It's February 1991 and an extravagant charity gala in Washington DC. On stage stands a relatively young governor named Bill Clinton. The player in "Call of duty: Black ops 6" moves around the party hall and talks to the guests, with the goal of scanning a senator's iris.
We thought, "what if we have a mission where we blackmail a senator. And wouldn't it be cool if we could really play with that kind of political espionage?" says Jon Zuk at developer Raven, who in recent years has taken on increasingly more responsibility for "Call of duty".
Feeling and authenticity
At the scene, you can hear the man who later becomes the President of the USA small-talking with some other political bigwigs.
When we use a public figure, we first think: Is this someone who is internationally recognized?
The idea is to create a certain feeling and authenticity for the time period, explains Zuk. In earlier games, Ronald Reagan and John F Kennedy have made appearances.
But we also put up some guardrails to ensure that the player doesn't try to harm this person. So we're pretty cautious about how we use them, and try to make sure we can tell our story first and foremost, he says.
New subscribers
"Call of duty" is the first game in the series that has been made available on Microsoft's subscription service Game Pass on the release date, just over a year after Microsoft's acquisition of Activision Blizzard went through. The release led to a record number of subscribers signing up for the service on the release date.
We've seen that many players are on Game Pass, which is super cool. The goal is to get the game into as many hands as possible, says Zuk.
Gustav Sjöholm/TT
Facts: "Call of duty"
TT
Activision's first-person shooter "Call of duty" is a game series that has existed since 2003. The first games took place during World War II, but since the first "Modern warfare" from 2007, they have mainly taken place in other time periods.
To maintain a high release rate of about one game per year, four studios – Sledgehammer, Infinity Ward, Treyarch, and Raven Software – take turns leading the development.
This year's "Call of duty" is the 21st game in the main series and has been developed by Raven and Treyarch. It is a sequel to 2012's "Black ops 2".
The game was released on October 25 for Playstation 4/5, Xbox One/Series, and PC.
