Call Of Duty: Ghosts represents everything that is wrong in the games industry

Opinion by Matt S.

Getting this out of the way from the outset: I haven't played Call Of Duty: Ghosts. There's no review that's going to go live on Digitally Downloaded once the embargo lifts, and I've got no inclination to buy the game.

I've played previous Call Of Duty games, of course, and they consistently disappoint me. Not because they're poorly-made games. They're quite clearly made well, or they wouldn't sell in the kinds of numbers they do.

Rather, my objection to Call Of Duty is on the basis of what it tells us about the development of the games industry. For the past week or so my Twitter feed and social aggregate sites like N4G have been filled with stories about whether the game looks better on one platform than the other, screenshot comparisons, and so on and so forth. The analysis of the game's technical merits, right down to fish and dogs, can actually be impressively detailed. And that's the problem.

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With Call Of Duty: Ghosts, the Australian Classifications Board again lets down the Australian public

Opinion by Matt S. 

The Australian Classifications Board has seen fit to give Call of Duty: Ghosts, a MA15+ rating. This is the second-highest classification available in Australia and is intended to bar children under the age of 15 from playing the game under any capacity.

But it isn't the R18+ rating, and it's yet the latest in a long string of hopelessly inconsistent ratings decisions by the Board that mean that the ratings don't actually mean anything to the people they're there to advise: principally, the parents.

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Friday 10s; Ten game franchises that need a rest

Everyone likes a top-10 list. They're a bit of fun, and always good for discussion. And so each week we pull together a "top 10" list. These are here for fun and laughs - we're not pretending that we're the authority of good games taste in the world and this is purely the author's preferences. Agree with him/ her or not, it's all good. We'd love to hear your own personal preferences in the comments below the list. But please do be civil. We're all friends here.

This week Digitally Downloaded journalist, Joseph, looks at a series of game franchises that are all superb, but possibly need to stop while they're ahead. It's a difficult challenge for game developers and publishers, to know when to stop, but too often we've seen wonderful game franchises that have fallen into mediocrity because the developers didn't know when to say enough is enough.

Be sure to let us know what you think of the list below in the comments, and of course if there are any franchises that you think should be added in there, let us know that as well!

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