Call of Duty introduces series' first nonbinary character with 'they/them' pronouns



Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 is breaking theoretical glass ceilings with the inclusion of a nonbinary character for the first time in its series.

The character named Volta Rossi is of Italian descent and described as "a street-smart rogue with a blue-blood pedigree."

"Volta Rossi is an enigma who left the comfort of aristocracy to forge a new name as a [human intelligence] specialist," the game explains.

As reported by the Gamer, Rossi is the only character that uses they/them pronouns in its description.

"Their ties to the Luttazzi family give them unique insight into Avalon," the caption reads.

Other character descriptions use he/him and she/her, marking a likely intentional move by developer Activision.

Photos of the character online show a strange, sparse-eyed individual, which aligns with the modern reimagining of femineity that major studios have typically adopted in recent years. Female characters have increasingly been designed to be unattractive, using traits such as masculine jawlines and figures, sometimes coupled with obesity.

Some have argued that the new character is a natural progression from Agent Bell, who appeared in Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War, which was released in 2020.

The character's origin was purposely left open-ended, leaving it to the user to decide their birthplace and gender.

For gender options, gamers could select male, female, nonbinary, or "classified."

Outlets pointed out that when using the nonbinary or classified options, the character did not make any noises when getting injured for some reason.

With an October 25 release, it's difficult to predict how this news may affect sales.

Given how hard big-budget games have suffered in 2024 once fans become aware developers are pushing diversity-driven story arcs, the move seems to be a big risk for studio Treyarch.

For example, Sony's Concord lost approximately $100 million after closing shop following just 14 days online. The game was highly criticized for morbidly obese characters and the excessive use of pronouns.

"Even the robot has pronouns," gamer Kabrutus, owner of DEI Detected, said in a review at the time. The writer showed off an image of a robot in the game that had "he/him" pronouns on the character select screen.

However, given the young age of the Call of Duty fanbase and the massive success of the franchise, the brand may be too big to fail.

According to Variety, Call of Duty: Black Ops IV pulled over $500 million in its first three days of release in 2018, which was about the same as its predecessor.

Call Of Duty: Black Ops Cold War sold approximately 5.7 million copies in its first month, GameRant reported.

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Lacrosse coach FIRED for congratulating the ‘real woman who won’



In the name of transgender rights, women’s rights — as well as free speech — continue to take a beating.

The latest blow comes from Oberlin College, where administrators fired Kim Russell from her position as women’s lacrosse coach because she dared to voice the most controversial opinion: that men don’t belong in women’s sports.

In March 2022, Russell had shared an Instagram post congratulating Emma Weyant as the “real woman who won” the NCAA 500-yard freestyle, after Weyant had placed second to Lia Thomas, a man who identifies as a woman.

At the top of the post, Russell left comments: “What do you believe? I can’t be quiet on this…I’ve spent my life playing sports, starting & coaching sports programs for girls & women...”

A student had reported her comments to college authorities, prompting Oberlin’s athletic director to demand that Russell write a letter of apology.

Russell refused.

Pat Gray jokes that Russell is obviously “a danger to society," but Oberlin College isn't joking.

“It’s acceptable to have your own opinions, but when they go against Oberlin College’s beliefs, it’s a problem for your employment,” Creg Jantz, senior associate director of athletics at Oberlin College, reportedly said.

“So you don’t really believe that it is important or acceptable to have your own opinions,” Gray says, calling it “incredible.”


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'Call of Duty' Pride bundle lets players simulate murder using trans flag-adorned guns and bullets



There have been multiple mass shootings executed, attempted, or at the very least planned by transvestites and LGBT radicals in recent years.

In April, police arrested a trans-identifying high school student in Maryland who was allegedly plotting to shoot up classrooms full of elementary school children. In February, a gender-bending anti-Semite from El Salvador opened fire in Joel Osteen's Houston-based Lakewood Church. In January, a Nazi-supporting transvestite in Oregon was arrested after threatening to "go out in a blaze of glory." The same month, a trans-identifying teen stalked the halls of a school in Iowa, murdering a sixth-grader and wounding five others. Last year, a female transvestite murdered three children and three adults at a Christian school in Nashville, Tennessee. There was also the 2019 STEM School Highlands Ranch mass shooting in Colorado and the November 2022 massacre at a LGBT club in Colorado Springs.

Trans-identifying suspects' share of mass public shootings nationwide over the 2018-2023 period is reportedly well over seven times their share of the population.

Despite the apparent instability of this cohort, particularly when cross-sex hormones are factored in, a major video game developer has decided to pair LGBT propaganda with its popular first-person shooter — a move some critics figure serves to glorify violence in the activists' colors.

Activision Blizzard's Call of Duty franchise is from far innocuous, having long courted controversy.

For instance, one mission in the Infinity Ward-developed 2009 title, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, generated outrage with its "No Russian" mission, which had players fill the shoes of an undercover agent drawn into a false flag attack at a fictional Moscow-based airport. Instead of mowing down the usual waves of armed enemies, players were instead tasked with becoming terrorists and massacring multitudes of unarmed civilians.

Activision Blizzard drew the ire of former CIA asset and Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega in 2012 for supposedly hurting his reputation in Call of Duty: Black Ops II.

The woke company's controversies are not limited to gamifying terrorism and providing Latin dictators with a second act.

In recent years, the DEI-captive company — which allegedly has diversity officers ensuring conformity and compliance for each video game — has worked to make sure its murder simulations are in alignment with the LGBT agenda.

Twitch streamer Nick Kolcheff's suggestion last year that LGBT activists should "leave little children alone" prompted the company to remove his in-game character avatar, which had gone on sale the previous month in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II and in Warzone.

Whereas last year, the company was breaking links to dissenting voices, this year the company rolled out LGBT propaganda in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 and in Warzone.

— (@)

In its Modern Warfare 3 season four announcement, Activision Blizzard alerted gamers to "seven free Pride weapon camos."

'We're proud to celebrate Pride Month by offering seven different Weapon camo variants.'

"Call of Duty is for everyone, and we're proud to celebrate Pride Month by offering seven different Weapon camo variants, each representing the colors of the different LGBTQ+ flags," said the company.

One gamer noted that some bullets in the game have been digitally painted in the colors of the transvestite flag.

Bounding into Comics reported that the franchise has rolled out similar bundles before, having introduced LGBT-themed calling cards in 2022. However, this is apparently the first time that the company has applied Pride graphics directly to bullets.

In addition to weapon camouflages and activist bullets, the free bundle includes Pride flag weapon stickers and weapon key chains.

Former Blizzard Entertainment team lead and Red 5 Studios cofounder Mark Kern tweeted, "Um....did you think this one through? @Activision @CallofDuty We just started PRIDE and we already have the worst virtue signal of the year. If the news media actually covered what was happening with mass shootings, they would know. But they either don't know, or don't care."

That Park Place noted that some critics have dubbed the Pride package the "Audrey Hale Operator update," in reference to the murderous transvestite who shot up the Covenant Christian School in Nashville.

The activist publication PinkNews suggested, "As is somewhat expected sadly, the reaction to the update has been mixed as the Call of Duty community is not renowned for its LGBTQ+ support or allyship."

While critics have suggested the Pride package is in bad taste, Forbes suggested it amounted to a "nice gesture to the LGBTQ Call of Duty community."

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Modern Warfare III loses the plot and delivers some dumb fun



Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 came out 12 years ago, putting gamers in the shoes of elite Western commandos and an ex-Spetsnaz operator, all working desperately to prevent the onset of another world war. It was a fast-paced treat, resolving gloriously with a blood-soused ruffian lighting a cigar while his newly conquered foe dangled by the neck nearby.

It was met with rave reviews. It also set records at the time, selling over 6.5 million units in the U.S. and the U.K. within 24 hours of launch, netting Activision over $400 million. The money just kept pouring in from there.

In an effort to transfer lightning from one bottle to another and then slap a $70 price tag on it, developer Sledgehammer Games and Microsoft-owned publisher Activision swapped “3” out for Roman numerals, gave 14-year-old Modern Warfare 2 multiplayer maps a facelift, and offered a partial and anticlimactic retelling of how fictional Cpts. John “Soap” McTavish and John Price helped thwart the toxic schemes of the terroristic Russian ultranationalist Vladimir Makarov.

It appears the original and the most recent title in the brand recycle, Modern Warfare II (2022), may have set the bar too high in terms of story, sales — MWII cracked $1 billion within ten days of launch — and player expectations. So far, the reviews have mostly been damning or, at the very least, dismissive, and the sales are reportedly down 25%.

The game comprises a single-player campaign, a multiplayer mode, and an open-world zombie mode that is all but Warzone with fewer brain-dead variables. Each of these elements, if taken alone, would not be worth the hour it takes to download the game or the 200GB it hogs on your hard drive. However, as a whole, it’s a full meal of shooting fun.

Image Courtesy of Activision Press Room

The single-player campaign is a blast to play right up until it isn’t. Apart from a mind-numbingly dull shipyard mission, a sparsely populated nuclear reactor mission, and a glorified walking simulator ostensibly inserted as a reminder that Black Ops: Cold War could have been a whole lot worse, the levels are relatively punchy and well-designed.

Always two steps behind Makarov, a cartoonish villain dead set on black-flagging his way to radioactive Russian greatness, you have to bleed your way around civilian corpses and useless ally NPCs in hopes of exonerating an insurgent leader from a made-up country that might interest John Bolton.

The campaign alternates between rail shooter and open-world combat. Since you’re usually kept busy finding the whatsit in the latter, there’s little time to contemplate how much first-person shooters benefit stylistically from strict limits and atmospheric straightaways.

Sledgehammer teases the potential of moral choices and dialogue trees early in the game, but it’s a bug, not a feature. The next time you see dialogue options of any significance, you’ll be disarming a bomb that threatens to do you the kindness of wasting the cast of pixel-deep characters who’ve been sporadically grunting at you with British accents.

There’s been a lot of chatter about this game being a glorified DLC repackaged as a stand-alone game. It certainly seems that way, concluding on an offbeat with a laughably lousy eulogy for the four hours you killed trying to put a bullet in Makarov, followed by a slapdash post-credits scene. There is certainly no glorious finale and no cigar, just a setup for postmodern warfare between East and West.

In fairness, the hours preceding that final disappointment are not without their share of cheap thrills. Storming a Slavic terror financier’s stylish beach compound and raining down fury in the obligatory AC-130 gunship mission were both standouts.

Image Courtesy of Activision Press Room

The multiplayer is excellent, delivering face-warming hours of consistent fun with maps designed back before Bin Laden was fish food. Geriatrics’ muscle memory will guide them to victory while new players will discover that sometimes the old ways were indeed the best. Players are once again permitted to slide-cancel and can work their way up the ranks to level 55 with the help of a mini-map. Those who fast-stab their way to the top will find plenty of gear-unlocking challenges to keep them occupied until Activision begins substantiating the game with more DLC content.

Finally, the open-world zombie mode delivers some progressively challenging missions and a massive hellscape to execute them in. Like the open combat missions in the single-player, the terrain is relatively bland; however, there’s a lot more to explore in this mode.

While the Call of Duty franchise has dared to push some boundaries over the years (e.g., Call of Duty: Black Ops III succeeded as a provocative work of cyberpunk) and surprise gamers with the occasional plot twist, at the end of the day, COD is energy drinks, not fine wine; mushroom clouds, not blue-sky thinking; Michael Bay, not Tarkovsky.

Once a year, just ahead of Christmas, kids and adults with stress to transmute answer the call for some dumb fun. Modern Warfare III may underachieve on much, but on this — when factoring in all three game modes — it delivers.

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Activision punishes 'Call of Duty' superstar player over tweet about young children being taught Pride month in school, gamers call for boycott



A superstar video game player has been punished for a tweet suggesting that Pride month shouldn't be celebrated in public schools and influencing young children. There have been calls to boycott the "Call of Duty" video game following the controversy.

Nick Kolcheff – who goes by the gamer name of "Nickmercs" – is one of the top players in "Call of Duty," the massively successful first-person shooter video game. Nickmercs is the most-watched "Call of Duty" gamer on the video game streaming platform Twitch.

Forbes said of Kolcheff, "Content revenue on his videos and livestreams, a platform exclusivity deal, and a growing list of brand sponsorships added up to $15 million for him in 2022."

Nickmercs was so influential in the "Call of Duty" community that the video game's publisher, Activision, awarded the gamer with his own in-game operator skin. This was the first time that "Call of Duty" had featured a skin honoring a professional video game player.

However, Kolcheff's operator skin was removed from the "Call of Duty" store this week after the gamer tweeted about leaving "little children alone" in regard to Pride month.

On Wednesday, Kolcheff responded to a tweet about the clash between protesters outside a Los Angeles County school district building, where board members were voting to determine if schools would recognize June as Pride month. There were demonstrators calling for educators to "Leave our kids alone," in response to pushing an LGBTQ agenda in schools. Despite the protest, the school board unanimously voted to recognize June as Pride month.

Video shows the protest erupting into violence outside the Glendale Unified School District headquarters. Three people were arrested.

Esports broadcaster Chris Puckett posted video of the school board melee on Twitter. Nickmercs responded to the tweet, "They should leave little children alone. That’s the real issue."

The tweet was liked nearly 75,000 times.

\u201c@MLGPuckett They should leave little children alone. That\u2019s the real issue.\u201d
— Puckett \u2708\ufe0f #CDL2023 (@Puckett \u2708\ufe0f #CDL2023) 1686153086

The next day, the official "Call of Duty" Twitter account announced that Kolcheff's skin had been removed.

The tweet read, "Due to recent events, we have removed the 'NICKMERCS Operator' bundle from the Modern Warfare II and Warzone store. We are focused on celebrating PRIDE with our employees and our community."

"I didn’t mean to upset anybody, I know that I did. I’m not apologizing about the tweet, because I don't feel like it's wrong. I’m going to stand by what I said, I’m not going to delete the tweet I just want to make sure everyone understands the point I was trying to make by tweeting my response," Kolcheff said, according to Fox News.

Forbes added, "He alleges the point he was trying to make was about how parents should talk to their children about those issues rather than teachers talking about it in a classroom, sparking debates about existing SexEd classes in schools."

Kolcheff wrote on Twitter, "Friends are created in good times, but families are built through adversity. Appreciate all of you that have my back, understand my position as a new father & recognize the love I have for all. Ain’t no hate in this heart."

There have been calls for a "Call of Duty" boycott by hundreds of video game players.

\u201cCall Of Duty MASS Boycott | CANCELS NickMercs Over "Leave Kids Alone" Tweet During Pride Month https://t.co/11UpERpcCh\u201d
— Vara Dark (@Vara Dark) 1686337094

Another top "Call of Duty" gamer, who goes by the name "Dr. Disrespect," called the decision "pathetic." He also demanded that Nickmercs' bundle be reinstated and that Activision apologize to Kolcheff. Dr. Disrespect vowed not to play "Call of Duty" until those actions were taken.

Activision has been vocal about celebrating Pride month. The official Twitter account for the video game company has only made two posts this month – one about Pride month and the other about having a float in the Los Angeles Pride Parade.

\u201cActivision embraces the beauty and strength of diversity, equality, and unity. We aim to foster an inclusive, supportive, and judgment-free environment. \n\nHappy #PrideMonth from our entire community! \ud83c\udff3\ufe0f\u200d\ud83c\udf08 \n#GameWithPride\u201d
— Activision (@Activision) 1686264695
\u201cJoin us in celebrating the power of #Pride \ud83c\udf08\n\nActivision is excited to be a part of the Los Angeles, Pride Parade on June 11th.\n\nIf you see our float during the parade route, be sure to say hello and share your own stories of pride and acceptance. See you there! \ud83c\udff3\ufe0f\u200d\ud83c\udf08\u201d
— Activision (@Activision) 1686338033

The Activision Blizzard, Inc. website touts the company's 2022 environmental, social, and governance report, "We are excited to share key highlights of our ESG efforts across this website."

Activision offers several "Employee Network Groups" to "provide safe spaces for connection, growth, learning, and leadership," which are "an important force behind our company’s DE&I progress."

Activision offers network groups for employees who are Asian Pacific Islanders, black, "LatinX," LGBT, indigenous and aboriginal, women, and veterans.

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Only Spiritual Brotherhood Can Save Men In The Job Crisis

America’s young men are in crisis, and the answer to this problem is spiritual, not economic or political.