Call of Duty games come out like clockwork. For years now, a new mainline entry in Activision’s shooter series has debuted every fall without fail. And while this year’s installment, Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War, was able to keep that streak going with its launch last month, that doesn’t mean the studios that made it had an easy time doing so amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
It’s common knowledge by now that the lockdowns and quarantines that have littered 2020 have forced most game developers to start working remotely or at home. This included Raven Software, the studio behind Black Ops Cold War’s single-player campaign, which was featured this week in an IGN article where it opened up on the challenges brought on by having to abruptly move work on one of the year’s biggest games to the developers’ homes.
With Activision mandating that the developers work from home once COVID started to hit pandemic levels, most of the roles at Raven were able to transition to remote development despite the inconvenience, including writing, designing, and coding. However, the team was initially unsure how it would be able to complete the motion-capture work that still needed to be done without the specialized sound stage and dozens of cameras that are normally required. Because of this, Senior Creative Director Dan Vondrak said, “I thought we were dead in the water.”
But since the game was still set to launch in November, the team had to improvise. According to Narrative Director Natalie Pohorski, the studio worked with Activision and the game’s actors to devise at-home recording setups that included voice-recording equipment and mini-sets for them to interact with for motion-capture. While far from convenient, the results were able to get the job done, with Lily Cowles, who plays MI6 agent Helen Park, even describing her setup as “user-friendly.”
Given the circumstances, the fact that Raven was able to get the campaign done in time for Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War’s November launch does mean the developers had to work overtime in order to meet the deadline. Despite this, Vondrak asserts that the staff at Raven were motivated to put in the extra hours, stating that they were excited to work on what they saw as a love letter to the fondly-remembered original Black Ops.
On one hand, it is impressive that Raven was able to pull it off despite the challenges the pandemic threw its way, and Vondrak said in closing that he’s “really proud of what the team was able to accomplish.” On the other, though, with the growing criticism being directed towards crunch culture in game development, many will likely take issue with Activision for not giving Raven and fellow Black Ops developer Treyarch extra time in light of the unprecedented circumstances the world has faced this year.
Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War is available for PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X.
Source: IGN
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