Call of Duty: WWII was far from the best game available last year. Yet, it’s not too surprising to hear that it was still the best-selling game of 2017. For some reason, people just love Call of Duty. Part of it is certainly due to the fact that it’s been around so long and people are just familiar with it, but another big part of the equation is that there are people who genuinely have fun playing it.

We could write several articles about everything that’s wrong with COD: WWII and the Call of Duty franchise as a whole, but that’s not the point this time around. The point is that it’s a mediocre crowd-pleaser and it’s okay that those kinds of games exist.  

Despite what some loud hardcore gamers might say, Call Of Duty: WWII is not the worst game ever. In fact, it’s one of the better Call of Duty games to have come out in the last few years. The whole argument over Call of Duty comes down to perspective.

There are two camps. In Camp A, there are the people who hate Call of Duty and think that it represents everything that is wrong with modern gaming. In camp B, you have people who don’t even know the others exist and who just enjoy casually playing video games. Camp A starts shouting really loudly, so loudly that they create an echo chamber and convince themselves that they’re right and that everyone should agree with them. Meanwhile, Camp B continues to obliviously play Call of Duty and all the other popular mainstream games they like. 

The thing is, neither camp is wrong. Camp A is right that Call of Duty is a highly mediocre game at best and Camp B is right to enjoy playing whatever game they damn well please. 

The existence of Call of Duty doesn’t inhibit the existence of Wolfenstein, Zelda, Cuphead or any of the other great games for 2017, all it does is widen the general gaming audience. Plus, there is nothing wrong with enjoying Call of Duty while also loving Horizon Zero Dawn. Sure other games are far, far more deserving of the best-seller title, but there’s no reason getting bent out of shape of Call of Duty winning. Ideally, money would be pouring into better games, but things aren’t usually ideal.

Without the gamers that love and routinely buy games like Call of Duty: WWII, the US games market wouldn’t have climbed another 11% last year. The overall gaming community needs both the hardcore gamers and the casual gamers to thrive. So next time someone tells you that their favorite game is Call of Duty, don’t berate them. Instead, gently suggest they check out Persona 5, Wolfenstein or some other game you think they might like. Then, maybe next year they’ll try something other than Call of Duty: Modern Black Ops Warfare, or whatever it’ll be called.