Black Ops 6 Has Been In Development For Four Years

Call of Duty

June 14, 2024

Grant Taylor-Hill

When 2023’s Modern Warfare 3 was released, it was quickly discovered just how rapidly it had been assembled by Activision Blizzard’s studios. It wasn’t quite as quickly as Black Ops Cold War (which was made in a matter of months), but it was in development for little more than a year and a half. That’s partly why many labelled it a ‘DLC’ for 2022’s Modern Warfare 2. It has just been revealed how long Black Ops 6 has been in development – and it’s a timeline that should fill fans with hope.

In a recent interview, Black Ops 6’s Director of Production, Yale Miller, explained that Black Ops 6 has been in development since 2020. That four-year window means it’s one of the heftiest Call of Duty titles in recent years, development-wise. They typically have a couple of years of production pushed into them, but Black Ops 6 having double that is nothing but good news.

Time = Quality?

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Miller, who has worked on Black Ops 6 since the first concepts of the game surfaced in 2020, gave the lowdown on the game’s development lifecycle

‘We started working on it – the ideation and talking about it – right after (Black Ops) Cold War. So, from then until now. We still have what feels like a lot of time to go with the six months of push. So we started there. We also had a huge moment for us, which was the move to the unified engine. That’s a big thing for us.

We started by looking at and dissecting what are all the parts of a great Black Ops game, and what are the things that we think it needs, Conversations about the era we want to go to, and those things. We thought the story the team wanted to tell was to go forward with Cold War. Then we looked at, well, if you go forward with Cold War, then you’re in the events of Black Ops 2, which had flashback missions, and so the early ‘90s was a good spot for us to land. Yeah, since Cold War, we’ve been focused on this.’

Black Ops Cold War was a solid shooter despite a rushed development cycle. It boasted one of the best and most balanced multiplayer ecosystems in recent years, even though it wasn’t regarded as one of the best Call of Duty games ever made. It ultimately came and went like all the other Call of Duty titles, being replaced by subsequent releases as the years wore on.

Black Ops 6 will be the first title in the Black Ops sub-franchise in four years, and fans are very eager to get their hands on the upcoming title. It’s being well-received, and the recent first trailers that were released stunned audiences worldwide. It could be the best COD game in years, and some of the innovative mechanics being developed for the game will change how we play Call of Duty for the foreseeable future.

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