Lifted a stone and shot himself in the foot
1
At E3 2009, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 (COD6) presented a classic story campaign demo that is still talked about by FPS veterans today.
The demo clip contributed by IGN received a high of 10.76 million views
The clip shows the game's third mission, Cliffhanger, and the debut of the story's Special Forces 141, a special forces made up of "the best fighters in the world". Captain McTavish "Soap" and newcomer "Xiaoqiang", these two people alone dared to infiltrate the Russian air base in the snowy mountains and make a big fuss.
"Xiaoqiang" almost fell off the cliff, but fortunately, "Soap" helped in time
After a thrilling rock climbing, the two climbed to the top of the mountain, prepared weapons, and cleared the Russian patrol. "Soap" was responsible for long-range cover, so he brought a sniper rifle.
This assault rifle with melee sights, silencers, and heartbeat detectors, painted in snow camouflage, is called ACR according to the prompts in the bottom right corner of the screen.
When the game was released and players entered this level to play "Xiaoqiang", they also discovered the uniqueness of ACR. The ACR has low recoil, easy gun control, and a heartbeat scanner that lets you know the enemy's position early in a low-visibility blizzard.
"You take out the left one. I count to three. One, two, three...... Good job. ”
As an imaginary enemy, the Russian army rarely has a firearm that is stronger than the ACR set. Players who have cleared the campaign and entered the multiplayer battle will find that the ACR here is also a panacea.
As a result, ACR is revered as one of the "Noob" weapons in COD6 multiplayer battles, or what we now call "wheelchair" weapons—and many players can use it to get a good fight.
A post on the GameFAQs forum 13 years ago reads:
"I like ACR, but my friend says it's a wheelchair"
The ACR is a real-life firearm. ACR stands for "Adaptive Combat Rifle" (Adaptive Combat Rifle), which is produced by Remington, a veteran American arms company. Call of Duty deliberately adjusted a real-life firearm to TO-level performance, somewhat suspiciously advertising for Remington.
Coincidentally, Remington thought so too.
ACR in reality
2
According to a report by the Wall Street Journal on October 16, a lawyer recently made public a batch of Remington's internal documents, including internal emails and company records.
According to the documents, Remington signed an explicit agreement with Activision Blizzard, the publisher of Call of Duty, in 2009 to put one of its rifles into COD6 as a marketing ploy to attract younger customers. That's right, this rifle is the ACR.
Executives at Remington and his parent company, Freedom Group, fearing an "aging clientele," are ready to put their guns into shooters as a marketing campaign to attract new audiences, especially younger ones, according to the filing.
The Liberty Group has an undated memo titled Gaming Strategy, which states: "As urbanization continues to increase and access to shooting/hunting areas decreases, the primary way young potential shooters have access to guns and ammunition is through virtual game scenarios." ”
There's also someone above the Liberty Corporation, Cerberus. Bolon's executives also agreed to advertise guns with games, saying it would "help create brand preference among the next generation" and "win market share among younger consumers."
So executives turned to Call of Duty, the hottest and coolest shooter of the moment, even though they didn't do much research on it.
Or the Game Strategy memo, which explicitly prohibits the use of the company's brand in games where "non-military bad guys" could be targeted. When COD6 was released, it caused a huge controversy because it included a bloody plot of massacre of civilians, and that level was followed by "Rock Climbing", called "No Russian".
A more impressive task than "sport climbing".
But the memo paradoxically points out that digital replicas of guns can appear in these games. "Past experience tells us that people actively look for brands of firearms." "Reducing direct branding helps us avoid direct recognition while still benefiting from participating in the game."
John C. Trull, then vice president of management of Remington's arms products, said in an interview with the Wall Street Journal that Remington executives didn't even look into COD6's multiplayer mode, let alone that their weapons would be used to fire at each other. "I believe that if someone had known at the time how these games as we know them now had evolved, the decision would have certainly been different."
In the end, Remington ACR joined the Call of Duty arsenal family. As part of the agreement, Remington and Activision agreed to keep the transaction strictly confidential and not to engage in any monetary transactions, which is equivalent to Remington prostituting advertisements for nothing and Activision for copyright.
3
According to Activision Blizzard's sales data, about 4.7 million copies of the COD6 were sold in the United States and the United Kingdom within 24 hours of its release. In August 2011, the then CEO of Activision Publishing revealed that the game had sold more than 22 million copies.
COD6 was undoubtedly the best-selling game of 2009
ACR's strong position in the game is remembered by a generation of players. A realistic selling point of the ACR is its high modularity and good accessory compatibility, which is fully reflected in the COD6.
The other point is the low recoil. In 2010, Mr. Trull wrote to other executives that a man who worked at his home had told him that ACR had earned a following among loyal Call of Duty fans. "What people like about it is its 'low recoil' in the game, which allows the player to maintain the target capture."
Low recoil equates to a high hit rate
Roy Gifford, then vice president of brand and research, responded later in the day: "It's amazing how games can sell real-world product attributes. ”
By 2011's Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 (COD8), Remington's partnership with Activision intensified. The ACR has been replaced with a larger-caliber version of the "ACR 6.8", which has strengthened the lethality on the basis of low recoil, and the status of the "wheelchair" is still solid.
In addition, two more Remington weapons have been added to the game. The first is the MSR bolt-action sniper rifle, which is more popular because it has a faster bolt pull and reload speed than the other bolt sniper in the game. The second is the R11 RSASS semi-automatic sniper rifle, which has the largest ammunition capacity and lowest recoil as a continuous sniper, and is as easy to use as the ACR.
There are currently no documents that have been disclosed that would prove that Remington and Activision continue to work together. However, in the game, the ACR 6.8 and MSR have the words "Remington" engraved on the side of the gun body model; As for RSASS, look it up and you'll know that its full name is "Remington Semi-Automatic Sniper System" - it's just a hard advertisement that can't even be washed by jumping into the Mississippi River.
Call of Duty Online, a domestic exclusive game that has been discontinued and copyrighted and represented by Tencent, uses the source code of Modern Warfare and includes ACR by the way. In the early days of operation, in an environment where there were no fairy guns to fight, the ACR was also a good assault rifle.
By this time, it was 2012, and Remington's earnings had yet to grow significantly, but executives were beginning to believe that video games were attracting new gun buyers. That year, Trull wrote in an email: "Ten years ago, video games were considered the number one threat to attract new gunmen; It's ironic that it's now an attraction for everyone. ”
However, it will not be long before something even more ironic and tragic happens, leaving executives forever to regret their decision to place ads in the game.
4
The December 2012 shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut was the second-worst school shooting in U.S. history and the fourth-worst mass shooting.
The killer shot his mother at home, then drove to the school and used a Remington rifle to kill 26 people, including 20 children and six educators, in five minutes. When the police arrived, the killer committed suicide with a pistol.
Rifles found at the scene
The shooting has once again pushed the issue of guns to the center of the American public discussion, and the video game industry has been shot while lying down.
Wayne LaPierre, then executive vice president of the National Rifle Association (NRA), gave a speech on the shooting, accusing "game companies of being the seeders of the school shooting nightmare" and calling it "a cold, corrupt shadow industry" that "peddles and incites violence to its own people" through games like Bulletstorm, Grand Theft Auto and Mortal Kombat.
The killer of the shooting, Adam Lanza, was 20 years old at the time of the crime, had a serious mental illness and spent most of his time hiding in his room playing video games.
A photo taken at the murderer's home, photo via AP
Although in November 2013, the Connecticut prosecutor's final 48-page report on the shooting did not link the video game to the motive for the shooting, but stated only a few facts.
According to the report, the murderer's game library also contains "violent" games such as "Battlefield", "Call of Duty", "Grand Theft Auto" and "Road to Survival", as well as a number of "non-violent" games. The killer spent most of his time playing "non-violent" games, the favorite of which was Super Mario Bros. He also often runs to a movie theater to play the "Dance Revolution" arcade there, "moving his feet rhythmically according to the on-screen prompts."
Part of the game stock of the murderer
But the NRA is intent on shifting tensions and changing social agendas, and Remington is the first to bear the brunt.
Nine victims, along with the families of one surviving teacher, filed a lawsuit against Remington. In their complaint, they argued that Remington's marketing through video games "attracts insecure loners and makes them become like the killers of the shooting, hell-bent on mass murder." Ten years later, in 2022, they announced a settlement with Remington for $73 million.
Remington already had internal mismanagement problems, owed a lot of debt, and the sudden lawsuit made Remington's financial situation even worse. This was partly due to the high legal fees, and partly because of the negative public perception of Remington, which led investors to announce the divestment. Eventually, Remington filed for bankruptcy in 2018 and went bankrupt again in 2020, with its assets being split and sold to multiple sellers.
...... So what happened to the ACR, which was pinned on by executives? Unfortunately, the game's popularity didn't translate into real-life sales, let alone save Remington's finances.
When it went public in 2010, ACR gave a suggested retail price that was twice as expensive as the earlier offer, prompting consumer protests. It didn't take long for the manufacturer to discover a design flaw in the ACR, which "resulted in multiple rounds firing continuously when the trigger was pulled" and had to recall the product.
In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, the previous Trull said that ACR "ceased production after years of low sales." "The fact that this rifle is so popular in Call of Duty is astounding... This is basically the only positive thing people say about ACR. ”
Even if Remington goes bankrupt and ACR is discontinued, ACR in Call of Duty is still alive. The ACR and ACR 6.8 assault rifles, both of which returned in the recent beta test of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III (COD20, 2023), are still known for their low recoil, but the name has been changed to MCW.
5
In a 2017 article, we used Barrett, another major gun manufacturer, as an example to introduce the symbiotic relationship between gun factories and game manufacturers.
In the lawsuit against Remington, lawyers on the victim's side obtained Remington's internal documents, completely confirming the existence of this symbiotic relationship.
Remington's strategy of trying to market firearms to younger audiences doesn't sound realistic. However, the United States has its own national situation, and Americans do have a brand preference for guns, just as we do for electronics or game manufacturers. Moreover, it is not impossible to cultivate this preference from an early age.
The Reddit subreddit built around gunslinger has more than 130,000 members
After the Sandy Hook tragedy, foreign media Eurogamer found a more specific target group for gun advertising: 13-year-old American child Smith.
He loves guns, owns nearly 10 BB guns, and has fought a real M1911 pistol with his grandfather in the country. He also plays Call of Duty, and his favorite gun in the game is Remington's MSR sniper rifle. "It's a very beautiful, accurate sniper rifle that rarely misses. I think once I grow up, I'll want to have a real guy. ”
We don't know if Smith, who is now an adult, will buy a Remington gun. But now it seems that Remington shot himself in the foot, in some way ending the symbiosis between guns and games. American kids, like Smith, who fall in love with a certain gun brand because of their games, are likely to be less and less.
Since 2013, a large number of games, including Call of Duty and Battlefield, that have intended to treat the United States as a major market, have a shooter theme, or contain firearms elements, have been cautious, rarely using real-life weapon names and full models. Even the Kalashnikov assault rifle, which is difficult to trace back to copyright and often refers to as "AK47", is no longer referred to as "AK" in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II (COD19, 2022), but "Kastov".
In addition to the two explanations of laziness and high royalties, the desperate desire to get rid of the link to gun violence is also an important reason for the over-caution of American game manufacturers.
A 2019 report in The Atlantic quoted Ross Dannenberg, author of the American Bar Association's Legal Guide to Video Game Development, as saying, "Some gaming companies have a policy of 'we don't apply for firearms licensing'... The only reason they say this about firearms is because they don't want to be convicted in court of public opinion for supporting the gun industry. ”
At the same time, manufacturers outside the U.S. are hardly affected. For example, Ubisoft has never shied away from introducing a large number of realistic firearms in shooting games such as Far Cry. Russia's BSG Studio's "Escape from Tarkov" is sitting on the copyrights of major arms manufacturers (including the Kalashnikov Group) and even accessories manufacturers, and it is the copyright fees that make the price of the game expensive.
When Ubisoft's FPS Unruly Alliance was open for beta, it had an ACR 6.8 in its arsenal
When players regret and criticize a shooter game for not recreating real-life firearms, they also need to understand the real situation at the moment. Gun violence, like geopolitics and pluralism, is a sensitive issue. The concerns of game makers about these issues are gradually reshaping every game we play.
However, I am afraid that the issues in reality can only be properly resolved in reality. Just bringing down a Remington and pinching off the gun factory's in-game advertisements is not enough to quell the grief of Americans caused by school shootings, nor can it completely prevent similar tragedies from happening again.
Some references:
https://www.wsj.com/business/media/remington-gun-call-of-duty-video-game-93059a66
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/28/business/remington-bankruptcy-guns.html
https://www.eurogamer.net/shooters-how-video-games-fund-arms-manufacturers
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2019/08/how-video-games-license-guns/596296/
https://web.archive.org/web/20131125212413/http://www.ct.gov/csao/lib/csao/Sandy_Hook_Final_Report.pdf