Another Black Ops? Call of Duty is Stuck in the Past (Premium)



Today, Activision confirmed that the next Call of Duty title will be a new entry in the Black Ops series. Here we go again.

As a long-time Call of Duty fan, I have great personal interest in the ups and downs of this dominant game franchise. But with its more futuristic titles not leading to multi-game series as Activision had hoped, the franchise has gotten stuck in the past.

To be clear, I mean its past. Not the past that some of its games depict, historically.

This is a problem for Activision, and on a number of levels.

Before getting to that, I should point out that, as a fan, I'm kind of OK with it. Part of the reason is that Call of Duty: WWII, despite my reservations about a return to World War II, has actually worked out wonderfully. The sites (and sights) and sounds of this conflagration will always be tied to Call of Duty, of course. And many fans appreciate the return to classic "boots on the ground" combat after a few experiments with wall-running and jetpacks.

But retreading the past is a slippery slope. To date, Call of Duty has had exactly three successful series: World War II, Modern Warfare, and Black Ops. Other games that were meant to kick off new franchises--Ghosts, Advanced Warfare, and Infinite Warfare---all failed.

How they failed is kind of interesting.

Call of Duty games have historically been comprised of two separate experiences, which are really two completely different games: The single-player campaign and multiplayer. In more recent years, a third experience/game, called Zombies, has become so popular that it's now a given that each new title will include this as well.

I'd imagine that multiplayer (and Zombies can be considered part of multiplayer, really) is where the real money is. And I don't need Activision's telemetry data to know that: Each year, with each COD title, Activision sells a massive additional package of downloadable content (DLC) that is comprised solely of multiplayer/Zombies, and usually in the form of new maps. There is never an update to the single-player campaign.

Given that, I'm a bit surprised that Activision couldn't have at least made a run with Ghosts. That game was the last of the classic "boots on the ground" COD multiplayer games, and, I think, an unrecognized classic.

Its standalone successors, Advanced Warfare and Infinite Warfare, introduced the divisive wall-running and jetpacks gameplay style to multiplayer. I felt that both of those games were pretty terrible. So I spent the year after Advanced Warfare came out replaying older COD titles (primarily in the Modern Warfare and Black Ops series) instead. I also spent the year after Infinite Warfare playing Modern Warfare Remastered, which you may recall was included with more expensive versions of that game.

Living in the past, in other words.

The thing is, I'm not so sure that wall-running and jetpacks ruined Call of Duty. After all, Black Ops III came out between those two other games, ...