Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 has faced enormous criticism and ridicule since its launch last month, but I haven’t really cared, because I’ve been too busy playing it. I’m not going to retread my review, but I’ll say this: it’s the best Zombies experience since Black Ops 4, and I’ve found myself playing multiplayer more than I did during Black Ops 6 (which was a lot for a casual multiplayer guy). However, yesterday we received an important “message from the Call of Duty team”, so I suppose I should throw in my two pence.
Flopper, Hold the PHD
I was optimistic about Black Ops 7, but make no mistake: a Call of Duty flop has been a long time coming. Sooner or later, players were bound to stand up to Activision and say “enough”. It could’ve happened at any point in the 2020s, really. I’m gutted it’s happening with a game I enjoy so much, but it is what it is. It was never going to be a mass-organised boycott that hit COD the hardest; it was destined to come from a resounding “meh”. You can’t combat indifference.
I’ve discussed the notion that “Call of Duty is too big to fail” before, but the reality is that Call of Duty has been failing its playerbase for years. The arrogance of being the biggest (though not necessarily the best) game in town granted it a layer of invulnerability. As long as players paid for the game, it didn’t matter how loudly they complained about content, or matchmaking, or microtransactions, or generative AI. The money rolled in and the profit line keeps rising. Mission accomplished. That hubris has papered over many cracks since the beginning of COD’s “Modern Era” (Modern Warfare 2019 onward). And as someone who ranks several modern-era titles highly, these games were not without controversy, disappointment or failure, and those are the ones I like!
This year, though, the profit line went down. Pre-orders were soft, and it was too late to pivot. The reintroduction of classic COD matchmaking was deployed as a Hail Mary; millions bought the game, but it still wasn’t enough. It turns out you can’t undo years of damage with one last-minute concession.
We could spend all night dissecting the ins and outs of Black Ops 7’s sales and where Call of Duty find itself now. It’s multifaceted (Game Pass certainly plays a role), and I do think in some ways, Black Ops 7 is a victim of circumstance. But Call of Duty assumed it could do whatever it wanted, whenever it wanted, for as long as it wanted, and that has proven not to be the case. The man in the suit believed the COD Mines would turn a profit indefinitely; he was wrong.
I don’t believe the hardworking creatives in COD studios, who genuinely want to make good video games, deserve heat for business decisions beyond their control. It’s easy to write Call of Duty off as soulless corporate filth, but countless people are fighting to make sure that isn’t the end product.
Not to state the obvious, but despite its current showing, Call of Duty isn’t going anywhere. People understandably want to see Goliath’s head on a pike, but it’ll take more than one bad year. If COD survived Infinite Warfare and Vanguard, it’ll survive Black Ops 7. The hit is bigger than usual, likely because alternatives like Battlefield 6 and Arc Raiders exist this time around. Hell, even Warzone and its free updates negate the need for many players to pay a premium. But Call of Duty will be back on top, and if any lessons are learned, they’ll probably be the wrong ones. You can tell I’ve been following this game for a while.
What worries me most is the wrath of the executives, whether they’re from COD studios, Activision, or Microsoft. I’m seriously concerned about the next round of Microsoft lay-offs (I say “next round” because we all know they’re coming). Microsoft continues to haemorrhage money in its endless pursuit of becoming the AI company—not to mention the shitshow Xbox is in right now. No Call of Duty studio was safe from the bloodbath of January 2024, so I dread to think about how much Xbox was banking on Call of Duty’s success this year, and how that will impact studios going forward.
Good News and Bad News
As part of the message, Activision confirmed there will be no further back-to-back Modern Warfare or Black Ops titles. Contrary to what those out of the loop assume, this does not mean the annual release strategy is changing (Bobby Kotick will grow wings and fly before that happens). It simply means we won’t see two consecutive years of the same subseries. It makes sense: Black Ops fans complained about two years of Modern Warfare, Modern Warfare fans complained about two years of Black Ops, and casual players felt they were buying the same game twice. It was a poor decision that could easily have been avoided if Modern Warfare III and Black Ops 7 had been packaged and sold as expansions rather than new titles (there’s that corporate arrogance again). That approach would also have removed the need to rush out two sub-standard Campaigns, but I digress.
Spreading games out is the right move. It should help avoid player fatigue while easing the burden on studios (assuming they aren’t assigned to the other projects anyway). However, development is already well underway for the next few years of COD, to the point that insiders have been teasing information for months. We know COD 2026 is another Modern Warfare, and COD 2027 kicks off a new series from Sledgehammer. It’s easy to say you won’t do something when you already know you have no plans to do it in the first place.
That’s my issue with the entire message. Until we see real change, it’s all lip service. For the most part, I’m not even sure who it’s aimed at. It reads like a desperate plea for people to play Black Ops 7, as if Call of Duty is begging all of its ex-lovers for another chance. As someone enjoying the game, I can almost guarantee the “next era of Call of Duty” which supposedly “will deliver precisely on what you want along with some surprises that push the Franchise and the genre forward”, is going to be the opposite of what I—and many others—actually want. We’re largely happy with this year’s effort, minus the slapdash campaign, the mandated generative AI, and the incessant nickel-and-diming. (Funnily enough, all of these issues wouldn’t exist under competent leadership.)
I touched on this in my review, but the gulf between the design ethos of Call of Duty studios has never been wider. With Black Ops 7’s poor performance, Infinity Ward may be given carte blanche to undo every positive change to the series from the past three years. This is the studio that removed red dots from the mini-map because it didn’t want to “punish players for firing their weapons”, after all. I’ve accepted that I’ll never get on board with Infinity Ward’s vision for COD, and that it’s different strokes for different folks, but there has to be a better solution than one half of the playerbase being pissed off until it’s their preferred developers’ turn.
We’re a long way from the era where every Call of Duty title stood on its own. Now, every game is thrown into the COD HQ soup: bloated file sizes, wildly different gameplay depending on the developer, the same bland UI, the same tired matchmaking, the same predictable seasonal format. Warzone integration. Battlepasses. Bundles. FOMO. That’s live service, baby.
All of these problems began with the decision to tie the premium Call of Duty experience to Warzone. Soon after, Activision decided that every new COD title would be built on the super-duper “Unified Engine”. I remain unconvinced this engine has done anything meaningful for Call of Duty beyond giving Activision the ability to shove every development studio trapped in the COD mines onto every project.
Shambling Towards an Exit
I’m a Zombies fan before I’m a Call of Duty fan. That might make no sense to the casual reader, but those who know, know. Zombies has been the biggest casualty of live service Call of Duty, with post-launch support suffering whenever Treyarch needs to start work on its next project. Vanguard and Modern Warfare Zombies are two prime examples. While I suspect they turned out to be vital projects for Treyarch and the Zombies Team to get to grips with the Unified Engine, they were still unnecessary projects that I can only surmise were ordered from the top. Imagine all that work had been spent on a Cold War Year 2 instead.
The silver lining (if you believe it) is Call of Duty’s commitment to supporting Black Ops 7. I hope this isn’t an empty promise, because Black Ops 7 Zombies deserves all the support it can get. Nothing surprises me these days, though. The mode has been put through the wringer since Black Ops 4, and it will continue happening because it is the opposite of what modern Call of Duty is. With Zombies, you can’t hash out five versions of the same map and call it a day. It’s a mode that demands a lot of time, love, and effort. Anything less is seen through in an instant. The Zombies Community may have high standards, but those standards were set by previous Call of Duty games. Black Ops 7 has started strongly; I pray it finishes that same way.
Beyond Black Ops 7, what’s the plan for Zombies? Who knows. It’s a conundrum I can’t solve either. I hate that it’s the Call of Duty mode that has to go on ice, but the Zombies Team needs time to recover and create something new. Black Ops 7’s gameplay is the best iteration of the modern Zombies formula, but another game using the same systems and mechanics would feel stale. The next Zombies mode from Treyarch needs to be a substantial evolution, with as smooth a development cycle as possible.
In the meantime, I’m going to savour every minute of Black Ops 7’s post-launch content, because realistically, I don’t know the next time I’ll feel this way about a Call of Duty game. The obscene amount of progression in BO7 means I’ll be happy to keep grinding until it’s time for new Zombies, whenever that may be.
When players and casual observers can point out issues with Call of Duty from a mile away, I often wonder what the creatives inside the studios think. Reading between the lines of Jason Blundell’s reason for leaving his role as Co-Studio Head of Treyarch after Black Ops 4 (the final COD before the beginning of the “Modern Era”) sure does make me think. It seems like anyone with a creative bone in their body is at the whim of executive upon executive upon executive.
The uncomfortable truth is that the future of Call of Duty is entirely out of our hands. I’d like to think the reception to this year’s effort will make a difference, but a Zursa can’t change its hives. Unless there is a radical shift in direction, the Colossus of Activision will rage on, chasing every penny, diluting legacy and artistry in its wake.
That doesn’t mean we should give up. Many of us have been on this ride for over a decade, and some developers have worked on these games even longer. I’m not naive enough to believe Call of Duty will change overnight, but as long as players and developers alike continue pushing for a game over a product, a better tomorrow will always be worth fighting for.
