While most other major first-person shooters have transitioned to a live-service model, Activision has created a hybrid approach for the beloved Call of Duty franchise. With mainline games still coming out every year only to be largely supplanted by the next year’s title, the free-to-play battle royale Warzone now acts as the glue that ties the whole franchise together. Meanwhile, each individual game still receives content updates, albeit limited by the focus placed on newer titles—many Modern Warfare fans have noticed a steep dropoff in developer support as Black Ops Cold War has taken the spotlight.
The pattern is clear, and now the official announcement of a new Call of Duty game for 2021 has been revealed in an Activision investors call. While a lack of details has led to rampant speculation about the developer, setting, and timeline of Call of Duty 2021, one thing is apparent: it will almost certainly be integrated to some degree in Warzone. Whether that’s a good thing or a bad thing is a tough call for fans to make, and no one will know for sure until it’s fully implemented later this year. Still, there are many foreseeable advantages and pitfalls to integrating yet another Call of Duty game into Warzone‘s content roster, with pros and cons in equal abundance.
The biggest benefits to adding Call of Duty 2021 content to Warzone are in achieving the original goal of the battle royale hit: tying every Call of Duty game together under one big free-to-play umbrella. Warzone remains immensely popular, and keeping it that way requires a steady stream of new content for fans to chew on. If Warzone is to serve as the backbone of the franchise, it needs to be a place where fans of Modern Warfare, Black Ops, and whatever CoD 2021 will be (WW2 if leaks are to be believed) can all find something that appeals to them.
While it’s practically a guarantee that Warzone will add Call of Duty 2021 to the fold, it’s useful to picture what would happen if it didn’t. Excluding Call of Duty 2021 would only serve to split the Call of Duty fanbase, forcing players to choose one game or the other, rather than getting something new in 2021 and having a mix of old and new in Warzone. If there is to be a new Call of Duty game every year, Warzone has to keep up with them to to stay relevant. As one of the most popular battle royales to emerge in the trend, the choice to keep its community active is an easy one.
While new content is the lifeblood that keeps any live service game running, before updates can breathe life into a game it needs to have a stable structure to support new additions. Right now, many fans feel that Warzone is lacking in several key areas that need to be addressed before any content from more games is inserted. In Warzone currently, there is an epidemic of cheaters and bugs, as well as consistent balancing issues and a lack of communication from the developers.
Adding content from Black Ops Cold War was a strain on Warzone‘s underlying structure, and content from a prospective 2021 CoD game would no doubt do the same. Before the game is ready to support that many changes, the fundamentals need to be ironed out. Players consistently complain about rampant cheating that goes undetected and unpunished by anti-cheat software, while weapons balancing and bugs require constant attention. These issues have often been met by radio silence from a publisher that is more used to seasonal releases than constant communication with active communities in live-update games.
The greatest strength of the Call of Duty franchise is its versatility, enabled by multiple series and development studios. Over the years, Call of Duty games’ settings have ranged from the past to modern day to the far future, the locations they take place in have spanned the globe, and their mechanics have varied from realism to arcade madness. Warzone has the potential to combine all of that variety into a single experience by incorporating aspects of completely different games, and that will set it apart from any other battle royale, or even any other shooter.
Leaks and rumors suggest that Call of Duty 2021 may take place in World War II, although earlier leakers thought it would be a modern setting or even take place in an imagined World War 3. The wind seems to be blowing towards a WW2 setting, though, and if Warzone can successfully bridge the gap between WW2, the Cold War, and modern combat settings, it will be nothing short of spectacular. Whatever the case, Warzone combining content from 3 completely separate, full games will serve to keep it interesting and provide enough content for every type of fan.
As much as Call of Duty 2021 could help liven Warzone up, making concessions to work alongside Warzone could easily blunt CoD 2021‘s unique edge. If Warzone remains the umbrella that covers all of the Call of Duty games, it could stifle the creativity and uniqueness of each individual title. Because Warzone requires unified balancing and needs assets to be built using the same game engine, it could prevent CoD 2021 from feeling different enough.
With next gen consoles and the release of new graphics cards, a big-budget Call of Duty game in 2021 could certainly look fantastic, and feel very different if made by another studio (the rumored Sledgehammer, for example) in a new engine. However, to continue working alongside Warzone, Call of Duty 2021 will likely still use the same engine made for 2019’s Modern Warfare. The game engine could be ramped up to look better and run well on stronger hardware, but concerns about weapon balancing and a limit on creative license remain.
Because Warzone is free-to-play, it was a great in-road for many players to get a feel for how Modern Warfare would stack up as a series refresh. Likewise, many players waited to try out Cold War content in Warzone before springing on the full game for its more classic multiplayer experience and singleplayer campaign. Part of Activision’s strategy for Warzone is likely to help advertise new Call of Duty games to an existing playerbase by introducing them to new titles through content drops. The upside for players, though, is that they will get to see more of Call of Duty 2021 before they must commit to buying the full game.
The greatest possible downside of CoD 2021 being integrated into Warzone goes part and parcel with the risk inherent in Blizzard-Activision’s new model for Call of Duty as a whole. While other shooters are focused on maintaining current playerbases for as long as possible, the strategy for Call of Duty seems to be cycling players through yearly full releases (each with its own constant content updates) while still keeping them loyal to Warzone, another full game with its own content cycles, which is also still tied to all the other games. This model runs the risk of oversaturating the market and overloading players.
Trying too hard to keep every new game tied to Warzone also runs the risk of fatiguing players who cannot keep up with each new release and update, while simultaneously disappointing the fanbase of each individual game with a lack of focused attention. Whether the combined might of Activision and all its subsidiary Call of Duty developers can make a full game that is worth players’ time and money year after year, while still keeping a long-term project like Warzone alive and competitive in the battle royale sphere remains to be seen, but the challenge of making it all work will doubtless put a strain on even such a massive publisher.
Call of Duty 2021 is in development.
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