Call of Duty has proven itself highly resilient to series fatigue. While the quality of each entry has varied wildly for at least a decade, its overall popularity hasn’t been in serious doubt since Call of Duty 4. Perhaps this is because Call of Duty is so culturally omnipresent it would require active effort from Activision (and now Microsoft) for it to fail, but the series has also demonstrated a knack for evolution, introducing new settings and new multiplayer modes in response to changing tastes.
Nonetheless, it seems concerns about series fatigue are beginning to seep in, at least over at Black Ops handlers Treyarch. When asked about the issue by CharlieIntel (via Eurogamer), Treyarch’s senior of director of production Yale Miller responded: “I think the honest answer is yes, I worry about that.”
The reason for this relates to how Call of Duty’s release schedule has changed over the last few years. Typically, Call of Duty has alternated between different settings with each new game, rotating between Modern Warfare, Black Ops, and World War 2, with occasional diversions into the future such as Infinite Warfare and Advanced Warfare. Since 2022, however, Activision released two Modern Warfare games in sequence, followed by back-to-back entries in its Black Ops sub-series.
It’s this bunching up of similarly themed games that has Miller concerned. “Obviously, there was a plan with the two MW games and then this,” he told CharlieIntel. ” We’ll see what the franchise does in the future. We’re excited about the opportunities it gave us, but we’d all be dead lying if we said we weren’t worried about that.”
One advantage Black Ops has over Modern Warfare is that it isn’t beholden to any specific time period. Its games take place in the 60s, the 80s, the 90s, and even dip into the future. Call of Duty: Black Ops 7, for instance, is set in 2035, around 40 years after the events of Call of Duty: Black Ops 6.
Miller believes this will help refresh the campaign and the multiplayer. “We’re absolutely going to bring it from a content perspective in our live seasons,” he added. “How can we have new gameplay experiences? More content, more maps, weeklies, with functional stuff like deeper weapon prestige experiences.”
Personally, I’m happy to play at least one more Black Ops game. While I thought the Modern Warfare reboots saw diminishing returns, I was pleasantly surprised by Black Ops 6. The campaign was one of Call of Duty’s better efforts in a long while, and the multiplayer delivered too, as explained by Nova Smith in her Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 review. “Call of Duty has never felt better in the hands, owing largely to the new omnimovement system, which lets one sprint, slide, and dive in any direction,” she wrote. “Side-diving into a room while mag dumping an SMG a la Max Payne just feels damn good.”
