Call of Duty: Vanguard, the 2021 installment of Activision’s annual first-person shooter series, is off to something of a rough start, with many fans voicing concerns over Vanguard’s content-devoid state and rehashed DLC content. That said, Modern Warfare 2, the Call of Duty title said to be in the works for 2022, may be able to nix many of these issues thanks to a surplus of development time.
In a recent series of tweets, gaming journalist and prognosticator Tom Henderson stated that Call of Duty 2022 will be the first in the series to enjoy a full three-year development cycle. He also speculated that the so-called DMZ mode—a spec-ops mode replacement theorized to borrow from open-world tactical shooters like Escape from Tarkov—has been in development in some fashion since early 2018, meaning that it would have more than four years of work behind it if it were to launch alongside the upcoming title.
This could represent a huge improvement for the Call of Duty series, as a feature-complete and relatively stable experience is everything Call of Duty: Vanguard is not, and it could do again what Modern Warfare 2019 did for the public perception of the series. The one major caveat pointed out by Henderson, however, is the lingering issue of quality assurance. In late 2021, Activision laid off a significant portion of Raven Software’s QA team, and the move sparked an intense backlash from employees and gamers alike.
The coronavirus pandemic likely also proved to be a bump in the road for Call of Duty 2022. Both Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War and Call of Duty: Vanguard were inhibited by the global outbreak—as was the franchise's esports league—and the benefits of a three-year development cycle may have been negated as a result of the unprecedented downtime. Many in the Call of Duty community have called for Activision to forego the series’ yearly release schedule, but that doesn’t seem like a likely scenario.
Modern Call of Duty titles are massive projects that require input from multiple studios and hundreds of employees, and, more often than not, entries not bearing the subtitles Modern Warfare or Black Ops seem to be stop-gap titles unable to reach the same acclaim as most games bearing the Call of Duty brand name. Call of Duty: Vanguard hasn't sold as well as Call of Duty: Modern Warfare sold two years ago, and it will be interesting to see how Activision and developer Infinity Ward plan to bounce back in the coming year.