Competitive gaming has been around for a long time, but its players, tactics and infrastructure can be little mystifying to the layman. People scream a lot; it’s a little intimidating. There’s a lot of action on screen; it’s a little confusing. It’s very in-depth and without prior knowledge, difficult to report.

Covering gamer rage has never been a complicated matter.

Tripwire Interactive are the people behind Red Orchestra 2, a game that takes the FPS model in a very different direction to Call of Duty. One of the reasons for a choosing such a direction might be, it seems, because their president has some very strong views about Call of Duty.

“I’m really discouraged by the current state of multiplayer shooters,” said John Gibson to PC Gamer. “I think that, and I hate to mention names, because it sounds like ‘I’m just jealous of their success,’ but I’m really, I feel like Call of Duty has almost ruined a generation of FPS players.”

Gibson explains that a huge amount of feedback they received during testing for RO2 revolved around frustrations that the game just wasn’t enough like Call of Duty.

“They’re like: ‘I hate Red Orchestra, I can’t play it.’ Well, why? ‘Because the guy doesn’t move like he does in Call of Duty. Call of Duty has great movement.’ Why is it great? ‘Because it just is, I just like the way it works.’”

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It’s just a small thing, but when you see a ping bar for a server instead of just a flat-out ping number, doesn’t it make you narrow your eyes a little, maybe clench your teeth? No? Just me then. Anyway, that and many other issues are now addressed in the latest PC patch for Black Ops 2, delivered late on Friday evening.

A further patch was also released on Wednesday, which resolves dozens and dozens of issues with multiplayer bugs, challenge tracking, and players and care packages flying unusually high into the air for no reason.

Check out the full patch notes for both below.

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Although free-to-play isn’t a term we associate with such a bastion of traditional publishing models, Activision does have a freemium offering, to whit: one Call of Duty Online, a China-only affair. During the publisher’s recent quarterly financial report, one investor asked, quite sensibly, if Activision is ever going to jump on board the F2P train anywhere else. Publishing boss Eric Hirshberg had the following response:

“I think we look at the Call of Duty Online game in China on its own merit as a great opportunity. That’s not to say that we won’t gain learnings about how it works in the micro-transaction-based format for the game. And there are a few other regions where that would be very relevant. So — but we certainly are not ready to announce any plans in that regard.”

So: not yet, but probably. It takes a long time to turn a boat that big.

Source: Activision IR

If you’ve played Spec Ops: The Line, you’ll know that it’s a game with a dark, morally ambiguous narrative, that really makes you feel like you’re making tough decisions and having to live with the consequences. Patrick Stafford argues that, although it’s not perfect, Spec Ops has raised the bar for shooters everywhere, and we as players have an obligation to raise our standards as well.