[Eddie]

Originally Posted by helbent4

Still, tens of thousands in one day alone are nothing to sneeze at. That's taking the number at 1%, but it's without a doubt much higher. Reviewers have given their thumb's up to the Cold War campaign, which tends to prove my point that the Cold War scenario turns people off or isn't a significant drag on sales or interest.

I haven't read any reviews, but I work around 18-42 year old military men every day. The office talk hasn't been that great about COD:BO. I'm running into the "don't waste your money" line quite frequently. It may or may not, but like I said, I haven't seen any hard statistics one way or the other.

I know that personally, I don't listen to formal reviewers or critics nine times out of ten. My tastes are usually pretty diametrically opposed to the mainstream. I'll go for informal reviewers on the web and forums more times than not. I have no interest in COD:BO though, so I haven't put forth the effort for it.

Two things which are different can still be enough to draw useful comparisons, which is sometimes all we can do in our imperfect world.

I didn't say apples to oranges. I said oranges to orange juice. Two versions of the same fruit. I used it as an analogy for pen and paper communal storytelling to individual video gaming storytelling.

Gamers are gamers, and at least there is cross-over.

Not necessarily. The only video games I play are UFO: Extraterrestrials because X-Com was the greatest game I ever played and Command and Conquer.

The larger game world seems to disagree with you that a background that makes use of the Cold War is not financially smart, and there it is.

This is a misleading statement. Of the seven million people you quoted that bought the game, how many of them paid attention to the story vice how many skipped the story parts to get to the shooting? Then we delve into the ones who paid attention to the story, how many cared? How many knew what the Cold War was? I'd wager the kids in the US public education system have no clue that the Iron Curtain wasn't a cover band of Iron Maiden. Because remember, video games aren't given the same social stigma that D&D and other role-playing games are; jocks, band geeks, gamer nerds, alpha male boneheads, O. G. gangsta rap stars, and 45-year-old virgins all talk about and play video games to be cool. You don't get the same response when you talk about Magic Missiles or your latest dungeon crawl in most social circles.

We can agree to disagree, I'm sure.

Tony[/QUOTE]