The Call of Duty franchise has supported extensive competition on consoles and PCs. A multiplatform team shooter reminiscent of Counter-Strike, the franchise is one of the most popular and lucrative of all time.
Leagues such as CPL, ESL, WSVG and, most importantly for the esport, MLG have supported the competitive side of the game. Although the game has had an esports presence to some extent for much of the decade, it was never a premiere esports title by almost any metric.
Around esports, prominent businessmen such as MLG’s Sundance DiGiovanni actively wonder how to get even a single percentage of CoD players to watch competition. Increasingly, with competitive services such as CoD Elite, Activision seems to have seen merit in answering the question as well.
Considering that 6.5 million copies of the newest version (Modern Warfare 3) sold within 24 hours, it becomes apparent that even just over a single percentage of the total player base (1% of 6.5 million is 65 thousand) would make for a successful competitive game.
The vast majority of CoD players participate in the game casually. Most prominent CoD YouTube personalities (such as SeaNanners, Xjawz and TmarTn) veer toward casual play rather than the competitive side. Unlike with other games on the MLG circuit (for instance, Husky or Day9 with StarCraft 2), most of the league’s commentators for CoD are not major personalities but relatively minor competitive players.
When those YouTube personalities do work together, Call of Duty has shown that it is capable of reaching 60,000 viewers (eerily close to the 65,000 which MLG aims for), a very respectable number that is higher than MLG’s CoD competition regularly sees.
Within the MLG offices especially, the audience is a lucrative puzzle waiting to be solved.
Next up was the massive Call of Duty XP tournament, which took over a 12 acre hanger in Los Angeles, California on the 2nd and 3rd of September. Thousands of esports fans and serious competitors took part in this first ever fan experience for Call of Duty and partied the weekend away with live music, paintball action, a zip line, Q&A sessions, and the unveiling of the new ambitious multiplayer mode for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 as well as the official complete rollout of the brand new Call of Duty Elite.
Attendees competed throughout the 2 day event, trying to win cash prizes. In the end, team OpTic Gaming won the championship and took home a $400,000 cash prize, while the 2nd place finisher, team Til Infinity, had to settle for a measly $200,000 (what a dissapointment). This was one of the most talked about esports tournaments in the United States in 2011 and left tons of Call of Duty fans with an experience they've surely been bragging about since the tournament concluded.