Football has long been associated with video games but only of the sporting type. Titles like EA Sports FIFA and PES have been releasing new editions every year to attract fans to play these games digitally.
But football may have just forayed into something different.
“Messi has just launched an absolute rocket strike” will have a whole new meaning in a few weeks’ time.
A new leak has suggested that some world-famous players could be coming to the new Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2.
Call of Duty, or CoD, is a first-person shooting game developed by Activision. It has been releasing new editions since 2003 and has focused on wars and other action sequences.
In the world of video games, CoD is a titan, but it hasn’t done it all by itself. The title needed significant collaboration to become as well-known as it is today.
The Call of Duty game franchise has worked with a variety of well-known people throughout the years, from prominent rappers to actors, and anything in between. Additionally, it has cooperated with various series, including the anime and the film industry.
Some of these collaborations are like that of Snoop Dogg, Godzilla, Kevin Spacey, and a lot more over the years. Call of Duty includes these characters in the game by adding them as an “Operator”.
Operators are playable characters that appear in the multiplayer, co-op, and zombie modes of these games, such as the upcoming release, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II.
CoD MW2 is the 19th instalment of the title and is expected to release on the 28th of October this year.
And if leaks are to be believed, football fans are in for a treat.
A renowned leaker, in a tweet yesterday, claimed that the game is again collaborating with some very well-known figures that will serve as Operators.
Football superstars Messi, Neymar, and Paul Pogba are among the names on the list.
How reliable is this TheGhostOfHope leaker? While their record is not spotless, many assertions and leaks made in the past have certainly come to fruition. So the most-recent list released does have some merit to it.
The football trio mentioned does not share a common collaboration or sponsor, so the CoD partnership is unlikely to be via a brand but rather individually.
One theory that has gotten some traction is that this could be a collaboration with the FIFA Qatar World Cup itself, and it makes sense as Argentina, Brazil, and France are among the favourites to win the tournament.
The game launches a month before the Cup kicks off. It is possible this could be used to generate hype for the tournament among a different audience, that of young video game players, while at the same time bringing the countless international fans of football to the world of Call of Duty.
Unsurprisingly, fans questioned why just these three and not any others like Ronaldo, but until Modern Warfare 2 releases or developers give an answer, it is next to impossible to know for sure.
This, however, wouldn’t be the first inclusion of football players in the promotion run of Modern Warfare 2.
Just yesterday, the live-action trailer for the game was released with some very big celebrity names like Nicki Minaj, Lil Baby, F1 driver Lando Norris, and Arsenal and England starboy Bukayo Saka.
So it seems like, with Modern Warfare 2, Call of Duty is aiming to go bigger than ever. They already are the most established FPS franchise in the world, and with this collaboration, the game might grow to levels never seen before.
