Modern Warfare 2 players are “grown-ups with too much time on their hands”

By: Nick Simberg | November 14th, 2009

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 broke the record for an entertainment property’s first-day sales with some $311 million dollars, stomping the Microsoft-exclusive Halo 3, which trumped previous title holder Spider-Man 2 (the movie).  That’s fine.  That’s cool.  And, after all the hype, that’s to be expected.

Still, I heard this news first delivered on Minnesota Public Radio by news guy Bob Collins in the most elitist, down-talking way imaginable.

Now, 89.3 The Current, based in Minneapolis, Minnesota, is probably one of the finest radio stations in the entire world.  Yes, they bring up the point that “you can’t hear this music on other stations” a lot, but it’s true.  They focus on local music, indie music, and a few “pop” songs like Weezer, Muse, and Modest Mouse (if those can truly be considered pop).

They are a completely public radio station, meaning that they rely on donations and listener support.  Personally, I send them $10 a month for making my car rides 100x more bearable.

But when Mr. Collins delivered the news about Modern Warfare 2, he could not have sounded more out of the times, or more patronizing.  I believe it was something like this:

“Modern Warfare 2 broke the single-day sales record for an entertainment property yesterday, with over $311 million in sales in North America and the U.K. alone.  That’s a lot of – I don’t want to say children, because I know they’re not children – that’s a lot of grown-ups with too much time on their hands.”

Seriously, Bob?  Every afternoon, you come over from MPR News to sit down with (and flirt incessantly with) Barb Abney and deliver your headlines.  You know she’s a DJ, right?  She spends her days and gets PAID to listen to music and talk on the phone all day.

People who play games are “grown-ups with too much time on their hands”?!  How about people who read fiction books?  How about people who go and see indie films at the local theater?

How about people who spend their days and nights listening to music instead of doing something productive, hmm?

Games are a hobby, but they are not entirely without merit.  The storytelling is finally advancing to a point where a game’s narrative is actually a priority for developers.  The twitch-reactions of first-person shooters increase hand-eye coordination by many times.  And it was even revealed in a recent study that FPS’s help increase night-vision abilities in humans.

So don’t you stand there in your ivory tower built on the backs of hardworking musicians that have probably played hundreds of shows for little more than applause.  A VIDEO GAME is the most popular single piece of technology of all time.  Not a CD.  Not a movie.  Not a book.

What else do they have to do to earn your respect?  What else do they have to do to be considered a viable entertainment medium by you elitist hipsters?

Yes, popular does not equal good.  But popular does signify acceptance.  If the world has finally accepted video games as their favorite entertainment medium, perhaps you, Mr. Collins, should get with the times.  You don’t want to be one of those kinds of people that still think the Internet is a “fad,” do you?

I am incredibly tempted to cancel my membership to The Current based on this statement alone.  Perhaps if I really have “too much time on my hands,” I shouldn’t be wasting it listening to the radio.   That’s as unproductive as playing a video game, isn’t it?