Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 was released earlier this week. Based on the sales figures (the Xbox 360 and PS3 versions of the game are the #1 and #2 video game bestsellers on Amazon.com and were there well before the game was released), it appears that fans appear to have forgiven and forgotten about the buggy multiplayer mode on Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 (although a better-quality Call of Duty: Black Ops was released in the intervening time).

There are two interesting trends here. The first is the idea of video game as phenomenon. The game had been promoted as well as a blockbuster movie, at least to the target audience. Thousands of people lined up on Monday night to buy the game when it came on sale at midnight Tuesday. Launch parties were held at over 13,000 retailers worldwide, according to Activision. This isn’t the only game that is released in this manner. Battlefield 3 was released last month, also to wide acclaim.

The other interesting trend is the move towards multiplayer games. Certainly that’s nothing new, but it’s hard to imagine that a lot of people buy CoD:MW3 for the single-player game, which is actually pretty boring. It’s the ability to play multiplayer that really interests the people that buy this game. Originally, video games were social games. You would go to the arcade with your friends and play there. The video game console made games a little less social; you would sit at home by yourself for hours. Now, with online play, these games are becoming more social again.

These two trends are sort of related; the common theme is being able to share these experience, whether it’s the experience of waiting in line to buy the game or the experience of playing the game. Will we see more games which essentially sell the buyers experiences? Only time will tell.