We have the lore and precedents there to add the wall buys, where you can go up and grab a weapon off the wall free of charge in a Blackout map. Scronce: At the same time–with Alcatraz, we’re working off of a Zombies map. A lot of times you’re targeting a fantasy.
You look for inspiration and figure out how to make a game of something that players can relate to. But it’s not a simulation, because a simulation isn’t necessarily designed to be fun. When you go too fantastical, then you lose the connection. Will this make it more fun? If the answer is yes, then we should probably put it in the game and try it out.įlame: It has to be something that players connect to. Sometimes you just have to ask yourselves if this is fun. Trying to remain fully grounded can sometimes hamstring you. We have that debate a lot, and not just us exclusively. GamesBeat: It sounds like players aren’t saying they want something realistic. It’s not something that other battle royales are offering to this extent. It was really a response to the player and community feedback. But we want to test the waters and see what we can do to further embrace that Call of Duty experience. They can still play the core, vanilla Blackout battle royale experience. But what that told us is that players want that faster, crazier gameplay. That’s been our most-played mode, even beating out quads. You’ve got the muscle cars and all the loot. Like I said, Hot Pursuit, that one was our chaotic battle royale game mode where we put players in the map with tons of vehicles. Scronce: It was responding to our players. Was that a response to anything in particular? Did people want to start shooting faster, basically? GamesBeat: But then you get into something really fast. We have the collapse and picking up items as you find them, but in that tight play space with the redeploys where everyone has five lives. Alcatraz still has the battle royale, last team standing element. We’ve taken a look at that and considered how we can push that a bit further. It’s that fast gunplay, that frenetic gameplay. They come to play Call of Duty for what Call of Duty is known for. They’re not necessarily battle royale players or multiplayer players first. That’s our most-played game mode now, although we haven’t checked since Alcatraz was released.įor Alcatraz, we looked at that and saw that - our players are Call of Duty players. Hot Pursuit was our testing ground for how fast and frenetic and chaotic we could push this thing while still retaining the battle royale feel. Through the journey and the life cycle so far, we’ve tried a bunch of different things. Last year when we met up, this was our Black Ops spin on battle royale. The high level on that, the players and ourselves at the studio were exploring what Blackout is together. With Alcatraz, it’s been really well-received so far. Scronce: In addition to MP, I’ve been heading up or helping out on a lot of the game modes we’ve been doing on Blackout. The results were kind of comical for me, but-anyway, I think it’s very interesting and very different.