The gaming industry is no stranger to ambitious projects being scaled back or completely reimagined during development. For Treyarch, the studio behind Call of Duty‘s Black Ops series, this story isn’t just about changed plans – it’s about broken promises and the human cost of development upheavals.
What started as an innovative vision for Black Ops 3 would eventually spiral into a pattern that would test the resilience of the development team.
Years later, this pattern would resurface in a way that left many veterans of the studio feeling an uncomfortable sense of déjà vu, leading to one of the most challenging periods in Treyarch’s history.
When History Repeats at Treyarch
Black Ops 3‘s development began with a bold vision: creating Call of Duty‘s first true open-world experience. The team poured countless hours into this ambitious project, crafting a game that would have revolutionized the series.
However, midway through production, everything changed. The open-world concept was scrapped, and the team had to pivot to a traditional linear campaign, leading to months of intense crunch.
For this to happen twice… The morale drop that happened in the studio can’t be understated. They’d been promised, ‘After Black Ops 3, we’re not going to do that again. We’re not going to scrap all this work that you’ve been putting in.’
— former Treyarch employee, to Kotaku.
That promise would come back to haunt the developers. As reported by Kotaku, in early 2018, during Black Ops 4‘s development, lightning struck twice.
The team had spent two years designing an innovative 2v2-focused campaign that would have revolutionized the series’ storytelling. Players would compete against another pair of human opponents (or AI-driven bots in single-player), with each side picking factions and battling over different objectives in a post-apocalyptic world.
They even managed to complete a fully voiced and art-complete demo of several missions just before Christmas 2017. Studio heads praised their work at the holiday party in Las Vegas, but the celebration would be short-lived.
Within weeks, the entire campaign was canceled—with Treyarch‘s leadership citing technical concerns, timing issues, and reportedly negative feedback from playtesters.
The Cost of Creative Upheaval
The cancellation of Black Ops 4‘s campaign led to a desperate scramble. Initially, the team tried to salvage their work by converting it into a traditional single-player story. However, with Rockstar’s Red Dead Redemption 2 forcing an earlier release date, this proved impossible.
What emerged from this chaos was Blackout, Call of Duty‘s first battle royale mode. While it would go on to be successful (eventually evolving into the Warzone we know today), its development was nothing short of miraculous—the entire mode was created in just nine months, leading to extensive crunch periods where developers worked up to 64 hours per week.
Fast forward to 2024, and there’s a bittersweet twist to this tale. Black Ops 6 has finally delivered on that long-abandoned dream of open-world Call of Duty gameplay, albeit in a single mission rather than an entire campaign.
While players are now enjoying this new take on the formula, it serves as a reminder of the toll these development struggles took on the teams who worked on previous iterations.
What do you think about these revelations? Should Call of Duty take more risks with its campaign design, or is the traditional formula still the way to go? Share your thoughts in the comments below!
