New Call of Duty: No Single Player Campaign as Activision Tries to Cash-Grab into Battle Royale Market

Adrian Sol
Daily Stormer
May 20, 2018

Such bold innovation. Bravo.

First of all, you may be surprised to learn that Call of Duty 15 is coming out. Weren’t there a whole lot more than just 15 CoD games out already?

Uh, let’s see here…

Okay, so scratch that 15.

CoD 40 is coming out. Wew.

I’ve got some images coming to mind, for some reason… Something involving a horse…

Mmmmhh.

Or, wait, something with a stone?

Maybe if you squeeze hard enough, blood will come out?

Either way, I’m sure this latest CoD game is totally not a cash grab, and is being developed because Activision had a bold artistic vision that desperately needed to be realized.

After all, all the previous CoD games have been totally original products bursting with new ideas.

Call of Duty 2.

Call of Duty 39.

The latest innovation is apparently to strip out the single-player campaign.

Games Radar:

This year could see some of the biggest changes to Call of Duty: Black Ops 4, with this year’s entry dropping the single-player campaign and making big changes to some pretty core multiplayer mechanics. Things like tracer fire to locate enemies, manual healing, a bot mode for zombies so you can play solo, and [drum roll] a battle royale mod. While some of what’s happening might seem odd at first, it makes sense if you think about this as a potential stepping stone towards Call of Duty becoming an ongoing ‘live’ game; something like Overwatch or Fortnite, that relies on updates and seasons rather than yearly releases. There’s a lot happening here that feels like Activision is testing that water, especially when developers at Treyarch talk about things like plans to make Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 Zombies an “evergreen mode, for daily, weekly, monthly and yearly engagement.”

Let’s take a look at all the big beats of the Call Of Duty: Black Ops 4 announcement and the differences to the latest instalment ahead of the Black Ops 4 release date on October 12.

1. Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 has no single-player campaign, it’s just multiplayer, zombies and battle royale

The rumour that Black Ops 4 wouldn’t have a traditional single player campaign seemed almost incomprehensible when it did the rounds recently, but it’s true. There will be single-player stuff in the game, but as Treyarch chairman, Mark Lamia, puts it, “no traditional campaign.” Instead the ‘three pillars’ are its multiplayer, Zombies and Blackout, Call of Duty’s new battle royal mode.

Wow, what a bold vision. I’m sure this has nothing to do at all with the fact that the single-player campaign is where most of the development costs lie, huh?

So this CoD will only cost around 25% to produce, as compared with previous entries. Actually, probably a lot less, since they can just recycle most of the existing content from the 39 previous games, along with the engine and most of the code. So it might cost 5-10%, considering that most of the cost would probably have gone to create the assets, levels, voice acting and so on for the main campaign.

Don’t worry, I’m sure Activision will pass the savings on to you!

3. The Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 battle royale mode is called Blackout

The fact that Call of Duty is doing a battle royale mode isn’t that surprising given Fortnite is the game mode right now, but it’s taking an interesting angle with the idea. Blackout, as the battle royale mode is known, takes place in a map “100 times bigger than your traditional [multiplayer] map,” according to studio director David Vonderhaar. The interesting thing, however, is this massive area appears to be mushing together the entire Black Ops universe: characters, vehicles, scorestreaks, multiplayer maps and more. Treyarch’s presentation suggested almost the entire history of the series was making an appearance, from Reznov to old zombie heroes, the RC-XD remote control car bomb was mentioned, and even set pieces and story beats appear to be on the cards somehow as well. Plus there’ll be land sea and air vehicles. There’s no player count yet other than “lots”.

In other words, they’re just recycling the old materials and assets from the previous games to make this one – to weasel into the market that PUBG and Fortnite are currently vying for TOTAL DOMINANCE of.

It is their duty to compete in the Battle Royale market – and they are heeding the call.

Fortnite would be #1 if they weren’t doing a radical “we’re not on Steam, brah” business model.

I mean, again, there wouldn’t be much room to complain if they charged, like, $5 for this. And $5 per copy would almost certainly be enough to cover the development costs, as mentioned before.

But charging full price for what is essentially a low-effort recycling of existing content to enter a market two other games are already dominating?

This is some top-tier kikery right there – just what you’d expect from a company like Activision.

Activision CEO (((Eric Hirshberg))).

Preliminary Stormer verdict: don’t buy this shit.

As far as PUBG vs Fornite… well, that is a battle we’re not willing to enter.