One year ago, Call of Duty was launched, and its story was to save the fictional city of Verdansk from a nuclear attack while it was already churning in the toxic fumes. I felt a strong déjà vu.

The ultimate battle royale was launched when the world was sitting tight and waiting in their home for the lockdown to end. It was March 2020. The gloom descended on the world matched the horror served by the second instalment of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare.  

What is Project Magma?

There is an interesting story of how Patrick Kelly and Dave Stohl, co-studio heads for Infinity ward, persuaded everyone to deal in the biggest game ever. All of Activision and Infinity Ward came out of their Woodland Hills' office with a vision to create a multiplayer game on a voluminous map with more than 150 players at a time. The project was named Magma.

Warzone was Originally Planned to be in Kabul

The work on this unnamed project started in 2017 when PUBG was steadily rising and raising the bar for virtual battleground game. Kelly enjoyed playing the game with his son, which prompted him to think about what he liked and didn't like about COD.

Kelly wanted to base it on Kabul, but Donestk’s features supported the logistics of the game well. Developers thought that most of the cityscape would look the same, and the players can find difficulty finding out where they are.

The team pondered on developing the city of Verdansk as tangible and identifiable as possible by making distinct structures. The map started to grow. Stohl and Kelly figured out that making a map spanning miles in the city is a wild goose chase.

The Biggest Battle Royale Ever

This was a critical point. The team decided to limit the map proportional to the number of players that could be supported, and Infinity Ward wanted to double the standards set by Fortnite and PUBG. Eventually, the number of players were capped at 200.

How Gulag was Developed: Chance of Survival

Kelly observed no chance of revival if a player got eliminated initially in Fortnite and PUBG. Infinity Ward was working on 'Gunfight' at this time. It was two players versus two players mode which inspired Kelly to create Gulag.

Gulag gives players a chance to get reinstated in the game. Two eliminated players would enter a one on one fight in prison separated by tiled walls. The fellow players could watch the duel from above and even tell their player about the enemy's position. The player who wins is respawned.

Kelly wanted this to take place on the weapon training platform with the wooden area at the center-King. But including Gulag was smart. In Fortnite, Apex Legends and PUBG, it was game over for many within a minute.

How They Got Players to Scavenge for More

Developers wanted the players to experience the map and move forward even after their favourite weapons and armour. The game had incentives for players to earn ‘Cash.’

The Cash is the game currency that players can spend on exclusive stations to buy radars to find enemies, weaponry used in airstrikes to kill them and even purchase back their lost player. These features inspired players to move around on the map. Still, if you are new at this game, you can try to learn with the help of some Warzone hacks.

The Final Act: Testing

At last, the day of reckoning came. This was the most pressurizing time for the team. A group of 100 playtesters sat in front of their Xboxes, Personal Computers, and PlayStations.

All of them entered the Modern Warfare's mode Ground War to test the limitation of the software. Testing stretched way past midnight. The developers weighed the pros and cons and limited the number of players from 200 to 150. However, the game can support 200 players in specific formats.

Realism in the Graphics: The Devil in Details

The game is set in a spooky and dreaded atmosphere. The air is cloudy and dry without any hint of life. The airports are bombed- down, towns sans people, and places are reeking of destruction. Dead bodies of livestock are decaying in the farms, the upland is rocky, and deserted lumber yards make us remember Chainsaw Massacre.

Like any horror movie, the players are always on their edge and vulnerable to being shot from a tattered pane of a rigged building. Shadows are lurking to shoot from the remotest places. The story is taken forward where Call of Duty Black Ops left.

Descending into a building where broken toys and dangling in a cot, the bedsheet is ruffled, and a fridge stocked with food items literally send chills down the spine. I could feel the hairs around my neck standing. This is the next level of spookiness.

The details are made gore with excellent graphics and software fidelity. The background sound has nailed the job. The sound of swarming of flies, creaking floorboards, branches and leaves rustling, dust unsettling from an abandoned building, and many more like this trigger the feeling of being hunted.

According to psychologists, the tactical team has done a great job by refining such subtle details making the surrounding more real. The player is hiding. He listens to footsteps approaching from behind; the sound of the storm with the monstrous and jaw-clattering roar of a missile launch stirs the Agency Detection Mechanism in our minds. The adrenaline rush that follows is incredible!

 
The Aftermath

The Team was quite skeptical of what will follow after the launch. The game was received with excitement and crossed 100 million downloads by the end of the year, making it the most played game on the planet.

Activision has hinted at launching a mobile version of the game after the Call of Duty Mobile downloads reflected success. This speculation is airing after the job for mobile developers was posted on LinkedIn by the publisher. Gamers can only sit tight and wait for the action to unleash on their mobiles.