STACK #133 Nov 2016

GAMES

FEATURE

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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 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.

Black Ops in Units Sold Up Until April 2015 • Black Ops (2010) 21,600,000 • Black Ops II (2012) 24,400,000

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

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

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. 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. Sledgehammer Games, the developer of last year’s CoD:

• CoD: Black Ops III is out Nov 6

NOVEMBER 2015

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