This being the third installment the “hype” or expectation of the video game was through the roof. Many consumers were expecting groundbreaking technology, more features, and innovative gameplay. Big companies (magazines and websites) were able to play the game before its release, rate it, and score it on their respective scale. Every company gave it positive reviews and a must buy. When consumers purchased the product, had actually face time with the game they went on a website, and gave their reviews of it. The website is metacritic.com. On that particular website it is broken down into two categories when reviewing a product. Modern Warfare 3 in particular got an 89 out of 100 from the critic side while from the consumer (User) side it got a 3.2 out of 10. What does this mean for the video game? It has to do with the economy and popular culture; where audience are bought and sold, and this relates to both economy and popular culture – the power of the consumer. Audiences have the power and may resist the powerful (Grossberg). The audience of Modern Warfare 3 wants to show the critics and the game company that produced this video game that the same concept, a copy and paste of the old video game, cannot be sold back to the audience. There needs to be more of a change in the product or it will fail and no longer be a part of popular culture.
Though, there never seems to be enough multiplayer videos from the millions of people that have bought this game. Just take a look at this video from one of the players. Ending with that, what do you all think? Should Call of Duty remain as popular culture or should we (the users) make a difference and try to have it erased from popular culture?
References
Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare. 2011. In Wikipedia. Retrieved December 5, 2011, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Call_of_Duty_4:_Modern_Warfare
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. 2011. In Wikipedia. Retrieved December 5, 2011, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Call_of_Duty:_Modern_Warfare_2
Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare 3. 2011. In Wikipedia. Retrieved December 5, 2011, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Call_of_Duty:_Modern_Warfare_3
Grossberg, L., Wartella, E., Whitney, D. C. (2006). MediaMaking: Mass media in a popular culture (2nd ed.). Thousand Oaks, California.
