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Call of Dutyas a franchise has always been known for its fun and engaging online play. While many fell in love with its war gameplay, others found enjoyment in its zombie mode.
EnterCall of Duty: Zombies, a now canceled live-service project that was conceptualized around 2011-2012. We learned about this after Michael Gummelt, former Lead Designer at Software, revealed the project in a recent interview.
Call of Duty Zombies – What Could’ve Been
It was a standalone zombies experience for the Call of Duty fanbase. A live service game that featured microtransactions for character customization options. It was all only on paper and never made it to development but the concepts alone sound crazy.
Gummelt has a lengthy history with theCall of Dutyseries. Starting atCall of Duty: Black Opsbefore transitioning intoCall of Duty: Onlinefor China, everything he did for the franchise was leading up to theCall of Duty: Zombieslive-service game.
It was going to be a four-player co-op experience where everyone would start in a gladiator arena. Gummelt described it as a “Mad Max post-apocalyptic zombie arena.” Fighting off waves of zombies round after round before transitioning to the open world map.
There would be areas with survivors who needed your help to fight off zombies. Conquer the area by clearing the waves of zombies and save the survivors.
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As opposed to the more serious side ofCall of Duty, the zombies live-service project embraced the more silly, colorful, and wacky side of the franchise.
How Call of Duty Zombies (Almost) Happened
At the time, Gummelt said Treyarch might not have wanted to continue making zombies afterCall of Duty: Black Ops. Offered this project, Gummelt and the rest of the team at Raven Software started to work with Activision to developCall of Duty: Zombies.
Gummelt had a ton of freedom when he was onCall of Duty: Onlinebecause Activision wasn’t worried the project would interfere with the mainlineCall of Dutyimage in the States. Through that freedom, he was able to experiment with the series from the zombies mode to the building blocks ofCall of Duty Warzone.
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Now tasked withCall of Duty: Zombiesas Lead Designer, Gummelt put a ton of work into conceptualizing the title. However, they never developed it.
Talks with Activision and design documents were being shifted around but it seems that Treyarch did want to continue developing zombies. The impression Gummelt got was that Activision did not want Raven’sCall of Duty: Zombiesto compete alongside Treyarch’s zombie modes in futureCall of Duty: Black Opssequels.
Make sense business-wise but ultimately leads to the cancellation ofCall of Duty: Zombies, a live-service zombies experience. A crazy timeline to live in ifCall of Duty: Zombiesbecame a reality. What do you think of this canceled concept? Let us know in the comments what you think!
Travis Vuong
Articles Published :143
Travis Vuong is a games journalist and content creator. He’s been a YouTuber since 2008 and continues to create videos under the “tvsonicgaming” banner. All social media accounts and his podcast: allmylinks.com/tvsonic
