STACK November Issue 68

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24 NOVEMBER 2015
A dmittedly, CoD campaign players are in
the minority, but they do exist. Studio
design director David Vonderhaar is
adamant that Treyarch placed as much
emphasis on the story component of Black Ops
III as it did the multiplayer.
“We don’t believe at all for a second that the
guy who sits down and wants to buy the game
and play through the story is a dying breed,” an
animated Vonderhaar explains on a recent trip
to Sydney. “If you wanted me to pull out a pie
chart for you, that pie chart would be slanted
really high towards the campaign section.
“It takes a tremendous amount of energy
and resources to build a campaign game, and
especially this one; there’s a lot of game going
on here. A huge percentage of the organisation
and more than half the building is trying to
make the best campaign game they can. It’s not
a dying breed for us.”
On this game, the studio decided not to
use the services of a Hollywood writer, which
according to Vonderhaar, comes with its own
set of challenges. Instead, Treyarch looked
within for a team to pen the narrative.
“In this game, the writing was largely done
in-house by Craig Houston and his team.
This story team worked with producer Jason
Blundell, and of course we always work
with various consultants and futurists and
technologists.”
The supposition that handling the writing
internally would be more advantageous than
outsourcing the story to external writers is
swiftly countered by Vonderhaar.
“Unfortunately, it wasn’t that black and
white,” he says. “There’s a lot more analysis of
the story and you might argue that there’s more
noodling involved. It’s better in some ways and
worse in others.
“I think what makes it better is it’s a
little easier for everybody in the building to
understand what we’re trying to do with the
story and the narrative and focus.”
The Black Ops series is well-known for its
compelling plot lines, but maintaining player
focus on the story in a frenetic first-person
shooter like CoD has always been difficult. An
elaborate cutscene
is soon forgotten
once the lead
starts flying, and
all the player concentrates on is an objective
on the radar. Vonderhaar, talking from a game
designer's perspective, believes that this will
change in Black Ops III.
“In Black Ops III, the character you play as
is one of your own creation. Right from the
very start, you’re deciding and describing who
the character is and, I think when you do that,
you’re not trying to imagine or participate in the
story from the perspective of a character that
you were handed specifically, who has his own
name and own place in the world. Whereas
here, the character you’re playing as didn’t exist
before, and it’s you."
Vonderhaar continues: ”I think that really
helps the player stay associated with what’s
happening in the narrative, so I think that’s one
way, from a game design point of view, you can
kind of approach that unique problem.”
And of course then you have the new four-
player co-op in the campaign; an inclusion set
to change up the regular single-player CoD
experience.
“If you’re making a co-op game, it’s just not
quite as structured and railed up as you might
know Call of Duty games to be, ‘cause you
have to build enough space for four players
to navigate in a fight,” explains Vonderhaar.
“When you start doing that, you start doing
interesting things with how people can combine
together to do interesting tactics to approach
any kind of thing.
“It’s a lot more encounter-based in that way,
which as a systems guy makes me very excited
because you have to plan battles and spaces
and events to support more than one player,
and I think that makes it more interesting for a
solo campaign player who wants to play it more
than once.”
Campaigner
Call of Duty:
Semper Fi These!
Call of Duty: ModernWarfare
3 made a staggering $775
million in the first five days of
release, blowing any Hollywood
blockbuster contender to pieces
with a Javelin anti-tank missile.
In 2012, Sydneysider Okan
Kaya played Black Ops II for an
incredible five and a half days
straight. Kaya was permitted a
ten-minute break for every hour of
playing.
Sledgehammer Games, the
developer of last year’s CoD:
AdvancedWarfare, was working
on a third-person Call of Duty title
set during the Vietnam War when
the studio was asked to help out
on ModernWarfare 3.
Activision Blizzard set up a
non-profit organisation called
the Call of Duty Endowment to
help returning war veterans find
employment.
If you put daily players of Call of
Duty in one space, there would
be enough to fill 80 of the world’s
biggest sports stadiums.
Black Ops in Units Sold Up Until April 2015
•
Black Ops
(2010)
21,600,000 •
Black Ops II
(2012)
24,400,000
It’s not all about multiplayer, you know.There are still
some people left in the world who play Call of Duty for
the campaign, and thankfully,Treyarch know this.