6. Racism
Now, this isn't necessarily to tar everyone with the same brush, but come on, who hasn't pumped a fist in the air and wanted to shout "USA! USA! USA!" while ripping a machine gun through an Arab's helpless body? No? Well, you must be one of the good'uns, because the jingoistic tone of especially the earlier games in the series certainly made it seem like these games were being designed for red state rednecks above all else. Going online only reinforces this theory, sadly... I've sat in so many games and listened to people make racist rants against other players - usually someone who killed them - by making fun of their name or their voice, and piling on some old-fashioned racial expletives to boot. Though it's easy enough to mute these individuals and report them to PSN or XBL, it's a curious phenomenon that I've never encountered to quite this degree in any other video game series. It's easy to assume that this is a by-product of the game appealing so virulently to casual players; not that casual players are racists, but that Activision are simply capturing a
massive slice of the FPS market share, ranging from smart gamers to the less-learned types who are more likely to be socially ignorant.