Tdawg Smitty Is Right to Step Away From Call of Duty, and I Know Because I've Tried Quitting 11 Times

Another major Call of Duty creator is walking away from Call of Duty. Tdawg Smitty just announced he is stepping away from regular Call of Duty content for at least the next three months, and before anybody calls him dramatic or says he is abandoning his audience, I think he is absolutely right.

I know he is right because I have tried quitting Call of Duty about 11 different times myself. The only difference is that every time I finally escaped, this franchise reached through the screen, grabbed me by the ankle and dragged me right back. "At this point, I've quit Call of Duty more times than Ric Flair retired from wrestling." Nobody believes me anymore. I do not even believe me when I say I am going to quit. I have become a meme. His announcement hit me on so many levels that I felt compelled to talk about it, because it was almost like looking in a mirror.

Tdawg Smitty Is Not Promising He Will Never Cover Call of Duty Again

He may still play some of the older games. He said he is not promising he will never cover COD again, which I think is smart. But he is done forcing himself to make content about a franchise that currently gives him absolutely nothing to be excited about. After listening to everything he said, I completely understand where he is coming from, because I have been fighting the exact same battle for years.

I do not know him personally. I believe we have had some positive interactions over the years on X, but I do not think I have ever spoken to him one on one. I will say this, though: I like his content. I put him on in the background all the time when I am editing or working, and I enjoy his view and his take on how to be a creator in this space.

The Every COD Formula Eventually Runs Out of Road

He said he finally reached a place he never expected to reach as a Call of Duty fan and creator. Even during Infinite Warfare, World War II, Black Ops 4, Vanguard and Modern Warfare 2, he could find something to enjoy or some angle that made creating content fun. When the new games were not delivering, he could go back through the franchise and make those every COD pieces.

Anybody who has followed me for a long time will find that very familiar. Use the M16 in every Call of Duty. Compare the same weapon across the games. Revisit forgotten maps, weapons, features and moments. Do a top 10 or top 20 in 27 different iterations. That formula worked, but eventually you run out of road. Lobbies become harder to find. Older games fill up with hackers and snipers targeting creators. Ideas start repeating, because there are only so many ways you can use the M16 in every Call of Duty before the audience realises they saw basically the same thing six months ago.

More importantly, you realise you are making the same thing again. Once you get bored of making it, the audience is eventually going to get bored of it too, and then you have no motivation and you are not having fun.

Black Ops 7 Classic Mode and the Ports Briefly Brought the Community Back to Life

Then Call of Duty suddenly started showing signs of life. Black Ops 7 introduced the classic mode, removed a lot of the movement insanity and delivered something much closer to the older COD experience. Tdawg went from barely touching the newer games to playing it almost daily. He was legitimately having fun again, and yes, creators need to have fun with their content.

Then the Black Ops 1 and Black Ops 2 ports appeared, and seemingly out of nowhere the community had life. Everybody had a reason to be excited. For a minute, it looked like Call of Duty had stumbled into the perfect formula: the ports for people who wanted the genuine classic experience, and Black Ops 7 classic mode acting as a bridge between old and new.

Then Tdawg played Modern Warfare 4 early, and his initial impression was positive. He thought he might have three or four versions of Call of Duty he could enjoy as a creator and a fan for the year. That is a good slate.

The Modern Warfare 4 Beta Brought Back the Same Old Complaints

Then Call of Duty did what Call of Duty always does. It took that momentum, loaded it into a cannon and fired it directly into the side of a mountain. The matchmaking people enjoyed in Black Ops 7 was reportedly changed back. Then the Modern Warfare 4 beta arrived with the same complaints we have been screaming about for years: aggressive skill based matchmaking, constant sprinting, tiny maps, exhausting pacing, and another game built around a version of the formula we have been playing since Modern Warfare 2019.

He also said he needed more playtesting time. You go in for two hours, capture your content, and of course you are excited, because it is the brand new thing. With more sessions, you could go back, process it, remember what was not the best and give real feedback, but it was never that way. I have been to countless playtests and early reveals for Call of Duty, and he is absolutely right. You get in for two or three hours, they push you through, and you are gone. There is no time to process what you are doing. It is new, it is great, and that is the vibe you send out.

With the Modern Warfare 4 beta, it did not matter whether you were a casual player, a professional or somebody who analyses the game for a living. Everybody felt it. You could not relax. Every lobby felt like the game was calculating exactly how much stress it could apply before you turned the console off. At some point you were not playing Call of Duty anymore; you were participating in an experiment designed to determine how much manipulation a young player requires before buying another skin.

Tdawg's Halo Comparison Was Painfully Accurate

Tdawg compared what is happening to Call of Duty with what happened to Halo, and I think that comparison was painfully accurate. Halo did not disappear overnight. It had a leak in the boat. The community pointed directly at the leak, and the people controlling the franchise refused to patch it. Then another leak appeared, then another, and every new game took something the community already disliked and doubled down on it.

That is exactly where Call of Duty appears to be heading. The franchise is not literally dead. It still makes a ton of money, releases every year and has millions of casual players who will always try the newest game. But being financially alive and culturally healthy are two completely different things. Call of Duty used to control the gaming conversation. Now a new COD releases, everybody argues about matchmaking for three weeks, and half the community quietly returns to whatever they were playing before. I am not trying to attack Call of Duty. I am reaffirming and validating the points Tdawg put out there.

The most frustrating part is that we all know what the problems are: skill based matchmaking, manipulated lobbies, hackers, voice chat, tiny maps, movement that makes everybody feel like they drank 14 energy drinks before spawning, and an engine and presentation that increasingly make every game feel interchangeable. There is the need for a proper remaster, and the possibility of finally taking a year off instead of sub series with seven and eight entries. Every year, Call of Duty listens just enough to convince everybody change is coming, takes one step forward, waits until everybody gets excited, then takes three steps backward while trying to sell us a weapon blueprint.

Negative Content Is the Only Call of Duty Content That Consistently Works

That creates a massive problem for creators. The only Call of Duty content that consistently works anymore is negative content. Rants work. Controversies work. Pieces explaining why the newest game is dying work. BlameTruth gets hundreds of thousands of views each time because he has his angle and sticks with it. I would not know what he would do if a good Call of Duty came out and he could admit he enjoyed it, because where do you go with that content? The faucet dries up really quickly.

I understand that better than anybody, because I have done plenty of those pieces myself. Some are fun to make, and when the criticism is deserved, we deserve to say it. But how many times can you make the same argument about skill based matchmaking before you feel trapped in a time loop or pigeonholed into a corner? How many times can you say Call of Duty needs a remaster, larger maps, and to listen to the community? At some point we are not creating anymore. "We're just changing the thumbnail and yelling the same five sentences slightly louder."

GTA and Other Big Games Gave Tdawg Smitty His Fun Back

That is why Tdawg started experimenting with GTA. He would begin his sessions with an hour of Call of Duty, then move over to GTA for the rest of the night. Eventually his own audience started telling him to get off COD and switch games, because they could see the difference. He was not forcing excitement anymore. He was actually having fun.

I think he just finished GTA 5, he is doing Cyberpunk and Red Dead Redemption, and he is gearing up for GTA 6. These are massive games he has never fully experienced, which gives him an entirely new creative challenge. Instead of trying to invent the 900th way to discuss matchmaking, he gets to discover characters, worlds and stories for the first time. I am super jealous. His audience is not only following the game; they are following somebody rediscover why he enjoyed playing video games.

Being Grateful to Call of Duty Does Not Mean Staying Trapped by It

That part hits me the hardest, because I have gone through the same thing. Call of Duty changed my life. It helped build my career, changed my family's life, put us on a completely different path, gave me an incredible audience and created opportunities I could never have imagined when I started. I will always appreciate what this franchise has done for me. But "being grateful to Call of Duty doesn't mean I'm required to remain creatively imprisoned by it forever."

That is a big reason I started building different homes for things I enjoy. My main gaming outlet covers upcoming games, GTA 6 and major gaming news, and Call of Duty may have a presence there from time to time. I have a home dedicated to Star Trek, one of my lifelong passions, with retrospective rankings, theories and commentary, and I am loving building a community of Trek fans. I also have one for movies, television and Star Wars, which is kind of turning into a Star Wars home now. None of that is me abandoning Call of Duty. It is me making sure Call of Duty does not become the only creative box I am ever allowed to live inside.

Leaving Call of Duty Is Scary, and I Am Proof

To be fair, I am probably the worst person on Earth to announce that someone else is leaving Call of Duty. I have attempted the escape plenty of times. I announce a bold new era and tell everybody I am finally expanding beyond Call of Duty. Then Activision sneezes somewhere near Modern Warfare 2, 48 hours later the views are not good, and I am back to making a 12 minute piece titled Call of Duty just changed everything, in all caps, of course.

That is why I will not pretend leaving is easy. When you build an audience around one franchise, trying something new can destroy your views. A COD piece brings everybody in, while something you are genuinely excited about gets treated like you accidentally posted someone else's work. Creators return to Call of Duty because it feels safe, even when the content is draining every ounce of creativity out of them. But there comes a point where the risk of changing becomes smaller than the risk of staying stuck, and that is exactly where Tdawg is. He also talked about Nadeshot going through the same thing in the past.

This franchise has trained creators and fans to survive on the promise that the next update, mode, port, remaster or annual release will fix everything. Occasionally something great happens, we rejoice, creators return, and for a few weeks Call of Duty feels alive. Then the same decisions and problems return. So I hope his retirement works better than my previous 11 attempts, which usually last until Activision puts out a tweet or my views tank for two days. Covering a game you no longer enjoy is not loyalty. He is choosing to have fun and evolve before he spends the next five years yelling about skill based matchmaking. I get it, and I support it. I do not think he will be the last major Call of Duty creator to make this decision. I have seen so many leave this space over the last 17 years, and it is almost sad to think about. For the record, I am not quitting Call of Duty right now; this one just hit home.

Can Call of Duty win these creators and players back, or does it even care to?