When it was released in 2003, the original Call of Duty won for itself a slew of awards, fans, and critical praise. The staying power of the visceral game play and seamless blending of triggered cut scenes brought cash and recognition to rookie development studio Infinity Ward. Seizing their star power, Infinity Ward went on to create three sequels to the series. The most recent addition, Call of Duty 4, plays on over 18,000 game servers as one of the most popular online shooters today.
But what of the little game that could, the one that started it all? In a turn that shouldn’t surprise anyone reading this site, it was the multiplayer game, and not the much-vaunted single player story, that gave the game a life beyond release. Almost five years later, Call of Duty is still being played online on almost 300 COD servers by players from all over the world. Just today, in fact, I shot a Nazi who then cursed at me in German in the chat box. I’m assuming he was cursing, of course, because, again, he was speaking German.

So why do so many gamers choose to wax nostalgic and play software 4 generations removed from the current product?

The primary reason has simply got to be nostalgia. Playing a game from years ago reminds you of what you were doing back then, the friends you played with and the spectacular headshots and last stands you witnessed.

We all have those games. Age of Empires 2: Age of Kings is one of mine. A friend and I used to play on a direct connection against computer rivals on random maps. This, of course, was back when my computer would pick up the phone and call his computer, and we’d tie up both phone lines for however long it took the French to realize that they didn’t stand a chance.

What’s that you say? Oh, yes, it does smell like the golden days in here.
Call of Duty as a series is still a force in the online world, with CoD2 and the original outperforming newer games like Doom 3 and F.E.A.R.

(Call of Duty 4 and Counter-Strike are not on this graph because they make all the other games feel inadequate)

It isn’t exactly news that older, better multiplayer games can stick around longer than newer games that lack the same magic – the most popular online shooter, after all, is the decade-old Counter-Strike with 42,000 operating servers. All the same, however, it is certainly telling that a single franchise can dominate much of today’s online play the way the Call of Duty series does. If you’re new to the series or just haven’t blown the dust off of the original jewel case in a few years, do yourself a favor: go back to the beginnings. You’ll be glad you did.