By Tencent CODM development lead designer
Translated and summarized by Gigi Geng
1. How do you define the CODM from the very beginning, what’s your expectation for this project?
We got CODM’s license（project bidding confirmation)on Feb. 15th, 2016.
Because we have the CFM project as a successful predecessor, our internal consensus is reached quickly and firmly: this game will be an all-around free movement mobile FPS shooting game, which inherited elements from traditional PC shooting games.
However, based on the mobile game market at that time, Activision had a different opinion from us. From a more practically less risky perspective, they were thinking about developing a Collectible Cards game with a system of qualitative value accumulation. Given various outputs on the game design direction, the expectation for the project was ambiguous.
2. How did everyone communicate in the following time and finally reached an agreement on the FPS genre?
It is a super long communication process. Activision insisted that they should see a similar product existing on the present market first to obtain more confidence to move forward with this project. And later in 2017, Fortnite was released globally, which allows the Western game publishers to see the fact that Western gamers also have an interest in playing such an intricate shooting game on mobile devices, and the hands-on control of the gameplay is so complex, including house building and gun shooting, and even on a harder level on the aspects of gameplay.
Then Activision began to realize that there is a huge potential for mobile FPS games in the regions of America, Europe, and Japan, such as Tier-One countries. And then they become more consented to develop an FPS game in the mobile space.
3. What are the unique features of CODM compared to other similar shooting games on the market?
Two highlights: One, is its IP value, and the other is its high product quality.
The Call of Duty IP has a history of 17 years, valuable sediment from more than a decade of efforts, and a classical IP.
Secondly, we can proudly say that the current CODM product on the mobile side is benchmarking and has gained tremendous achievement in the industry.
4. What’s the specialty of the COD IP?
The most impressive thing about the IP of COD is its forever-lasting popularity. This is extremely difficult, many other IPs have faded out of the market with time passing by and lost the attention of their fans. The second or third sequel product is usually the ceiling glass for an average IP. On the converse side, COD started off not smoothly, its early game releases are not very successful until the fourth generation came out and then gradually established its IP foothold on the market. Since then, every game version/standalone product they released had become the best-sellers.
Blizzard has a strong team specialized in content marketing and live-ops, and they always have new ideas and updated features to capture players’ attention and deliver a AAA service beyond the players’ expectations. For example, new gameplays such as Warzone, Weapons-upgrading system, new arcs borrowed from field-battles movies such as Cold War, and Zombie scenarios, are all widely welcomed among players, and players are willing to pay for them.
So feeding the players with new tastes and following the fresh/hot cultural trends has brought COD a constant success over all these years.
THE FOUR PILLARS OF COD GAMES
- Forever 60-frames experience
- Military realistic graphics
- Adrenaline-provoking experience
- Easy to begin, but hard to master
Every generation of Call of Duty games has well-inherited these qualities.
5. We all know that the COD PC/console version is where you can get the main themes/storylines/gameplay, if we try to replicate the features on mobile devices, what are the major hurdles we need to jump across?
Our biggest challenge is mobile techniques for the gameplay. Especially when the game was first released in the Western market, it was not an easy experience for the western players to operate on a tiny mobile screen, therefore it was very difficult to attract low-threshold players.
Since most male players have big hands, we designed an auto-trajectory firing system for novice shooters. It’s hard to imagine that we adopted such a feature in a fair-competition shooting game, feels like players can get away from their devices when playing the game.
This is a hard balancing process for us, as western players did not have previous experience coordinating both hands on the screen at the same time, such as turning directions using the left hand and firing a weapon with the right hand, players may feel too hard to maneuver their hands and give up the game in the early stage. This is the main reason we added the auto-firing function, you aim at a target and you fire quickly. We also upgrade the auto-firing system later on by adding a cooling-down time when you move the crosshair upon an enemy, players who excel at auto-firing will never surpass the best capability of master shooters.
6. What features have been dropped off for CODM if compared to the COD PC version?
There are no campaigns in CODM. We decided to discard the previous campaigns after a thorough examination of the ROI (Return of Investment) of this gameplay.
Secondly, PVE mode was abandoned as well. We had some initial try-outs on the PVE, but the overall metrics did not look good and so we dropped it.
CODM referred to a lot of content from the COD Universe, which is a gameplay collection from previous PC versions. A goal of CODM is to merge together all the essence of COD gameplay in the historical versions, combining its maps(such as Nuketown and Crash from Black Ops and Modern Warfare), modes, SNDs, TDM, frontline, domination are all the classical gameplay modes from the previous versions. Also, the gunner system from Modern Warfare is super creative, we reconstructed the weaponry tank and introduced the gunner system. CODM has been a one-stop mobile store for COD players, and mobile players can enjoy all the most fun elements from the previous versions.
7. Why do you drop the PVE mode?
We found that western players have a very high expectation for PVE content quality. PVE itself has been very demanding on content investment, such as Boss-hunting in a specific task or storyline. The mobile version was confined by creating different genres of bosses or monsters in various arcs. Due to the small screen of mobile phones, huge maps available on PC have to be cut into small pieces to fit the mobile screen, which greatly reduced the fun part of exploration on a holistic map. The data feedback was also not optimistic at that moment, but we may try to bring this topic up again if a new opportunity arises with the technical maturity of the development team.
8. What are the lessons learned through the communication with Activision?
We took care of the initial proposal of game design, and discuss its feasibility with Activision, to see if the features would match up with westerners’ needs. Activision will provide feedback from players’ points of view and help to cover our thinking blindspot.
As for the lesson we learned, western working professionals have a tremendous passion for the industry and it’s a good trait that they stand strong on their opinions. Sometimes when they see the feedback of players and data which are against their judgment, they still insist that their idea may not be wrong, because we’ve never tried this idea and we can’t decide yet whether it’s right or wrong. It’s an interesting communication process but never mind, we are the final designers who execute specific ideas and put the product into practice.
Later, we joined some business communication sessions, and then we learned that the culture and mindset gap between the east and west. The lecturer brought out a concept called “low context” and “high context”. The Chinese communicative style is ‘low context’, which means some ideas are implicative but not orally conveyable, a sign of eye contact will be understandable; While the westerners are very detail-oriented, they want everything concise and organized. For example, we producers/designers love to talk about game systems, if we decide to make a similar system, we would extract the core parts（the essence of the gameplay） of the system， but they would not understand exactly and ask us to elaborate on all the functions(high context) we need to do. So our team learned over time that in order to make a smooth communication, we have to prepare more details of the plan. Collaboration is a slow process in which both sides gradually get to know each other and they will also see that data-driven, players driven method proved itself to be the right way. Both sides are growing.
9. It’s said that you guys shared a central co-development backend platform, so why do you use this central platform, did it improve the collaboration efficiency?
The central platform is serving all the projects across the J3 department and technically it did take a little bit of time at the beginning for everybody to be able to use it. But in the long term, teams can use these platforms to see the successful cases from other teams and take their knowledge to help you predict the growth potentials of your own product.
10. Is there any successful experience to share on the marketing or publishing side?
Authenticity. All the COD PC players and new mobile players hope to get an authentic playing experience originating from the PC/console version. Given this demand, we put everything such as similar play modes, gameplay, battles, and systems into the mobile game, except for some insurmountable difficulty like hands-on operation.
When the game was in the 2.0 development phase, we applied a Zombie mode which turned out not very successful, with poor data performance. And then we have to switch our direction to build a reputable product among the COD community. We have co-workers collecting players’ comments on Reddit and talk with them frankly about their expectations. When we focused on improving our product and making the community happy, the game brand/reputation stands up little by little, until this game became a word-of-mouth product among the players.
Western players really touched my heart, they are all so cute and sincere. They complained about your game when it’s not fun to play, but they also praise you in glowing terms once you are great at something. If players saw your effort and potential, they give you extra opportunities and hope to see you succeed! This is the most awesome learning experience.
Another great thing about the COD community is that players are so candid and love to share their true feelings, they like and dislike from hearts, most of the comments are not only vents for feelings, but real feedback, we don’t even have to filter the misinformation too much to collect useful feedback.
11. What changes have been made to cater to Chinese mainland players?
Firstly, the Graphic design: we need higher photo definition;
Secondly, the system: A huge base of shooting game players in China has formed over the past years, but the majority are shooting novices, with low skill thresholds， that’s why new player tutorial design is critical to attract and keep the players.
Thirdly, Strong social media channels: Tencent has QQ and Wechat as our major marketing platforms, so increasing social functions within the game and building a bustling online community is not hard.
Finally, the gameplay: not much difference between the Chinese and western players, maybe will add the bombing/demolition function for the Chinese players.
The social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter are for socializing purposes, not an accurate marketing channel for gamers. The gamers and socializers are separate groups on different platforms.
In China, IP influence is weaker, but the marketing channels are stronger, we are positive about the Chinese market.
