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Infinity Ward needs to pick a lane
Hold up! Don’t like reading? Watch instead…
How did you like Vanguard?
It sold worse than Cold War.
And how did you like Cold War?
That sold less than Modern Warfare 2019… noticing a pattern?
Activision and its shareholders definitely see the problem. That’s why they’re trying to get some of that sweet, sweet mobile money — Diablo Immortal makes 1 Million a day and hit $100 million in global player spending two months after its release.
That’s great for them, but what about us?
From our viewpoint, if you had to sum up the current era of CoD in one sentence, what would it be?
How about, “Turn off the damn SBMM!”
Modern Warfare 2 and Warzone 2 arrive in a couple of months and on a new engine. That means we’re headed into the next decades-long era of the CoD franchise.
And unless Infinity Ward and Activision want to go for the quad (shareholder)damage, they have to answer this one question…
Sweat or casual?
You’re Not Gonna Like The Answer
I’m sorry to say, it’s not looking good.
How do I know?
Warzone is losing hard to the current top dog of the Battle Royale genre — Apex Legends — and if they want to win, they’ve got to give chase. That means a higher difficulty curve and competition-focused. That means sweat.
But on the off chance Infinity Ward wants to bring back the glory days of Call of Duty, here’s how they could make the Warzone experience FUN again.
Ditch the “Battle Royale” mindset. It’s stale — plop a bunch of players on a map, surround them all with a shrinking circle, and voila, you have a game.
Call of Dutys, since their inception, have been mocked, accepted, and mocked some more as the “console casual” shooter — too slow for the PC master race and not cool enough for the Halo crowd.
Casual means more speed, lower barriers to entry, and tools or mechanics that close skill gaps mid-game.
Currently, Warzone moves like Modern Warfare which is fine for smaller maps but not for battle royales.
And while mechanically the barrier to entry might be low, the payoff doesn’t transfer like in other CoD titles — it’s not fun spending 15 minutes to get 2 kills and never coming close to winning a match.
Infinity Ward needs to remind everyone why Call of Duty became a cultural phenomenon despite competing with the best at the time.
Warzone 2 needs to feel like Infinity Ward invented the genre specifically for the CoD catalog — they need to make it their own. They need to stop imitating.
Back to The Roots
Call of Duty is about one-on-one, team-on-team firefights with low downtime between skirmishes. And standard battle royale maps just aren’t set up for that. So shrink the maps and curate the game flow.
And you know what’s crazy? CoD more or less nailed battle royale design with Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War Fireteam. Specifically the Dirty Bomb and Sat-Link game modes.
Even though the maps were large, Treyarch expertly directed players into micro-sections of the landscape that oftentimes felt more like standalone Black Ops or Modern Warfare levels.
Infinity Ward needs to do the same with Warzone 2.
That doesn’t mean objectives, but shrinking the map and tuning the environments for smaller sustained skirmishes instead of camping would create faster and more visceral experiences — there’s a reason players gravitated towards Supermarket on Verdansk.
Conclusion
Do you know what’s kind of weird?
The direction Warzone 2 needs to take to become its own thing would require Infinity Ward to kind of ditch the traditional Battle Royale definition.
Who says a large map, shrinking circle, and loot boxes need to be the primary mechanics in your royale?
What do you guys think? Do you want another 5 years of basically playing PUBG with a Modern Warfare coating?
Tell me what you think, and as always, stay cool, gentlemen.
