Judging by many daily social media posts, it would seem that Call of Duty is a hated franchise by any who play it. But the fact is that vocal minority is just a fraction of the player base who buys CoD each year—and the upcoming Modern Warfare 3 is not expected to be any different.
In a recent interview with VentureBeat, Activision president Rob Kostich peeled back the curtain a bit on the franchise, which turns 20 years old this year. And the loud feedback is heard all the same, according to him.
“You hear what is said from the community,” Kostich said. “It’s really about us getting it right and putting the right game out there for the community, one that they really thoroughly enjoy across all aspects and that’s on us. That’s on us to deliver the community’s expectations. Whenever we’ve done that, they’ve never said, ‘I can’t believe there’s another Call of Duty coming out.’ They get excited for it. Our job is really innovation and surprising and delighting the community first and foremost. If we do that right, to your point, it hasn’t been perfect every single year throughout our history, but more often than not, I think we’ve been pretty successful.”
Part of that feedback has been finding the right era for CoD, and Kostich says the company has found a “sweet spot” between past titles like World War II-based games and futuristic ones. But changing things up has been an integral part of the experience.
“It’s a balance, I think most importantly, that we feel like we actually need to provide good differentiated experiences, good things for people to get in, and feel like they’re experiencing new kinds of fun,” Kostich said.
The fun, however, comes at a price. And that’s a lot of development time and a whole lot of money invested in that development, along with marketing and everything else that goes into a major release.
“Games have changed quite a bit,” Kostich said. “They’re a lot harder to make. They’re way more labor intensive now than they’ve ever been, and so it does require just more resources to get any one game done. I would say the other thing that changed things for us too is Warzone, because that’s a more of an evergreen type of thing for us, dealing with the seasons and seasonal content in addition to the premium games that we’re doing. It requires that level of resource to fulfill every aspect of the franchise.”
Activision is quite obviously all-in on CoD, and Kostich revealed in the interview that 3,000 developers are all working on the franchise now, across titles like MW3 and Warzone, and even Call of Duty Mobile and Warzone Mobile.
“Like I said, these games are quite labor-intensive now,” he said. “You see everyone doing this, all the big games are – quite big teams are trying to pull these things together. They’re monumental efforts. Competition is real, and so we’re just focused on, again, just how we can deliver our players’ expectations, and to do so nowadays, it takes a lot more than it used to back in the day.”
As for the future or those rooting for CoD to come to an end, the series won’t be riding off into the sunset any time soon. Kostich said the company has titles “planned out all the way through 2027” and that each game is a learning experience along the way.
“Anything that’s happened in the past is a great learning experience,” he said. “We’ve got a massive focus group around the world who tells us what they think each and every day about the franchise that we pay particular attention to.”
CoD’s future will be revealed during this week’s CoD Next livestream event, and MW3 will release on Nov. 10.
Published: Oct 3, 2023 02:14 pm