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If you have players in your home, chances are you’re playing Call of Duty: Warzone. The new Battle Royale mode for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare multiplayer arrived on March 10 just in time for the blockade in the United States and elsewhere. And it has become my game of choice to stop thinking about the pandemic.
In its first month, the free game was downloaded more than 50 million times, or the same number that Electronic Arts and Respawn saw with the Apex Legends debut last year. In this case, social distancing and self-isolation contributed to Warzone’s success. It has caught the attention of a larger group, particularly parents or other household members who discover that their player is obsessed.
Like Fortnite, Warzone has entered the mainstream. Saturday Night Live aired a segment on Warzone, which you can watch below. In the episode, a Twitch streamer plays Warzone and is killed instantly every time it spawns. That can happen in-game, as many players are quite skilled. (I was even killed once while parachuting on the battlefield, by another parachutist.) But the problem with the Saturday Night Live sketch was that the map was in Modern Warfare multiplayer. It was not from Warzone itself. Anyone who has played Warzone or Modern Warfare multiplayer would know, making it another case of conventional entertainment trying to assimilate games and fail.
Still, the nod to a hardcore game on everyone’s show indicates that games are gaining ground around the world, and Warzone is one of the games at the forefront of that offensive. In this story, I hope to explain why this game is so fun and popular during the pandemic.
Obsession
It is an addictive game, but it is not easy to win since 150 players compete in a fight until the end. You can play alone or join teams of three or four squadmates. But only one team is the winner, as an ever-smaller circle forces everyone to unite on the battlefield.
I have been obsessed with Warzone as it took me a long time to get my first win, just yesterday. I came in second four times, and it was killing me that I still didn’t have a victory. I expanded my circle of friends and found people who were good at Warzone, and that helped improve my chances of winning. But mostly, he just needed to play a lot to beat the laws of probability.
I have played 147 games in Warzone. As I said, I have won a game and been in the top 10 teams 32 times. I have 243 deaths in those games. I’ve shot down 202 other players (if you shoot someone down, a squadmate can resurrect the player). I have a career rank of 153 in multiplayer and Warzone, and am currently ranked at level 96 in the current Battle Pass Season 3 for Warzone.
I have spent 48 hours and 28 minutes playing all those games. It’s not a long time when it comes to hardcore gamers. One of my friends has 10 wins in over 600 games. But then again, I’ve had a busy job during the pandemic. I had to spend a lot of time preparing for our GamesBeat Summit 2020 event, which took place last week.
I’ve been much more engaged with Warzone than with Call of Duty: Blackout, which debuted with Call of Duty: Black Ops IIII. That battle royale mode came out last year and didn’t have the same type of hooks that kept me in the game any longer.
How hard do you have to be
Above: Mark Chandler helped us secure our first Warzone victory.
Image credit: Dean Takahashi / GamesBeat
I am playing on the PC. For a long time, the game kept crashing after I finished the games. But lately, it’s been pretty stable. Occasionally, he suffers a delay, which is an indication of how he can bring the internet to his knees. I am more than happy to bear this, given the fact that there are not many other exciting entertainments available now.
I’m sure some people wonder if I’m really good at this game, given my story. No, not really. I’m pretty mediocre, however I enjoy it. It’s immensely fun, and that’s what matters to me. You may be intimidated at first, but if you tell your squad mates that this is your first game, they will probably come in handy (if they are playing on microphones).
Every year, I play Call of Duty and I level up multiplayer. I did it in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare last fall, and I was delighted to know that when you collect your cash in Warzone and then spend it to buy a load, you can access your multiplayer load Modern Warfare. That was a brilliant reward for people who spent a lot of time in multiplayer mode leveling their weapons.
When I grab my load (either buying it from an in-game purchase station or when it randomly falls from the sky), I can hold my ground. I use a leveled light machine gun (LMG) and an assault rifle, and I play with an Xbox game controller. That puts me at a disadvantage for gamers who can better aim with a mouse and keyboard. But I think it is the only way I can move and shoot well at the same time. With a full charge, your weapon is much more stable and has a level sight, which helps to aim accurately.
The other thing that’s cool about the Warzone design for newbies (new players) is the Gulag. If you are killed for the first time, you have a chance to return. You have to go to a prison and have another one on one fight with another player. If your squadmate is also in the Gulag with you, he or she can look up from above and verbally tell you which way to go to avoid the enemy.
If you win in the Gulag, you can parachute back into the game. If you lose, you can still watch your teammates play. They can collect cash and buy it again at a purchasing station.
The net result is that Warzone is attractive and team oriented. It gives you a reason to stay and support your team, even after you die. You can watch them while you wait for them to buy from you again, and you can give them advice. It’s a little design change that makes gamers more social. While you must be a hardcore gamer to be good at the game, the social side is more appealing to people who just want to have a good time.
the comunication is the key
Above: Stembo, Stvrgeon and PierrePressure are stacked in a doorway as we prepare to go out on the dam.
Image credit: Dean Takahashi / GamesBeat
But the best is not just playing with familiar weapons. It is the fact that the game is extremely social.
In the name of team survival, you are motivated to speak. They must tell where they are going, return if they are straying, where the enemies are or if they are reloading. You do this with non-verbal cues, such as double-clicking a distant enemy to point it at your squad mates, or with an audio chat on an open microphone. You can easily mark a point on the map where you want the team to go next. That is an innovation introduced by Apex Legends.
I firmly believe that this communication system is what makes this game so popular. When I’m hanging out in the lobby or warming up, I have conversations with people like Mark Chandler or Sean Hollister and I see how they are. In this pandemic, that is a blessing. It’s fun to have fun with friends; I often try to grab a helicopter and cut other players with the blades. (See the video below).
“The amount of ingenuity among our players never ceases to amaze me,” Taylor Kurosaki, narrative designer for Infinity Ward, said in an interview with me. “The way they can take the toolkit you give them, the playground you give them, and then use it in ways you never imagined is remarkable.”
On Thursday, Peter Levin of Griffin Gaming Partners connected me to his team, which included some extremely talented people: Stembo, stvrgeon, and PierrePressure. Everyone tried to get my victory when they found out that I had not yet won. Most of the time, I felt like it was an escort mission where these guys defeated many other players and I was the VIP they had to protect.
I was surprised at how good these sniper players were. In fact, if you want to be good at Warzone, you really should feel much more comfortable shooting, perhaps training in multiplayer games. Other skills, such as flying a helicopter or driving a car, will also allow you to earn points with your squad. But the goal of a squad is that you must have various abilities. My skill is to be a heavy gunner.
The expert squad was also good at tactics, such as anticipating how to get to high ground first or flanking an enemy who has a player pinned.
They were also talked to on the phone via Discord, since the clarity of the audio is much better in that social network of players than the audio of the game, which can slow down the game. They chatted a lot about where the enemies were, dialing enemies quickly with a single click of a mouse or touching a controller. It gave me a better idea of how a team that communicates can do much better. Very often, on other teams, one of our team will start shooting at someone without telling us where the enemy is. That wastes precious time.
In one of the games where we almost won (we came in third place). And it was ironically right at the same point near the dam where he would later win a match. But in the match with Stembo, Stvrgeon and PierrePressure, they pulled us out of the game. Due to the circle squeeze, I was the last survivor. I was falling behind and pulled out two players, but the gas finally caught me. If he had jumped over the dam wall, he would have had a chance to play, but he would also have been eliminated by another team sitting on an island in an ice lake.
When I actually won a game match with Mark Chandler and two strangers, it was almost exactly in the same location, except that the other teams were the ones being pressured by the gas circle and we were the ones on the island. The closing gas forced them to run toward us over the unprotected ice lake, and they were easy to remove. We won because, during our communication, we correctly chose where the final circle would be, and that made the difference in having the final advantage.
