Activision Can’t Risk Changing Simple Call of Duty Formula

Call of Duty isn’t a project that can be fiddled with too greatly each and every year. Of course, certain aspects of the massive first-person shooter are constantly being improved or expanded upon in order to make the moment-to-moment action more enjoyable for the player, but the game’s popularity and inclusion into e-sports events has made it difficult for publisher Activision to take too many chances. U.S. e-sports outfit Major League Gaming will be using the upcoming Ghosts as its first-person shooter of choice come November, and studio producer Jason Rubin realizes that this makes it more difficult to tweak his company’s flagship series.

“There is the obvious truth that if this were football, and next year they decided we only want seven players a side and you can use your hands, I don't think people would want to go to many of those games,” Rubin said in an interview with OXM. "So, we can't change too many of the core rules, and the core rules are really simple.

"You're a player, it's in first-person, you have a weapon in your hand, and you run around shooting other people. We can play a lot with the outside of how that works, and it's things like character customization, making the movement through that world better, making the world itself more interesting, adding the new modes, adding the new dynamic maps."

The multiplayer modes and list of weapons will be unique, but don’t expect a huge departure when Call of Duty: Ghosts ships this November.