The teaser and release experience of Call of Duty 2020 has been unlike anything attempted by Activision in recent years. Fundamentally, the traditional announce and release schedule has been shattered by this mixture of puzzles, teasers, and leaks. Without a formal Call of Duty announcement, all the fans of the franchise are left guessing the game's future and deciphering details from obscure clues scattered across Warzone.
The craziest part of the entire process is that chaos is the point of the entire campaign. Without Activision giving information, players are instead left searching for information, and the best place to find information happens to be an Activision product. Warzone became the promotional tool that drives Call of Duty 2020's marketing campaign but this change in schedule might have on an unexpected side effect.
Activision exists in a culture of big-screen game announcements, repetitive promotional formulas, and a constantly evolving game environment. With a promised release of Call of Duty every year, the game company must work tirelessly year-round to impress fans with the next big and flashy game. Years of this process have worn fans down causing skepticism and nit-picking of upcoming topics, but this new process may have fixed a long term industry problem.
A Familiar Formula
For years, Activision has used the same formula when it comes to promoting its upcoming Call of Duty title. It waits until around halfway through the year, usually when its previous game starts to lose attention, and then it announces the upcoming title with a stunning trailer and beautiful graphics. Usually, the trailer is rendered to be higher quality than the actual game, and fans are left speculating the story and quality of the title until the release in the fourth quarter of the year.
This formula worked for years, as Activision has been able to continuously cycle games through its audience. It had become so predictable that, when Activision decided to change pace, the community was left confused. Every fan was left in limbo trying to predict the announcement of the next Call of Duty game.
It was this adherence to pattern that made the fanbase and Activision complacent to a rehash of the same product. After the questionable reception of Black Ops 4, Activision knew it had to do something when it came to the next big release window. Little did fans know at the time, but Activision would do something big, flashy, and practically revolutionary.
Modern Game Announcements
A majority of the modern game announcements revolve around flashy showings, massive panels, and false demonstrations. Although there are many game companies that truly give all into the promotion of an upcoming title, it doesn't always pan out this way. Great examples of this process are the No Man's Sky reveal versus release or the Bioshock: Infinite demo that turned out to be an almost completely different game.
For a long time, Activision has participated in this system showcasing its title in front of massive audiences. Howeve its games end up, they do feel like a repeating game at the fault of the genre itself. There are only so many ways that a game company can remix first-person shooters without losing the intrinsic shooting part of the game. To Activision's credit, it has done an amazing job keeping the Call of Duty franchise fresh and interesting with every iteration.
The issue in the modern game announcement atmosphere exists outside of Activision and is more of an industry problem as a whole. Dishonest showcases have bred an atmosphere of doubt in fans and resulted in players decided whether or not to buy the game early. By withholding release information, fans have no idea what is to come and without all of the information at hand, they can not make an educated decision to purchase the title or not.
Future Of Activision's Releases
Activision has set a new expectation among its dedicated community and made a major splash as a publishing company. The shift from active promotion into a more subtle teaser based approach has been, thus far, massively successful. If a major company like Activision can promote on such a subtle level and gain such a massive reaction then other publishers might start to mimic the approach. The release of Call of Duty 2020 could strike a larger effect on the gaming industry breaking fans away from the standard promotional protocol and entering a new era of interactive advertising.
Although it could just as easily fail and fall apart, the fan reception has been massively positive so far. From the thousands of users watching streamers unbox promotional COD material for a chance to see the new teaser trailer to the fact that Activision has kept so much of the core content under wraps, players are left discovering rather than observe the new title. This path of discovery brings the promotion from a "telling the audience" approach and instead shows the audience in a deep and impactful way.
This is all prior to the launch itself. The combination of Call of Duty 2020 with the Modern Warfare battle royale Warzone creates one of the first situations where a multiplayer player franchise of this scale traveled with a free-to-play title. The nature of a battle royale might change as the game progresses with its parent franchise rather than separating from the core game mechanics as Fortnite did. A future with less disposable games gives a sense of permanence to players and although the Call of Duty release window will continue to cycle if Warzone follows then players will, for the first time in CoD history, have a permanent place in Activision's world.
Warzone has broken several player records, but Call of Duty 2020 is in a position to shake the gaming industry itself. Players are quickly headed towards a revolutionary turning point where things can either shift, or continue with the status quo. With so many variables up in the air it will be interesting to see where Activision takes fans in the next Call of Duty release.
Call of Duty 2020 is being developed by Treyarch and Raven Software.