How Call of Duty Stays on Top

Call of Duty’s detractors often accuse publisher Activision of churning out the same-old game, year after year -- of sitting back on tired ideas and waiting for the loot to roll in.

There’s no doubt that this series of fantastically successful shooters relies on simplicity for its core appeal, but at the same time it’s unfair both on the makers of the games and their dedicated followers to suggest that they entirely fail to innovate.

This year’s game, Black Ops 2, has taken the franchise into the future for the first time ever. Clips and previews show big-explosion scenarios, as always, but also some measure of personality, like that of the villain Raul Menendez and the cynical narrator Frank Woods. E3 was also a coming-out party for the new tactical-strategic sections of the game known as Strike Force, in which players are able to control entire battlefields while placing themselves inside a soldier or even a weapon. This is new and, given that most players are interested in running and gunning, it’s a risk.

And there are now branching story-lines, dictated partly by player performance in those Strike Force missions -- which can be failed -- that shape how the story progresses.

Ultimate responsibility for Call of Duty falls to Eric Hirshberg, CEO of Activision Publishing. I met with him to talk about the challenge of keeping Call of Duty fresh, and the game’s current place at the pinnacle of gaming.

When the new game comes out, it will likely beat all previous records for cash-laid-down for an entertainment experience. How does that feel?

“It's so many things at once,” he says. “It's thrilling, it's an honor, it's terrifying, it's a blessing, a burden. Gaming is the epicenter of popular culture today, it’s becoming the medium of choice for a generation. Having the biggest franchise within that is a once-in-a-lifetime experience.”

Hirshberg came to the attention of Activision as top creative at advertising agency Deutsch LA. He worked on famous campaigns for PlayStation and, judging by various talks he has given in the last few years, has a solid grip on gaming’s history and culture.

One of the lessons he won't have failed to learn is how quickly success can fade, how gamers can easily grow bored of formulae, and how competitors like EA will fight ferociously to take over the top spot. “It's a high-class problem,” he says. “But it's the same for the people who have kept Batman relevant for 30 years or kept Star Wars relevant. It’s the same for the people who keep soccer or the NFL relevant. We're not the only entertainment property that has this challenge.”

On the specifics of keeping Call of Duty fresh -- a franchise that comes out every year at roughly the same time -- he says, “The creative challenge has a duality to it. On one hand, you have to provide innovation that's meaningful every year to get people to stay interested, to get people to want to come back and never want to leave. On the other hand, you can't ever lose touch with the thing that people fell in love with in the first place, right? You have to stay true to the core tenets of the game or you risk meddling with its fundamental appeal.”

He says that with Black Ops 2 “we've taken our most aggressive stance when it comes to innovation yet”. He explains, “Moving to the near future is as big as when we moved from World War II to the modern era. It opens up so many new ways to play the game, so many new weapons, so many new capabilities.” He adds, “It’s not just the setting and the weapon set. We also are playing with the gameplay mode itself. There are elements in campaign that are totally new, like Strike Force, branching story-lines, choices you make in the game will affect the outcome and affect whether your squad-mates live or die.”

I’m curious as to how much the guys at Activision HQ, the so-called ‘suits’, get to shape how these financially crucial games are created. How far does Hirshberg dictate what developer Treyarch makes? “It all starts with a developer's vision,” he says. “We're there to help make their vision successful, we're there to help guide it, and we help to give them the resources and the tools that they need to be successful.”

He adds, “Clearly with my background as more of a creative person, I think I probably annoy them a little more with (he laughs) my own comments and ideas. You should ask [development heads] Mark Lamia, Glen Schofield, Dave Anthony. We've had a lot of good conversations that may or may not have been helpful, but I certainly enjoyed that part of it.” Part of the creative process, he says, is Activision’s system of giving competing studios like Treyarch, Infinity Ward and Sledgehammer, a shot at interpreting Call of Duty in their own way. This does, of course, have the added benefit of producing a new game every year.

“We give different developers different shots at different times. It helps with the iterative process of innovation. You get different artists and different visionaries all riffing on the same theme, and obviously they have a different take."

He adds, “I remember last year, when we were developing MW3 and people were asking, ‘how is it going to work with Sledgehammer and Infinity Ward working together?’ Obviously it was not something anyone would design proactively, it was born out of necessity. But it really had this wonderful effect on the game, where there were different, slightly different takes on the world and on the universe. I really felt like it was a one plus one equals three situation. I feel the same way about having different developers contributing to the vision of the game overall.”

Call of Duty is currently the biggest franchise in gaming. In simple terms, it makes more money than anything else. Hirshberg’s job is to keep it that way. “There are so many people who are so enthralled with this game and this universe, and it's our job to continue to surprise them and delight them and give them reasons to come back, while never forgetting the appeal of what got us here in the first place.”