Warzone
This article was updated on 6/5/20.
Yesterday, Activisionmade the announcementthat they would be delaying the next season of Call of Duty: Warzone, which was scheduled to begin today, Wednesday June 3. This is due to the protests in the US, and the statement cites the fact that it’s time for “those speaking up for justice and change to be heard.”
But with Call of Duty, it’s a little more complicated than that. It’s not just some video game, it’s a video game full of heavily armed military characters and occasionally, police.
It’s a game that looks like this:
Warzone
When real life currently looks like this:
Or a game that looks like this:
Warzone
When real life looks like this:
You get the idea. The heavy focus on militarized combat would just play so, so poorly in the current state of the US, where protesters are under siege from geared-up police using excessive force. So that creates a problem that other games may not have to deal with (Valorant went ahead with its launch yesterday, Destiny seems poised to launch its new season next week), though the glorification of military violence has long been something COD has struggled to thoughtfully address.
So, when does Call of Duty figure it has waited long enough to release Warzone season 4?
It’s left the game in a weird place, that’s for sure. There was a surge of double XP in the last few days of the season so players could finish their battle pass, which had a ticking clock attached to it. Now, there is no clock, no new date for the season because Activision genuinely does not know how long these protests will continue in the US, and if things are just going to keep getting worse, as they have been the last few nights in a row.
My guess is somewhere around two weeks.
Next week is likely to still be too soon, and things seem unlikely to deescalate much before then. But two weeks? That’s probably going to be “long enough” for them before the delay starts to mess up their calendar for the entire rest of the year. And even then, I would expect the marketing for the new season to be very light, focused on someone like say, Captain Price, who isn’t quite as foreboding as a bunch of blank-faced soldier types that we’re seeing on the streets everywhere right now. And I do wonder if it’s possible they might scramble to change a battle pass offering or two, because lord knows that debuting something like the D-Day POLICE cowboy skin from the season 3 battle pass right now would be a colossal, tone deaf screw up. So if there was some sort of riot gear or SWAT skin planned, I could see that being scrapped.
We will probably not hear anything about firm plans for season 4 before next week. And I wouldn’t expect to see the actual season until the week after. Stay tuned.
Update:
In the last few days since Warzone season 4 was supposed to arrive, Infinity Ward still has not given a new date, but my estimate remains the end of next week, or the beginning of the week after that.
Rather, Infinity Ward has made sure to just delay the season in solidarity with protester, as they’verecently announcedthey’re taking the following steps to further reduce in-game racism, which has long been a problem in Call of Duty:
- Adding additional resources to monitor and ID racist content.
- Adding additional in-game reporting systems to increase the number of bans by hour.
- Adding filters and greater restrictions on name changes.
- Evaluating in-game improvements to make it easier to report offenses.
- Increasing permanent bans to root out repeat offenders.
It’s not clear when this is all rolling out, but it’s what they’re working on.
And as of this morning, Call of Duty is putting out one of the most obvious, front-facing statements I’ve seen, as when you log into the game you are greeted with the following screen:
COD
That is very cool to see, though Iknowthat they’ll start getting tremendous backlash for it from a certain crowd almost immediately. The screen appears each time you start the game, and I’m not sure how long it will be there, but probably for a few days at least. Game companies seem to keep trying to do more and more to show support for Black Lives Matter between donating money or Rockstar taking its games offline for a few hours. This screen and this statement is one of the more significant action items I’ve seen.
More to come about when season 4 arrives soon.
Update 2:
So it turns out that Call of Duty’s Black Lives Message is more than just an intro screen you can click past. After playing Warzone for a while yesterday, I could see that it was actuallyeveryloading screen in the game when you’re loading into or out of a match. A link to the message is also displayed on the home menu, and I imagine all this will last at least a week or two.
I know that some companies are being criticized for their somewhat “inauthentic” feeling gestures regarding the current moment, and yet the more I played Warzone yesterday, the more I felt that what Infinity Ward is doing here is actually quite powerful.
There is no other game that I have seen or heard more racism from the playerbase than Call of Duty over the years. And I’m white! The point being, if there was ever a toxic community that needed its worst elements called out, it’s probably this one, and that’s what Infinity Ward is doing in a big way here.
It’s a powerful message to have a statement like BLACK LIVES MATTER in the face of every player, for every loading screen, to essentially say, “no, you’re wrong,” and hopefully get them to reflect on that. It may not produce that result, and there are no doubt plenty of people claiming they’ll boycott the game because of all this messaging (I’d be amazed if anyone actually does, in practice), but that’s the price. If you take an incorrect stance you will be made to feel uncomfortable through all this constant messaging tell you that you’re wrong and close-minded. Maybe this polarizes some people further, but maybe it gets some people to at least think aboutwhyInfinity Ward would support this message so strongly and forcefully.
We are seeing real change already in the perception of the Black Lives Matter movement, as the protests have shifted public perception of it being a political group to something more about just plain human rights. And no, messages like this may not be adrivingforce, but I fully believe they do more good than harm, and Infinity Ward should be applauded for being as forceful as they’ve been with this.
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