Zelda and Call of Duty

The Zelda franchise has a long history of being incredibly versatile, borrowing disparate elements from many different series such as God of War, Darksiders, and Goof Troop. Lately, however, the franchise has stalled a bit, failing to bring any exciting new elements to the table. But the gaming industry overall has never been more diverse; there are so many series that Zelda can look to for inspiration, and perhaps the most exciting one is Call of Duty.

Frequently selling millions of copies, Call of Duty is undoubtedly the most successful franchise in the industry, and for good reason. More so than any other series out there, Call of Duty’s developers understand how to craft exciting experiences for all who play the game, regardless of their skill level or familiarity with the genre. As its sales numbers illustrate, the Call of Duty series is clearly better than any of the modern Zelda titles, none of which have sales that hold a candle to even the weakest selling entry among the recent Call of Duty games. So naturally, the question is, what can Zelda take from Call of Duty in order to appeal to a more widespread audience?

There are three specific aspects of Call of Duty that Zelda would do well to learn from and assimilate into the stagnating series formula: cinematic action, a microsession and multiplayer focus, and Skinner Boxes.

Cinematic Action

One of the cornerstones of recent Call of Duty games is a tremendous sense of cinematic artistry on display in their campaign modes. Whereas most recent Zelda titles have relied almost entirely on player control of the camera with minimal cinematography, Call of Duty titles have regularly taken control of the camera away from the player. This allows the series to deliver exciting cutscene-quality events even as regular gameplay is occurring, and results in a very engaging story.

Take, for example, the end of the Paul Jackson segment of Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare’s campaign, which features Paul struggling to walk through the aftermath of a nuclear detonation. The game inhibits player control of both Paul and the camera in order to simulate the effects of the blast on the nervous system and the surrounding environments, and the result is a powerful and affecting illustration as the camera moves in a predetermined manner to capture the intimidating mushroom cloud and the devastation. Had they allowed the player normal control of Paul and the camera, the effect wouldn’t have been as strong. By framing the entire sequence with the eye of a cinematographer, the developers were able to effect a greater emotional reaction within the players than they would have if they had let the players control the experience.

Zelda games, however, tend not to do this. Even in such pivotal scenes, the game tends to step aside and let the player control Link and the camera, with the obvious exception of dialogue sequences. This can often become tedious, with the player performing menial actions like running to different areas in the game – actions that could better be displayed in a short, cinematic cutscene – themselves, rather than with the game’s direct guiding hand.

It’d be very easy for Zelda to adopt this trend of cinematic action throughout. While it should stop short of quicktime events, more restricted camera segments would be easy to integrate into the game. Vine swinging, for example, could be framed from a far more exciting low angle shot to give the impression of Link swinging through the trees high in the air, reminiscent of adventure films. Instead of allowing the player to rotate the camera freely during boss fights, the camera should be fixed and cut rapidly as Link and the boss attack each other, reminiscent of action and martial arts films. Making the games feel more like interactive movies would go a long way toward improving the stagnant formula and capturing some of the Call of Duty audience.

Microsessions and Multiplayer

Gamers are being pulled in many different directions in today’s industry, as evidenced by the rise of microsession mobile gaming. Microsession gaming refers to gaming intended to be done in very short sessions — usually of a few minutes maximum, though at times for only a few seconds at a time. Mobile games are the best deliverers of this sort of gaming experience, and they, like Call of Duty, have been experiencing tremendous sales numbers. With short, microsession mobile games like Super Hexagon dominating the market, longer games are falling by the wayside as short, five-hour single player experiences are being placed on a pedestal. There will always be a niche for grand storytelling in games, but as mobile games take more and more of the overall gaming market, game developers will need to begin making their games shorter in order to compete with the microsession audience. The long, tedious adventures of yesteryear just aren’t fit for the changing industry. The Zelda series, short of JRPGs like Final Fantasy and Xenoblade, is one of the few remaining holdouts, with its most recent offering clocking in at just under 25 hours for the campaign. Zelda should take after Call of Duty in this respect, by delivering a short, focused experience that allows for lots of replay and trophy acquisition rather than expansive content.

The most recent Call of Duty game, Black Ops 2, had only a 6 hour campaign. Why, then, did it manage to sell so many copies? Simple: Call of Duty appealed to the microsessions crowd with a focus on multiplayer. In particular, Call of Duty’s multiplayer mode is very focused on microsession gameplay. The entire feel of multiplayer is very fast-paced, with players dying after only one or two hits (a clever gameplay twist that appeals to microsessions as well as calls for increased realism in gaming) and then respawning shortly thereafter. This quick death and respawn cycle mirrors the microsession gameplay of mobile titles, and makes the game more accessible to those with short attention spans. Rather than requiring a lot of time to immerse yourself into the game, it’s quick to pick up and play for a short length of time: perfect for the 21st century.

Zelda needs to follow suit and finally implement a meaningful multiplayer mode. The series has flirted with multiplayer modes in the past, notably in Four Swords and Four Swords Adventures, but both of those were difficult to begin due to the requirement of having other players with their own consoles and copies of the game nearby. Phantom Hourglass was slightly more accessible, but didn’t feature a deep multiplayer experience. For the series to really capture the microsession feel that modern multiplayer should be patterned upon, it needs to feature the classic Deathmatch and Team Deathmatch modes. How these modes are framed in the story is up to the developers, but the addition of these modes would compensate for the necessarily shorter campaign (to appeal to the short-attention spans of the modern gamer) as well as greatly increase the longevity of the game. It also allows for easy expansion into additional modes, such as Zombies, and new maps through paid downloadable content. It’s a win-win for Nintendo and the players.

Skinner Boxes

Microsession multiplayer is a great way to appeal to the mobile gaming audience, but it introduces the problem of persistence: When the experience is segmented into small microsessions of action and brief periods of inaction, what incentive is there for players to play the multiplayer mode over an extended period of time? Call of Duty’s answer to this is a Skinner Box.

A Skinner Box is a device used to reinforce positive repetitive behavior in test subjects. As a subject performs an action repeatedly, they are periodically given a reward as positive reinforcement for performing the repetitive task. In theory, and often in practice, this leads the subject to continue performing the repetitive task over time, driven by the promise for more reward.

Call of Duty implements this technique using their level up system: As players complete minor tasks in multiplayer, such as killing other players, winning matches, and so on, they are allotted a certain number of experience points, allowing them to gain levels and eventually unlock perks for their player characters in multiplayer and make them more powerful. These rewards are paced to encourage repeated play in multiplayer to unlock more features. The “prestige” system is even more brilliant. Rather than allowing players to level indefinitely or to cap their experience, players can reduce their level to 1 and repeat the process of gaining experience. While it sets them back at a level equivalent to new players, they gain emblems based on their prestige level, which sets them apart and grants them a higher status among the player base. This system prolongs the efficacy of the Skinner Box and adds the perk of prestige (the system is aptly named) to the Box.

Call of Duty’s Skinner Box is highly effective, as the games remain among the most played online for at least a year after their release — until the release of the next title — and then remain high up for a great while after. Zelda can quite easily implement a Skinner Box into its multiplayer, should they decide to add it, but even more novel would be the addition of Skinner Boxes into the campaign.

I’ve mentioned shorter games being better suited for trophy and achievement acquisition, and a shorter campaign in a Zelda game would certainly accomplish this. But this has the added bonus of allowing for an easily implemented Skinner Box: Incremental achievements and trophies, commonly coming in the form of “Defeat X number of enemies by using Y weapon”, can provide updates on the progress every 25 or so enemies. This provides an end goal, and then reinforces the repetitive task every so often. Something like “Defeat 250 Bokoblins using the Bow” would provide ample motivation for dedicated players to continue playing the game well past the duration of a typical microsession. Additionally, the implementation of an overall progress bar that fills gradually upon the completion of story events, dungeons, bosses, trophies/achievements, and so on, would reinforce behavior on the whole. Something similar to this was featured in PopCap’s popular game Bejeweled 3: the player would receive experience based on their performance in game modes, and gain levels that offered no perks other than satisfaction.

Conclusion

It’s incredibly easy to make Zelda more accessible to the Call of Duty audience, and given the size and loyalty of that fanbase, Nintendo would be foolish not to do so. It is absolutely inarguable that these changes would make for a far more lasting and enjoyable experience than the modern series has offered to date.

Author: GaroXiconGaroXicon is an aspiring film student who moonlights as a freelance journalist specializing in video gaming news and editorials. Enigmatic at best, he can often be spotted lurking the Article Center, Fan Works and Theory sections of Zelda Dungeon with the occasional post offering what he hopes is sage advice.