Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 - Zombies
Developer: High Moon Studios Co-Dev with Treyarch
Genre: Single-player/Co-op/Multiplayer; First-Person; Shooter
Engine: CoD Tech
Platforms: Playstation 4; Xbox One; Microsoft Windows
Released: October 2018 - September 2019
Gameplay Overview: The 15th installment of the Call of Duty series. My team and I worked exclusively on the Zombies game mode, featuring classic Treyarch deep easter egg side quests and escalating gameplay against hordes of zombies.
My Role: Lead Game Designer
Duties: Team lead, personnel management and career growth, design direction and feedback
Responsibilities:
My team built brand new, updated, and expanded versions of some classic zombies maps from previous Black Ops entries:
Classified (remake of Five), Alpha Omega (remake of Nuketown), and Tag Der Toten (remake of Call of the Dead)
After Activision and Bungie broke up, High Moon went back to supporting Call of Duty. My team of designers and I shifted to the zombies effort for Black Ops 4, this time working with Treyarch. Unlike my previous stint on zombies, this time we were much more in sync with the lead studio, meeting with them regularly and exchanging notes and ideas. Treyarch took their zombies installments very seriously, especially because this time around, they were intending to wrap up one of their oldest story arcs specifically in the maps we were building.
Highlights for me were:
Revisiting some classic maps but not just remastering them. Really making substantive additions with brand new and ambitious easter eggs was a real pleasure. It’s always a fine line to tread between honoring something fans love while also refreshing it for current times.
The amount of fan service we put into the maps was exciting. Launch days were always a pleasure, watching the zombies fan community play through and discover all the secrets we placed was pretty special.
Building these zombies experiences required a breadth of design skill. We were designing level spaces, player gameplay mechanics, new weapons, new enemy types, and a host of unique level mechanics as well.
Classified
Classified set the stage for our collaboration with Treyarch and for the pace of the project, which was blistering. We began by ramping up on Black Ops zombies in general and by familiarizing ourselves with the original map and its script.
I’ve included an overall video as well as a video that breaks down the easter egg, which I think is necessary to get an idea for the kind of detail and complexity that goes into these maps. Each step in the easter egg quests is hand scripted and requires tight coordination with art teams, especially for prop requirements.
By the end, the team were absolute experts, and we were ready for more. We established good cred with Treyarch and the fans were very happy with the map.
Alpha Omega
Alpha Omega was my favorite of the maps we did. Nuketown is such a classic map with a great kitschy 1950’s vibe and the easter egg in this one was pretty amazing. We also had fun building weapons and new AI enemies, including the Ray Gun, new nova crawler types, and the boss.
Additionally, we were able to riff on many of our own ideas for the map, including the bunker lockdown, which proved to be lots of fun.
Tag Der Toten
Tag der Toten was the finale of the Aether storyline, which began all the way back in Call of Duty: World at War, so there was narrative momentum that needed to be resolved.
Each of the zombies maps we built had very unique gameplay challenges. In this one, the icy water, the ziplines, the flingers, and the snowballs were all bespoke elements.
Overall, this project was a good lesson in the cost vs. reward calculus of developer effort. In this case, the population that consumed zombie easter egg and story content was a niche within a niche, but it was an important fan base to serve.
Much of the zombies easter egg content could and should have been systematized in my opinion, but given the pace and priority of Call of Duty zombies development, it never was.