Activision Blizzard announced that the company intends to apply the Call of Duty framework to its other franchises. With the joint company owning dozens of different games with massively different audiences, the gaming community is not sure if this plan will work. Activision Blizzard may have exceeded expectations during their final quarter, but that does not mean their Call of Duty model was completely to blame.
While the current Call of Duty formula has seen massive success among its community, it does not mean that it will work for every community. Call of Duty is a franchise with millions of supporters, and not every Activision Blizzard title has that. While free-to-play models with optional purchase options seem viable, there are several things that need to be examined before applying to across the board.
It is important to put context to the Call of Duty and Activision Blizzard’s success. The final quarter estimates were based on a “normal” year, but with COVID spreading across the globe, this year has been anything but normal. There is a higher population of gamers stuck at home due to COVID, many of them searching for things to do in the meantime. While this is not the complete cause for a surge, it certainly needs to be considered a part of the equation rather than crediting all the success to a new model of development.
To understand why the Call of Duty model will struggle to work on other franchises, it is important to define exactly what that model is. Activision Blizzard has recently begun referring to it as the “Call of Duty framework,” and they are mainly referencing recent additions to the franchise. While Activision has long held to a yearly release schedule, a new shift appeared when Call of Duty: Warzone was introduced to the community.
Call of Duty now is built on top of a live-service edition of the game mixed with regular and robust content updates across all platforms and “active” titles. This is mixed with an expansion to mobile platforms and the push for premium content as an optional purchase via in-game stores. This entire combination of assets and marketing strategies mix into the “Call of Duty framework” and are the basis for Activision Blizzard’s plan of cross integration.
In theory, the framework has a solid chance of working as a future business strategy. Free-to-play titles are quick to gather an audience, and mixing the title with paid content encourages microtransactions to occur. If Overwatch, Diablo, or World of Warcraft embraced a similar free-to-play philosophy as an off-shoot title, then a similar operation could be born. The issue is that Call of Duty has something that the other games don’t: Call of Duty has a massive population that may be willing to embrace rapid change.
There has been a massive discussion among the game publishing industry regarding the “Games as a Service” business model. The idea is that a company could release a title without an initial purchase cost, like Call of Duty: Warzone, and make their money off monetized microtransactions and subscription opportunities. While many games within Activision Blizzard are built with this model, including World of Warcraft and Hearthstone, there are also several that aren’t.
As more games embrace the games as a service model, players expect frequent content bursts throughout their subscriptions through seasonal content. Expansions, new cosmetics, and rotating content are a must for the audience, and this can get tricky. More games mean a divided community, and fewer community members mean less money to create expansions. This can easily cause a cycle where there is not enough support to continue expanding, but the current community is demanding more content.
Eventually, live service games will begin cannibalizing each other in a desperate search for audience members with cash. Players can only spend their money so many ways, and eventually, they will choose one title over another. Populations will shift, and consistent income will become less frequent and more of a gamble based on the fading interest of a fickle community.
Aside from the technical limitations of the Call of Duty model, there is also a limitation with the audience themselves. Most active gamers spend their time in around 3-4 titles at a time. From mobile games to competitive shooters, the gaming community likes to dabble in multiple games. With new titles coming out every year, there is no way to tell when players will shift and abandon old games for new products.
The gaming industry has created this cycle after years of production. Players have new titles to look forward to on almost a monthly basis, and with so many new games, they are forced to prioritize their time. With work, school, and life events mixing with a dedicated player’s game time, where they spend that time becomes a valuable question.
If every game is free-to-play, and all of them are constantly updating, then they will have to battle for that sliver of free time. Instead of a player completing a game, enjoying the multiplayer, and moving to the next title, they instead are sitting in one game and enjoying the new content. There is theoretically no need to purchase the next title if previous titles are still supported.
Activision Blizzard witnessed this occurrence first-hand when Call of Duty: Modern Warfare players refused to shift into the new title. While many of them are Call of Duty: Warzone fans, they stayed in the previous game instead of progressing into the newer title. At a fundamental level, there is an audience difference between subscription-based gamers and title-based gamers. While subscription-based gamers will continue to fork over money, they are less likely to buy a new game when it comes out. Meanwhile, title-based gamers are less likely to stay in one game, and rather than subscribing, many of them will simply find a more rapidly evolving franchise.
Activision Blizzard will need to evaluate the needs of each individual community before trying to apply a single formula to rapidly different groups. With Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War and Call of Duty: Warzone barely able to keep up their continuing content and anti-cheat measures, Activision may soon learn that other game communities are drastically less forgiving.
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