Call of Duty: what would indie developers do to it?

Call of Duty – same every year, right? A bunch of savage looking eastern Europeans attack America with nuclear weapons or computer viruses, and then you join a crack squad of spec-ops hard men traveling the world trying to shoot everything that isn't physically nailed down. Eventually you get to the terrorist leader, who turns out to have a complicated backstory, but you stab him in the neck anyway; then you spend the next six months complaining that the multiplayer servers are full of 12-year-old racists.

Thankfully, Sledgehammer Games is promising to mix things up with its forthcoming take on the series, Advanced Warfare, which features Kevin Spacey as the lunatic head of a private military contractor. But is making Keyser Soze the lead antagonist going far enough? Could Activision really not turn the formula on its head? What would happen if the franchise was handed over to the indie community?

I had to find out, so I asked a collection of indie developers to come up with their own ideas for the next Call of Duty title. Here's what they handed in…

I’d take some of the millions and billions of dollars it makes each year and hire a decent writer to craft something that isn’t all 'hoo-ah dudebros', and invest in some tech that makes it a more open, engaging experience rather than just a corridor shooting gallery. There’s great scope for Call of Duty to do some real good for games with its popularity, it’d be nice to see them capitalise on that. Knowing me, I’d turn it into a point and click adventure.
Dan Marshall, Size Five Games

With an unlimited budget? Go open-world, non-linear, incredibly empty with long periods of tense nothingness punctuated by insanely frenetic, chaotic and confusing action where you don't really know what the hell is going on and you are mainly screaming and panicking and nuking everything that moves and then it suddenly goes utterly quiet again and you are back to being cut adrift in a big unfriendly world that's really difficult to predict. Rinse and repeat until post-traumatic stress disorder kicks in.
Dan Pinchbeck, The Chinese Room

I'd do a first person war game from the perspective of a civilian, swept up in events, who doesn't pick up a gun. Protecting your family, avoiding forces on both sides. It'd be an interesting and under-represented perspective on a conflict.
Mike Bithell (Thomas Was Alone, Volume)

Call of Duty: Peacekeeper. I'd dump the campaign and focus on creating a much deeper multiplayer, with more opportunities for non-combat play. I'd introduce a third AI team of civilians to muddy the waters and make combat have a more chaotic and stressful feel. I'd also add a fourth class – journalists – who would be playable on your death and who get to document the fights with video, audio and still images…

The "good guys" would essentially play peacekeepers, and have similar tools like sniffer dogs to find bombs, riot gear, barricades to 'contain' a panicked populace. But I'd be very keen to make sure it all depends on the player's deployment of the tools they're given.

Riffing on that, I'd encourage the "baddy" team to try to disrupt things for the civilians as well as the good guys – bombs, sabotage, etc. The idea being that the bad guys want as much media attention as possible, while the good guys are always trying to bend the rules without being caught on camera so as to cut off the terrorist threat and deny them the attention. This could all make for some amazing emergent gameplay and truly memorable scenarios.
Andrew Smith, Spilt-Milk Studios

Ukip has not only won the election but has thrown the UK into a xenophobic state – turning the country into a closed dictatorship. All is not well, however, and civil war has broken out across the nation. The jack-booted Farage stazi start clamping down hard on the insurgents using lethal force. You play as an an ex-SAS fighter, now part of the super elite FreeUK freedom fighters tasked with breaking into the highly fortified war fortress that used to be Whitehall and assassinating the Ukip overlord. Will that do?
Byron Atkinson-Jones, Xiotex

My version would draw on competitive puzzlers such as Super Puzzle Fighter. Two participants play in separate stages. Enemy soldiers wear either red, yellow or blue jumpsuits, and if you shoot three of the same colour in a row you get a chain. Getting bigger chains sends more enemies to your opponent, but if they chain them right back they can send even more to you. Ka-pow! It would be called Call of Duty: Combo-Bustin' Chaos.
Alistair Aitcheson (Greedy Bankers, Slamjet Stadium)

With the impending First World War Centenary, I'd return the series to the trenches of Northern France in WW1. The game would revolve around life between battles: making a decent cup of tea, using rats for target practice, burning lice out of blankets with candles, reinforcing the trench walls to keep out the mud, playing cards and writing letters home... all under heavy bombardment (lots of camera shake and deafening audio design).
Each level would end with you and your pals climbing the trench ladders to charge at the enemy, then everything would fade to white and the next level would start, only with some of your fellow soliders gone.
Ricky Haggett, Honeyslug

George and I are waiting to board a plane to Iceland so we've both decided to give hurried responses.

George: If I designed the new Call of Duty, it would be a Doom WAD.

Mitu: Mine would be a complex social simulation in which you must juggle your duty to your country with the growing romantic feelings for, and catty struggles between, your squad mates.
Mitu (and George) Khandaker-Kokoris, Tiniest Shark

I have the unfashionable post-Gone Home viewpoint that I quite like the unfettered face shooting that the Call of Duty games provide. Admittedly the single-player is an increasingly pointless, diversionary, and bombastic spectacle and has never again reached the genuinely groundbreaking and interesting narrative highs that Modern Warfare managed. But Call of Duty has always been about multiplayer and it's still a taut, precise, and largely flawless shooter in that regard. The corporate answer would of course be to suggest a real-time second-screen tactical experience to run alongside the main game allowing you to control a whole squad rather than a single player (*cough* like Salvaged - Kickstart it now!), but actually I'm tempted to go the Billy Joel route and say, "I love you just the way you are."
James Parker, Opposable Games

The player is a military contractor working as a remote operator of an unmanned drone aircraft. You begin your day by driving to work and sitting in a server room, watching a video screen and pressing buttons to send commands to the drone. You get 10,000 points for blowing up an enemy militant or military hardware, but be careful because you lose one point if you hit a civilian.
Bennett Foddy (Girp, Qwop)

Call of Duty: War Photographer. Players step into the shoes of veteran conflict documentarian Angela Espinoza, entering hot zones armed only with a mechanical film camera. Adjust the F-stop on the fly and swap lenses with the analog triggers and d-pad. Develop photos after each battle, selling them to player-run galleries and news agencies.
Adam Saltsman (Canabalt, Hundreds)

Cold open through the sight of a sniper scope. Fast zoom on to typically arid landscape, sand-blasted rubble, long shadows and crumbling stone huts. Your red dot dances across a doorway. Suddenly: movement. You track your dot back – but it's just a scrawny cat, chasing the laser. The cat stops in its tracks, narrows its eyes, ears flatten, and slowly turns to face the scope. Has it seen something? Then it happens: the cat reaches, with a paw that behaves unnaturally human, behind her tail and pulls out a Desert Eagle. Everything slows down as she shoots and your POV reels backwards. Before you fade to black you catch a glimpse of your falling body in a cracked mirror behind you. You, too, are a cat. Call of Duty Logo. You're welcome, Activision. I know what the internet wants. Call me for more on the Grumpy Cat Season Pass.
Ste Curran, game consultant

Call of Duty: Fallen. The player takes the role of soldiers injured or incapacitated in battle, in a series of set-pieces covering the course of war in human history from the Peloponnesian War through contemporary remotely-operated 'surgical' drone warfare. In each case, after a struggle, death overtakes him—differently in each scenario. The soldier’s ultimate duty is not to liberate nor to defend nor even to kill, but to die, and the game strips warfare down to this singular principle.
Ian Bogost (Cow Clicker, Simony)

Clearly the next CoD should be set near Bournemouth and feature a retired colonel whose lawn has been trampled. Having spoken about this to his second wife, Miriam, he sets out for bloody revenge.
Jim Rossignol, Big Robot

An Oculus Rift game set in Blitz-era London. It's blackout, no lighting of cigarettes, no switching on of lights. You play a pregnant woman going into labour. You have to get across London to a hospital or a midwife before the baby is born. The idea is to navigate by sound and shadow, by the voices of strangers to get help, and avoid being blown the heck up. Your move, Sledgehammer Games.
Cara Ellison (Sweatshop, Sacrilege)

So what's your idea for the future of Call of Duty? Let us know in the comments section.

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