Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 was a great game. Was. Any goodwill it had at launch has been completely squandered in just two months, making it one of 2024’s most embarrassing releases.
Activision Appears To Be Going All In On AI…
New promotional art was revealed earlier this month for the holiday festivities, and fans immediately noticed that it looked suspiciously like AI, since zombie Santa — and a hand holding Gobblegum — had the wrong number of fingers. Activision, which was bought out for a staggering $75 billion by Microsoft, and which itself pulled in a profit of $86.2 billion last year (as reported by Forbes), seemingly chose not to pay real artists.
Instead, it appears to have gone with the most immoral option, simply to skimp on a few dollars, which would have made no noticeable difference whatsoever to the company’s bottom line. But that controversy is a drop in the ocean compared to what Activision did just a few weeks later.
On December 19, it came to light that Activision had recast the Zombies crew, and it’s believed to be because of the SAG-AFTRA strikes over a lack of protection regarding AI. What’s worse, the replacements haven’t been credited yet, and William Peck actor Zeke Alton believes that the new voices could even be AI-generated; “the lack of crediting implies that it may still be me.”
It’s hard to be invested in the Zombies story when the crux of its narrative might be upheld by lifeless puppets imitating real actors. But even if they were recast a) the new actors aren’t being credited for their work, and b) it’s still insulting to the original performers, and may even be an attempt to skirt future strike action.
Call of Duty is all-consuming. Studios across Activision are pulled in to keep it whirring away year after year, even leading to Spyro Reignited and Crash Bandicoot 4 developer Toys for Bob going independent after years of being trapped in the machine. But even with all that manpower and funding, and the sheer success of each game, Activision tries to save on every possible dollar. To put into perspective how unnecessary that is, Bobby Kotick was one of the highest-paid gaming CEOs in 2020, making nearly $30 million, while his employees made only 0.3 percent of that. It’s not a question of money, it’s a question of ethics.
…And Egregious Microtransactions
Black Ops 6 is a $70 game (or $100 for the Vault Edition). It’s not cheap. And yet it has some of the worst microtransactions in the series’ history.
There’s a BlackCell variant of the Replacer selling for $50, a skin that turns you into a cloud upon death, giving your teammates immediate cover, and the already infamous Squid Game collaboration. What is essentially an unavoidable advert plastered on the events page for the new Netflix series is a paid “Premium Track”, tacked on top of a $70 game already loaded with pricey cosmetics.
A quick glance at the store and you’ll find generic skin bundles selling for 1,600 to 2,000 Cod Points, equivalent to $20. Some go for as high as 3,000 Cod Points, which is either $40 if you buy the 4,000 CP bundle, or $30 if you buy the 2,000 and 1,000 CP bundles separately. It’s understandable that so much of the community is calling for future instalments to go free-to-play with this kind of monetisation. It’s out of place in a full-priced game, especially one as enormous as Call of Duty.
After just two months, Black Ops 6 feels dirty to play. It’s like a grimy salesman in a dodgy back alley or a creepy message from a stranger on Facebook — it’s uncomfortable and off-putting. Opening up the game and being met with what looks like AI art and pop-up ads asking you to splash out another $20 on some cheap skins is unbelievably tacky.
What was a great foundation for a shooter, with the best Zombies we’ve had in years, has quickly become humiliating to so much as look at.
Forced to go rogue. Hunted from within. This is Call of Duty: Black Ops 6.
Developed by Treyarch and Raven, Black Ops 6 is a spy action thriller set in the early 90s, a period of transition and upheaval in global politics, characterized by the end of the Cold War and the rise of the United States as a single superpower. With a mind-bending narrative, and unbound by the rules of engagement, this is signature Black Ops.
The Black Ops 6 Campaign provides dynamic moment-to-moment gameplay that includes a variety of play spaces with blockbuster set pieces and action-packed moments, high-stakes heists, and cloak-and-dagger spy activity.
In a best-in-class Multiplayer experience, players will test their skills across 16 new maps at launch, including 12 core 6v6 maps and 4 Strike maps that can be played 2v2 or 6v6.
Black Ops 6 also marks the epic return of Round-Based Zombies, the fan-favorite mode where players will take down hordes of the undead in two brand-new maps at launch. Post-launch, players can look forward to even more exciting maps and groundbreaking experiences dropping into both Multiplayer and Zombies.