Call of Duty: How the “Medal of Honour Killer” Killed Its Own Identity

Introduction: An Economic Fortress

Today we’re going to talk about the Call of Duty franchise, which is huge. The size of this is hard to describe. We’re talking about a series that has sold more than 425 million copies since 2003. It’s a lot more than a game. It’s an economic fortress worth billions of dollars that has been around for more than twenty years. It’s a great business success story, but what I find most interesting about this series of games is the creative warfare that was always going on just below the surface.

We’re going to follow its history from its very violent beginning as a game made just to kill its main rival, to the strategic thinking behind the 2025 entry, Black Ops 7. And that’s really what I’m here to do. Figure out what those big changes in strategy mean.

There’s always a lot of pressure between real creative innovation and the need to stick to an annual business model. However, that’s pretty much the whole story. It came from a bitter rivalry, but its modern identity is shaped by how that business model ate up its own creative past. That tension runs through everything.

The “MOH Killer”: Origins of a Rivalry

Let’s start from the very beginning. That rivalry was all that mattered in those early years. Activision was desperate to close the gap and beat EA’s Medal of Honour. At the time, this was the best WWII shooter by far. And making Call of Duty was very personal for some. The main group of developers, 22 of them, had worked on Medal of Honour: Allied Assault. They literally left the 2015, Inc. office overnight to start their own studio, Infinity Ward.

All they wanted to do was beat their old game. The project was given the internal code name “MOH killer.” And the genius of it wasn’t just a business drama. It was a real change in creativity. The Medal of Honour was all about that “lone wolf” fantasy. You’re the one-man army and the super spy. Infinity Ward turned that upside down on purpose. They changed course quickly to squad-based play.

They wanted you to feel weak, like you were a small part of this huge, chaotic war, and they wanted you to see it through the eyes of regular soldiers. They made it worse with the many campaigns. You have to play as the Americans, the British, and the Soviets. That movie-like, multi-perspective style was a big improvement for the whole genre.

The Regenerating Health Revolution

That identity was set pretty quickly. The Xbox 360’s big launch title in 2005 was Call of Duty 2. That’s when it really turned into a console-first series. But that game also brought about what is probably the most important mechanical change in the history of first-person shooters.

I’m talking about health that comes back. No more looking for health packs. You just hide behind something. It seems easy now, but it made firefights a lot more intense. It kept you in the game. And it set the standard for almost every shooter that came after it.

The Pressure Cooker: Establishing the Annual Cycle

This is where the stress of that yearly model starts to show up really early. Treyarch has to step in while Infinity Ward plans its next big move. It took them just eight months to make their first mainline game, Call of Duty 3. It was a game that filled in the gaps. And you could tell. It got bad reviews and seemed rushed. But that failure set two important things in stone for the future of the franchise.

First, a multi-studio rotation is absolutely necessary. And second, this huge pressure on Treyarch, the so-called B team, to show that they could do it. That pressure cooker takes us right into what I call the dopamine loop era.

Modern Warfare and the Dopamine Loop

Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare landed in 2007. And it’s not just a game. It was a huge change. It completely left World War II behind for a modern setting, which was a big risk. The real change though, was in how many people could play at once. Before Modern Warfare, games like Halo and Counter-Strike were all about fair play. Everyone starts out the same. COD 4 changed all that. It chose to use psychology as a weapon.

So, what did they do to create this dopamine loop that made all other multiplayer games feel like they were from the past? They combined the instant fun of an arcade shooter with the long-term journey of an RPG. You kept leveling up. You got perks. You worked hard to get these strong killstreaks. So everything you did paid off in some way. And it was a real reward for the senses.

That famous thwip sound that plays when you hit a target and the music that plays when you level up. It just hooked you by putting cool things behind playtime. It rewarded people who were dedicated, and it set a new standard that everyone else had to follow. It wasn’t just enjoyable. It was made that way.

Zombies and the Three Product Strategy

But even after that huge success, Activision made Treyarch go back to World War II for World at War in 2008. But Treyarch added a secret weapon that changed everything for them. Zombies. At first, it was just an Easter egg. You found something after the campaign. A little extra mode. But it turned out to be a huge, surprise hit, and all of a sudden, Treyarch had their own sub-brand that they owned completely. It was their secret weapon.

So this is how the franchise made that three-product model work. You had a big movie campaign. You had this really competitive multiplayer. And now you have this third mode that is very different from the others, like Zombies or Spec Ops in Modern Warfare 2. And that’s how you explain the high price. You’re getting three games in one box, basically. You’re trying to please three different groups of people at once. And that’s what made them the most powerful people of that time. This also caused some big problems. Just like the “No Russian” mission.

Black Ops 2: The Creative Peak vs. The Machine

That brings us to the next step. The crisis of identity. A lot of people still call it the series’ creative peak. In 2012, Black Ops 2. I think you have to say that this is the most ambitious Call of Duty ever. Treyarch took a big risk. They added storylines that branch out. Where your choices really made a difference. You could change the main story and get completely different endings by doing things in these Strike Force missions. This series had never seen anything like it before in terms of replay value. But it was out of the ordinary.

Why didn’t they do it again if it was so great and new? In short, it just didn’t work with the machine. The model for yearly releases. The price, the difficulty, and the time it takes to make a good branching story. It doesn’t work with an annual release schedule that doesn’t take risks and is very fast. The business model was too ambitious to last. And that incompatibility was what caused the crisis.

Identity Crisis: The Jetpack Era and the Great Reset

In 2013, Ghosts was a big flop. People said it was just repeating things that had been said before. The formula was getting old. And that failure led to a very radical three-year test. The time of the jetpack. Black Ops 3, Advanced Warfare, and Infinite Warfare. All advanced moves, like boost jumps and wall running. The developers thought it was new. Adding verticality and raising the skill level. But the people watching it thought differently.

Why was there such a big gap between the people who made the game and the people who played it? The teams were looking at themselves and asking what they could do differently with the mechanics. The audience was looking outward at the brand’s identity, which was based on military action.

And the market absolutely rejected it. The trailer for Infinite Warfare. One of the most hated videos on YouTube ever. The whole player base was screaming for the boots-on-the-ground identity they thought the franchise had betrayed.

That led to the Great Reset. Call of Duty: WWII in 2017 was the first game in the apology tour. A very direct and very successful return to form in business. But as soon as they made a change, the whole market moved out from under them. Activision was in a mess on the inside and was also worried about Fortnite and PUBG at the same time.

Chasing Trends: Battle Royale and the Gunsmith

Because of this, Black Ops 4 didn’t come with a campaign at all in 2018. And that wasn’t a very brave thing to do. That was a business choice, a response. Inside sources said that the campaign just wasn’t coming together in time, so yes. They cancelled it to protect the yearly release date and put Blackout in its place as their first Battle Royale.

Call of Duty was following a trend for the first time, not making one. After that, we get the 2019 reboot of Modern Warfare. A new engine and the ability to play on different platforms. It felt like a new base.

The Gunsmith system was the most important new thing that replaced the old dopamine loop. The Gunsmith made a grind that was way deeper than before. The old way had limits. You unlock a gun, and it’s over. But now you can unlock the gun, but you have to level it up 50 or 60 times to get all of its attachments. If you do that with dozens of weapons, you could have thousands of hours of potential engagement. It was made to give you the most playtime possible.

The Ecosystem: From Game to Platform

And that engagement engine is the most important part because it’s what makes the whole free-to-play model work. The franchise is no longer just a set of games. It’s more like a fortress for the economy. There are a few main parts that all work together. First, you still have the yearly release. That’s what keeps the hype cycle going every autumn. And you have Warzone. The ecosystem that lets you play for free. That’s the hub that never goes away.

The yearly game you buy isn’t just a thing anymore. It’s a funnel for content. It’s like a $70 starter pack for the free platform, where the real money is made through small purchases. That’s not even counting the game for phones. Call of Duty: Mobile. The best launch of a mobile game ever. In the first week, there were 100 million downloads. It has made more than $3 billion.

The eSports League is the last thing you do. The CDL. The Call of Duty League. It makes the culture more official. Protects that media footprint. The whole thing is built so that if one part breaks, the others will hold it up. But that constant need for content to be efficient has lit up some pretty cynical design.

Cynical Design and Asset Recycling

I’m thinking about the open combat missions in Modern Warfare III in 2023. Everyone who didn’t like them said they were just solo DMZ pretending to be a campaign. They were nonlinear missions that used parts of the Warzone map in a clear way. Recycling assets in a clear way. It showed a big change inside the company away from the high-quality films that made the brand famous, all in the name of efficiency.

The Future: Nostalgia Skins on a Live-Service Soul

This leads us to the future. The plan for Black Ops 7 in 2025. Bringing back Raul Menendez, the bad guy, from their best work in 2012. It’s the most important move of all. The old-fashioned single-player movie experience is pretty much dead.

The campaign is a four-player co-op mode. Some people say it feels more like a multiplayer test stuck into a campaign show. And the new third mode, Endgame, is supposed to be a big PvE mode that is very replayable and, well, grinding. Now it’s all about the loop of continuous engagement. That’s when the cynicism of the players really starts to show.

I read a comment that summed it up perfectly. According to this particular person, “the game is bringing back old characters to appeal to people who are nostalgic. At the same time, it is moving away from being a realistic military shooter and becoming a live service game that the developers can make as crazy as possible with as many skins as they can sell.” And that’s the main point. They’re using the goodwill from their most ambitious game to sell something that is, in a way, the opposite of what that game is about.

So let’s just have a quick recap and go over the whole trip again. At first, the war was outside, with people fighting to be the Medal of Honour killer. Then it came inside. The battle between new ideas and the need to release new products every year.

So, what do we learn from this 22-year war? The never-ending live-service asset recycling model has won without a doubt. Black Ops 7 seems to be the best example of that. A game that uses its beloved creative past as a “nostalgia skin” to hide its new, ongoing live-service soul. The franchise that was made to kill the Medal of Honour movie model of the lone wolf. In the end, it killed its own best movie identity.

This leaves you with a question to ponder. What would it take for a giant like this to take a real, meaningful, creative risk again if it means giving up its creative identity completely for the sake of making money? What would need to happen for another Black Ops 2 to happen? Just a little nugget for you to think about… Until next time!