On this episode, host David Taylor sits down with Dan Bunting, the former Studio Head of Treyarch and one of the key creative leaders behind the Call of Duty franchise. With over 18 years at Treyarch, Dan helped shape some of the most iconic moments in FPS history — from the introduction of Zombies mode in World at War to the rise of the Black Ops series.
We explore how Call of Duty became the dominant FPS franchise, and how Treyarch carved out its own identity through bold design decisions, narrative risk-taking, and constant innovation. Dan shares behind-the-scenes stories from the early 2000s to the modern era, reflecting on the key audience insights, design shifts, and tech evolutions that influenced Treyarch’s approach.
We also dive into his transition from studio leadership to entrepreneurship and investing, his outlook on the next decade of Call of Duty, and what excites him most about the future of the gaming industry.
We’d also like to thank Neon – a merchant of record with customizable webshops optimized for conversion – for making this episode possible! Neon is trusted by some of the biggest names in gaming and can help you sell direct without the typical overhead. To learn more, visit https://www.neonpay.com/?utm_source=naavik
This transcript is machine-generated, and we apologize for any errors.
David: Welcome to the Naavik Gaming Podcast. I'm your host, David Taylor. The Call of Duty franchise needs no introduction, but today we're speaking with a leader who has been there since it launched in 2003.
So let's do a quick review. Call of Duty is the bestselling first person shooter franchise, and the second bestselling video game franchise of all time. After Mario and ahead of Pokemon and Tetris, it has reportedly surpassed over 500 million copies, sold in 2023, over 30 billion in revenue, and maintains a monthly active user base of a hundred million players according to the Washington Post.
Over the years, there's been three primary studios working on it. Infinity Award created the franchise and the Seminole Modern Warfare series. Treyarch established zombie modes in World at War, and the popular Black Ops series and Sledgehammer Games joined later to co-developed titles starting in the 2010s.
Today we're going to dive into Call of Duty's Amazing history through the lens of Treyarch. With that, I'm thrilled to be joined by the former studio head of Treyarch, Dan Bunting, who is now the founder of Ready Up Games and a venture partner at 1:00 AM Gaming. Dan, welcome to the podcast.
Dan: Thank you. Glad to be here.
David: So we're gonna cover a lot of your career over the next hour, but just to kick us off, could you give an introduction on your journey? How did you get into the video game industry and how did you find yourself at Treyarch back in 2003 when the COD franchise was just getting started?
Dan: Well, how so? How I got into games, was a very meandering path, but eventually got there. You know, as a young kid, of course, I played games like everybody in the eighties. Kid Iris was the first, NES game that kind of like got me addicted to really hard games, which I've still, I love hard games to this day. Zelda, Mario, you know, I played them all on my 13 inch black and white TV in my bedroom when I was a kid.
You know, growing up playing games, I never quite, you know, I didn't think of it as a career or a thing that you could do. You know, I, I kind of grew up with a very traditional sort of upbringing with, you know, go to school, study hard, get good grades, overperform, and then, you know, find a good paying job.
Like I never thought of games, you know. When I got to college, that was when kind of in the, or in the mid-nineties when the IED software explosion happened, and I got very hooked on first person shooters, Quake One, Quake Two. I was really into the mod community, mod scene, and I was, you know, I would download and play every mod uh, that came out from, from the moders.
The Team Fortress, the original Team Fortress mod was, became sort of my go-to game for like two years after that. And so, you know, from that point forward, I was hooked on, on, on games, I mean, for, for my whole life. But, but shooters, specifically from kind of college on, I. When I graduated in the late nineties, I had kind of done a tour around Europe, backpacking and such, trying to find myself and figure out what I wanted to do with, with my life.
And I knew that I wanted to do something creative in what I would think of as sort of like at that point in time, a renaissance art, like something that's multidisciplinary, that involves art, storytelling, engineering, history, you know, everything that you can imagine in terms of the arts coming together to tell stories.
And so I decided I, I was either going to go to grad school for architecture, I was going to get into film and tv, or I was going to get into video games. Those were my three paths. I didn't set one in, in stone, but just kind of packed everything. I, I owned up into a car, drove out to LA because LA was a place that you could do all three of those things.
And started my journey there. First job I took was in, at FX networks doing, um, kind of part-time work for a while and then got full-time there. That became, you know, four years of kind of learning how to be a professional, I guess. Which was fun, but it wasn't my career ambition. And, you know, ultimately I, I realized to get serious about what I wanted to do with my life, I wanted to get into games.
So I just started pounding the pavement. It took me about seven months from start to finish. Every day I would keep a journal of whoever, whatever network connection I would make. You know, I would talk to anybody and everybody, and I didn't care, you know, how executive level or high up they were. I just was, I would cold call people. I would try to get warm introductions or whatever I could do. And the funny thing is that of all of the connections I made over that seven months, it was actually the very first call that I made that led to the job seven months later at Trey. And so, you know, the rest is kind of history.
That, that was, that was how I got in. I mean, it was a long, it was a lot of interviews. At that point in time they were really focused on Spider-Man games. And I originally had interviewed with the Spider-Man producer. But then he referred me to this other project that was a new project, which is called Dead Rush.
And Dead Rush was an open world zombie survival horror game, which had a lot of potential. It was a lot of fun. There was really great gameplay mechanics and features in it. But ultimately, I think the company determined it was too big of a risk and they, shut down the game in 2004, which was, you know, a blessing for me because I, for was fortunate to be then put on the Call of Duty team in early 2004. So, and that was right after the first game launched. So that was the beginning that, that kind of, I guess, walks you through my journey.
David: That's amazing. And I, I feel like that zombie game is going to somehow come back later in the story.
And I also love that, you know, you mentioned that you're like passionate about history and mm-hmm. You know, then you found yourself a call of duty. Like, it just sounds like this was meant to be, this was your dream job.
Dan: Definitely. It was a dream come true, for sure.
David: Yeah. Yeah. That's awesome.
Okay, so, so you're at, you're at Treyarch in 2004. Could you take us through your journey at Tray Arc as well, and, and then we'll sort of dive into like a bunch of questions about those different time periods, but would love to just understand your journey going through, through Treyarch.
Dan: Yeah. Well, so I joined in 2003. The very first project that I mentioned, dead Rush, was a super small team. I think we had like 15 developers. And it was, you know, it was, it was like scrappy startup land. I mean, you didn't get, it was a risky kind of new IP. You didn't have the same kind of, you know, publishing backing that you would have for a large, you know, proven franchise or anything.
So in a lot of ways it was like an indie game that a startup would do. It was small, small team, very scrappy. We had to kinda, you know, figure out how to, to do, be, do more with than, other teams with less, you know, um, but. It was a great, great experience for me to just cut my teeth. You know, my first, one of my first jobs was just to go around to every team member every day and kind of like, figure out what was going on, what tasks they were working on, what was their schedule like, which was super intimidating 'cause I didn't know anybody and I was new to the games industry, so I had to go, you know, be this like nerdy little kid who's I think in their mind is probably just an annoying.
But it was really, it was an amazing first experience because it forced me, number one, to get outta my shell and, and, and talk to people. Number two, it taught me what everybody on the team did and standing workflows and tasks and how games are put together. So I think that, you know, the kind of the year one of training wheels was actually a really good way for me to, to, to start my career because it, it gave me a good cross section of what everybody does and how games are made.
So that was, that was a, you know, I'm, I'm thankful for that experience, and, and I think the, the fact that the game got cancelled was a blessing in disguise, obviously, for me.
David: Were there any things that sort of set you up to be successful in that role from your past that you can sort of touch on?
Like, you know, you know, being able to ask people questions or mm-hmm. You know, the fact that you had spent a lot of time on mods and sort of getting an understanding for how the, how games got made just as a player.
Dan: I would say that I, well, there's a number of things. One, I kind of, you know, one of my, I guess, you know, if everyone, everyone has their own superpowers.
One of my superpowers is I, I can, I tend to spin a lot of plates. And I think part of that's just kind of my background of, you know, I was a very bookish kid, very, you know, heavy on schoolwork and, and was able like a try, you know, always try to push ahead on things beyond my, you know, comfort zone.
I waited tables in college. That was another one that forced me to like, multitask and just like, deal with stuff, deal with stress., And then in the TV role that I had, it was a production role. So it was a lot of coordination across a lot of different people, a lot of departments, into internal and external.
You know, I was talking to, you know, big producers of TV shows and I was taught up to, you know, vendors who would drive, you know, tapes from one place to another. So it was just, I think like. You know, all of that kind of multitasking, prioritization,, mission-driven kind of emphasis is what really helped me establish that strong foundation.
David: That's awesome. Okay. So we got a lot of ground to cover between, you as sort of the, the person going around just checking in on what everybody's working on mm-hmm. To co studio head. So what was sort of like your progression from there? Like what were the opportunities that came up? And I know that the franchise just kept growing, but how did, how did you, you know, move through the ranks and, and become the studio head?
Dan: You know, wow, that's a long one. It is, it is a very, you know, any, any career path is gonna be a, a, a very, um, long and, and kind of meandering journey. Um, I think that on the first project, the executive producer of that project had taken a particular interest in me because I was such a hustler and like, just trying, like, just trying to get everything done to the best quality as much as I possibly could and just, and just like overloading myself with work.
And I think that really helped me. That was probably the, the main reason why I was put on the Call of Duty team in the first place. Because it was, you know, it wasn't like everybody just got moved over. They, they did handpick a, a select number of people. And I think that, you know, from there it was, I, you know, it was just like, I would do anything. I would order food, I would, you know, I think I, you know, on that first project I got, my first two employees, quote unquote, which were like, the, the only QA testers, internal QA testers on the project, I, one of whom I brought onto the team and is now, you know, an art director on the weapons and vehicles team.
It's, which is amazing. And I'm, you know, I, I love him. And that, you know, that was part of, like, that was also part of my career journey was I would always bring people up that I, when I identified talent, bring people into the development team and, and give them a, a safe place to grow and learn and kind of shape the culture alongside the rest of the team.
And, you know, so that, that next project was, call of Duty. United Offensive, which was branded as an expansion pack after the first Call of Duty launched. But it was a really, a full game. We had joined with the team at Gray Matter, which was a smaller, PC dev shop. They had also just had a project cancelled.
And so we kind of, we brought together the PC first person shooter, like hardcore gamer chops of Gray Matter into the console, you know, mass market expertise of Trey. At the time I was much more of a, you know, Gray Matter type of person because of coming out of the, you know, the quake community and in, and mods and being super hardcore into first person shooters.
So I that I, like when I moved over to the Gray Matter building, I was like, that was the. Really the beginning for me 'cause I just kind of jelled with that team there. And, and a lot of those team members are still currently the, like the director level of Treyarch today. So it did eventually, you know, Call of Duty took over as it has done within the larger Activision family.
David: Amazing. So, sounds like, you know, you just, you know, it was a, I think you were there for 18 years and just Yeah. Over the years more, more opportunity, more success and you just sort of kept, kept getting more responsibility.
Dan: Yeah, and it's, I mean, you know, a, a part of it is just. The, the under promise, over deliver, you know, always trying to just do the best that you possibly can.
I tend to be a very mission focused person, so it's like whatever that thing is, whatever the right thing to do for that project is, and that team is, is where my, you know, my North Star is gonna be. And so I am just always pushing to make things better, and it's, you know, personal life goal to always leave things better than I found them.
So, that, you know, that kind of motivation I think drove, drove me and propelled my career. You know, e those first three projects we worked on, each one was done in under a year. So, you know, 2004, 2005, 2006, we shipped games and
David: Yeah.
Dan: It was a brutal slog. I mean, anybody who makes games, especially at that scale, can understand how, you know, especially a multi-platform global, you know, fully localized, simultaneous launch, how, how challenging that can be. And then, you know, by the time we got to World at War, that was a big turning point for us as a, as a team at triarch because we were no longer sort of just cranking out, like, you know, these second games that are, you know, behind or underneath one of the Infinity Award games.
But we were now making, you know, a proper standalone two year development where we actually for the first time got to utilize the same tools that the Infinity Award team had been using, the same tech. And so I think World of War really was where the expression of Treyarch first came out. It was like, you know, that was our identity.
That was our, that was kind of who we were. And, it was dark, you know? It was, it was edgy. It, it pushed boundaries. It made people uncomfortable.
David: Yeah, it was like the first game that had dismemberment, I think.
Dan: Yeah. And, you know, and player cho like some, some player narrative choices in the, in the mix, which became a theme as, as time went by. And, you know, we also as a, as a team at Cher, you know, also part of our identity was that we felt like we're underdogs. We felt like we had something to prove. We kind of had a chip on our shoulders. So we sort of overextended ourselves on our ambitions. World at War.
We got two years to make that game. We're like, Hey, let's go make a co-op campaign. You know, like, not smart, but, you know, that was, that was kind of where our head was at. And , so we built that game. For co-op and you know, that, that, that required us to basically take the engine apart and put all the parts, you know, on the, uh, you know, on the garage floor and then put them back together with networking, which was no small feat.
And yeah, it also took a long time. So our first two year development was actually ended up being basically another one year development. Because so much of the work that went on without having a co-op campaign, you know, ended up getting thrown away. But once, once the, once the co-op stuff had come together and we were, and the missions were starting to, you know, get fleshed out better, I think we kind realized, you know, co-op in a very bespoke, rollercoaster ride.
Michael Bay AAA blockbuster campaign kind of doesn't work. You know, it's like, it's very hard to, to, , you know, custom tailor, an exciting cinematic, rollercoaster ride experience for four players, you know. And so that was, that was something that we learned a little bit later in long in the development process, which ultimately led to the reason that zombies existed was the need to have a smaller replayable co-op mode that you could play with your friends. That actually was at the heart of what co-op gameplay was about.
David: Wow. And so, zombie mode—
Dan: Was not answer, answer your questions at all. I’m just kind of talking.
David: No, no, this is. Sorry. I'm glad you, I'm glad you brought up zombie mode. I was, uh, when I was in college, I played zombie mode with my, my soccer teammates.
Yeah. Over and over again, seeing how far we could progress through, through the levels. How many, I think, I'm trying to remember the name of the guns. There's like the, the, wonder do off. Mm-hmm. Yep. Wonder off the, yeah.
Dan: I mean the Reagan's the one that the ray's just like stayed. That was, that was, that was one of those guns that was, you know, it was kind of kitschy retro fifties style sci-fi, but very much fit the era.
And, you know, I don't, there was not really a, a strong narrative thread or universe around zombies when it first came out. That was the thing that sort of came together with, you know, it, the, the, the, the mode itself had only existed because individuals from every department just put in extra work to make it happen.
And so all of those sort of individual contributions that came together helped to shape what the identity of zombies was. And then as time went by, as more content was released, you saw this, the, the community reactions to all of those little pieces, and they started forming their own narratives and their own hypotheses.
And there was a very conspiratorial kind of thread to all the community, you know, talk about it. And which we loved, I mean like, as, as developers are, you know, especially cer, a few members of our team were really, really, really into that kind of MK ultra sort of vibe stuff and, and seeing where the community was going with it, and then started playing with the community and adding, like, it was, it was this feedback loop.
They would come up with conspiracy theories. We'd say, well, that looks like a fun one to play with. Let's bring, let's, so we'd, we'd feed into that conspiracy theory for the next one. And it kind of went on like that through the, through the four DLC releases of World of War until you got to Darice the end where, where I think a lot of fans, you know, really think about that as, as a, as a big change, like a, a big point for the solidification of, of that narrative universe.
David: I'm, I'm curious about the, the like transition. Do you think that the reason why you guys came up with zombie mode was because you had worked on a, a game that was sort of similar or was are they completely detached and like, there wasn't like a, oh, well, you kind of already.
Dan: Designed this before it was completely detached.
I know it seems very much like, oh, that was a, you know, a, a good synthesis of an earlier game that Trey was working on. But the developers, most of the developers who were building zombies had actually come from Gray Matter. Not all, but most. And, so I think that that, that that thread of what Dead Rush had been, there were a little bits that came into it because some of the engineers had worked on Dead Rush on the team.
But for the most part it was really, I think, you know, the origin, I mean, it's been out, it's been talked about before, but the, the origin of, of the actual zombie part of it. Inspiration had had come out of a mocap session where they were doing motion capture for kind of walking wounded soldiers.
Soldiers had just come out or shellshocked, they'd just come out of explosions. So they, as they were hobbling around, they looked like zombies. The character models had, you know, were bloody and, and dirty. And, and they were hobbling like zombies. And that kind of, I think started the, the foundation of, of that idea.
David: It's fascinating 'cause when I, I think the reason why it resonated with me so much was 'cause I had played return to Castle Wolfenstein. And so like, the idea of Nazi zombies was like already like there. And I, it was like a ops opportunity to like reengage with Yeah. With that concept.
Dan: And that Gray Matter team had, had worked on, return to Castle Wolf at site as well.
David: Well, there you go. I knew there was a connection here.
Dan: Yeah.
David: ,Cool. So I think we should, let's keep going. Let's talk about Black ops because that obviously has turned into that sort of came out, came off of World at War. I'm curious, like what were the, it was, it was a, it was following Modern Warfare.
Which had been this, you know, huge moment. I, I played that game for hundreds of hours. And so you sort of, you, you talked about how like you guys were, were looking at Infinity Ward and it almost felt like at that point it was like, oh, who's gonna like, make the, make the better game? Black Ops seemed to like go in a different direction, carve out its own identity, and that's sort of gone on to be its own, you know, sub franchise.
I'm curious to understand, like, what was that process like? How did, how did Black Ops become such a distinct game from, from modern warfare?
Dan: I think any, I mean, any group of developers gonna bring their own sensibilities to the table, especially in a younger team like we were at the time because, you know, you, you haven't, you're not experienced enough to get kind of infused with some of like business knowledge, I guess, you know, and thinking about, thinking about it as a franchise, you were thinking about it as your game.
And, and I think that that kind of rawness and, you know, the magic that comes out it, I think is what helps to shape that identity. The World at War, like I said, was the beginning of our expression of our, our identity and our, our tastes and our, our kind of, you know, fictional preferences.
And you started to see the, the beginning, the, the, the what we called mind fuckery later. But mind fuckery became the, the linchpin of the whole zombie's ethos, or, sorry, zombie, sorry, Black Ops ethos. And, you know, the introduction of Reno in World at War was such an iconic character. I actually did a little talk about this at USC not too long ago, but because it's such an interesting, like the whole story around Savv is really cool, but
David: I'm down to take a, take a, let's do it.
Dan: Oh man. It's, it's a long one, but, uh, you know, it was Gary Oldman, it was with the voice actor for Savv. But his, the, the very introduction of him in World at War was just such a memorable moment in that game because you wake up at the beginning of the mission. You're, you don't know what's going on.
It's sort of like you're coming in and outta consciousness. There's these black crows and dead bodies around you, and you see German soldiers walking by. You're inside this fountain and you're, you start crawling. Once the player gets control, you start crawling. And as you're crawling, you see the, the kind of German soldiers walking past and one of the dead bodies just turns to look at you and gives you a whisper.
But he whispers with his missing finger, which that's just like, to me, I, that, that I remember like the, the putting together of that moment was just such a iconic thing. And I, like, it still gives me chills just thinking about it. But thinking about like, the history of him after that and then that, that was the introduction.
We had no idea at the time what he was gonna turn into. And then, you know, you learn that the missing finger was because, you know, he's a, he's a sharp shooter. He is a sniper, but he, he had his finger shot off and so that's why he's giving you now the sniper rifle. And that was, and so then you have to take out all of these guards with the sniper rifle.
And it be, that was the, the setup for the snipe, you know, sniper level. And it was just, I don't know, like it was just a cool, it. Cool way to introduce that character. And, and he became so popular. Like everyone loved him on the team. And of course we had to bring Gary Oldman back. So it was almost like Rena, the character, had to, you know, be the reason that Black Ops existed, you know?
And so you saw Black Ops carrying the same themes forward, the dark themes, the, the mind fuckery, the, you know, some of the MK Ultra stuff that crept into these dark CIA experiments on human psychology. And it was just a lot of fun material to play with. You know, and on that project I was focused a lot more on multiplayer than campaign at the time. I had, I, you know, I had had produced a handful of the campaign missions and World at War, but I really wanted to do multiplayer, you know, first and foremost. So Black Ops was the first one, was really the first time that multiplayer team as a core came together, uh, to work as one unit where everyone had, you know, was sort of, you know, on the same team working towards the same mission.
From a multiplayer perspective, we had a different, we had a different philosophy, I think, than the Infinity War team did. You know, there, the Modern Warfare game was very, very lethal. You know, you could sneeze at a player and they're gonna die. And so it really was a game of who get, who sees the other player first.
We wanted to have, not to say that like we were influenced by Halo or anything, but, but there were some games that had higher time to kill. And they, you know, there, there's a certain thing that happens. There's a dance that happens in those combat encounters where you get an extra chance to get, to break away and have a longer engagement.
And we felt like those longer engagements and that second chance of being able to break away and, and circle back around and out flank the other guy, outsmart the other guy, was fun. And that that would be a more, you know, that was just a more interesting and exciting way to play the game. And so that was where Black Ops won.
Departed a little bit from Modern Warfare. We had a higher time to kill., It was a bit chunkier combat.
David: Yeah.
Dan: Yeah. But, yeah, definitely.
David: I used, I, I, I remember the thing that I remember about, Black Ops is just using a silent shotgun and just sprinting around and, and getting into really close combat because for that reason because like, because you could survive long enough to get close enough to use the shotgun.
It like, yeah. It, it was unique from, in that sense, from, from modern warfare where it was like, yeah, you just used the heartbeat sensor, like,yeah. Yeah. That's cool. I'm curious about like during that time period, were there any, you know, design or technology trends that were enabling these games to come through? Like, were you guys seeing technology that was not around previously that you were then introducing into the games?
Dan: That's probably another one of those areas where we, you know, just not knowing what we don't know, led us to making very kind of ambitious decisions about things. You know, we had introduced the implement editor. We'd introduced the theater mode. We were very into our team and the DNA of our team was very much, you know, massively into social systems and mm-hmm.
And building a, a, you know, a tighter social weave around the game. And that, that drove us to, to build a lot of these kind of, you know, the theater system for example, didn't exist in the game. The technology to do it was kind of there. But in terms of—
David: Remind me what the theater system was.
Dan: So theater was the fact every single game was recorded from a data point of view.
So it's not video recording, it's recording the data positioning and location of all the entities in the world at any point in time. And so it would record that as a data chunk would then get stored. You could stream it back down to your system to, to watch replays. Oh wow. So you could have an entire match, you know, would be replayable.
We put controls for fast forward, rewind, free camera controls, you know, the. The features that were around that were really robust over time. I mean, over the next three games we added the ability to attach cameras to objects. So like if you had an amazing combat axe kill, you could attach the camera to the combat ax, it would follow it to the kill so people could make really cool videos using the theater.
And that was totally outside of core gameplay. I mean, there was very little reason, I guess, for us, like logically to do it because it wasn't core to the game.
David: But, well, I guess there was, you know, YouTube was coming up around that time, right? Yeah. So, yeah, that's true.
Dan: Yeah. And then with Black Ops two, we integrated, Twitch streaming functionality and YouTube streaming functionality directly into the game.
Because at that time, Twitch was not big yet. So we were able to actually get the Twitch team to very heavily focused on feature development just to make our game stream their service directly out of it, or directly out from our game into their service, I should say. And you know that like they weren't a really, it wasn't a really big platform at the time.
They think they just set up Twitch set outside of Justin tv, you know, very, you know, recently. And, but because they were a small team, it was also a startup and also very eager to make a name for themselves. They bent over backwards to help, you know, get their streaming service connected to Black Ops two.
So that was another one of those examples of just pure social features, totally outside the game, not courted the game, but it was things that we were passionate about and try to be kind of cutting edge technology wise. I mean, there's a million pieces of tech I could go into, but those are just some of the ones that just top of mind.
David: Got it on, on the design side. So like I've noticed that the maps have gotten smaller over time, like mm-hmm. I remember with, with Black Ops, it, they were still pretty expansive in terms of, you know, all of the Yeah.
Dan: All of the used to call Turbine was old man Turbine. That was what we called it in, in inhouse because it was such a large map that it took forever to compile and, and build for.
So anytime we were trying to ship the game in Black Ops and, and we're in like, I don't know, two o'clock in the morning trying to get the game out the door to first party submission and it's like, there's a bug in Turbine. It was like, oh my God. You know, you had to wait 'cause then you had to wait for that entire map to build before you could get the next game built out.
It was just, that was such a nightmare. But, yes, they, they were much larger earlier on that we took a very data driven approach to. You know, kind of optimize. I think there are, if you, if you follow data just a hundred percent purely, it's always going to, you know, over index on just a single thing that people always want.
And that can be self-defeating because then people will get bored. They'll, it'll feel grindy. They're not getting enough variety to their experience. So we didn't always just, you know, I mean, everybody would want nuketown or shipment, you know, or rust like that would want. Yeah. I mean, it's the most popular map of all time in the franchise.
Yeah. But, uh, and it is for good reason, you know, it's, it's just constant action. There's never a, there's never a moment of downtime really.
David: But that would, why do you think it's so, like, why do you think that's so hard to replicate? Because you wouldn't think of Newtown as like that very, you know, complex map to design and yet like mm-hmm.
Yet, I can't, I, at least in my experience, playing it over the last, you know, six months, like there really isn't a map that, that, sort of is, that com is as compelling as that.
Dan: I mean, nuke 10 has its own experience or its own story to tell. That was another part of that talk that I gave at USC, but it, it actually, there was a design bible for how to build really good call of duty levels and you could go through and, you know, it's doc well documented over like 60 pages or something, like all the different, you know, rules. And those got refined over the years, of course through iteration.
But, but if you go and you actually looked at the rule, the rules of level design for COD at the time, and you look at Nuketown, you could check all the boxes. That was the goal in that map in the first place was we wanted to have a very small map that was like shipment, but more structured. So we wanted to have a shipment experience with a more viable, you know, kind of three lane checks all the boxes of, of the gameplay rules kind map.
And that was what, you know, that was, that was the slug in our schedule, that ton filled. That, and so, yeah, so every, you know, it was the thing that was difficult with that map because it was so small. And we did, you know, different art styles of it over every game release. One of the biggest challenges always line of sight because every, it was so tightly constructed so that every line of sight was controlled.
Mm-hmm. If you changed the geo even a little bit, you would open something up that was unintended, you know, so mm-hmm. That was always like a big challenge with that map and, and redoing, reimagining it over the years was always making sure that those lines of sight were still covered. But yeah, every little detail and nuances conforms to the rules of the rule book of what makes great cod map design.
David: Got it. Which is the counterpoint to what you were saying just before we launch into this, which is like, you can't follow, you can't just follow like what the data says, you know? Yeah. Directly. Yeah. I'm curious, all right, so, so what are some maps or what are some examples of things that emerged that weren't data-driven or maybe didn't, broke, broke some rules that you know, that, you know, prove the rule?
Dan: Oh man. Rule breakers. We had a lot of rule breaker maps, I would say that there was never a map where you could break, you know, too many rules at once, you know? Mm-hmm. Like, a lot of times what we would do is say, Hey, what makes this map interesting is we'll break one rule, we'll do something that we don't normally do or doesn't fit within the construct of the game. And, you know, like I think about some of the inter map interactive objects that we would put in, like radiation from Black Ops. One, you had the big bay doors that could open and close. Mm-hmm. You had the conveyor belt that that players could, could walk up onto, you know, a lot of kinda little things like that, that really were not part of core gameplay, but just made the, made the map spicy. Summit had the, the hanging gondola that you could jump in wasn't super useful, but it was kind of fun and cool when you got a, you know, when you got a kill from it.
David: Yeah. It felt
Dan: Pretty awesome.
David: Yeah.
Dan: Yeah.
David: That's cool. So I'm curious about like, the competitive environment. So, you know, battlefield went in the completely opposite direction of, of going from small scale to massive scale. How did you guys approach your competitors over the years? Did you look at what Halo was doing and, and what Battlefield was doing? Or were you really just focused on, on your, and building the best possible version of your game?
Dan: I mean, we play, you know, we were gamers at heart, so we all play games.
So we all look at the other games that are coming out, especially shooters, but I don't remember ever a time really looking at what they were doing and being like, oh my God, we have to go compete at that level. Mm-hmm. Like we just always had our thing. And I feel like the, the battle between cod and Battlefield was really more of a media manufactured battle because I don't ever feel like internally that was a thing that we worried about.
They were just two such different games. You know, they, it was, they were both first person shooters. They both had guns, they both had military themes, and that was about where it ended,
David: Yeah,
Dan: You know, beyond that, you had very large scale vehicular combat with heavy, heavy on destruction versus very small scale kind of arcadey combat, which was, you know, low time to kill very different game experiences.
So I just, it was not something that we really worried about. I think the only time we ever felt there was one halo launch that happened the week before one of our game launches. I wanna say it was Black Ops three which definitely did soften the week one launch, but it picked up and then some in week two.
So it was like, it, it never really was a thing.
David: Got it.
Dan: You know,
David: What do you, so what do you think, I'm curious what your perspective is on why Call of Duty sort of took the, the lead spot and why, you know, halo and, and Battlefield haven't, haven't, been able to keep up. Are there any insights that you can share on what made Call of Duty so, you know, so much more successful?
Dan: I, I mean, I would probably boil it down to sticking to your knitting. Like instead of trying to chase other people once you start trying to chase competitors, then you've already kinda lost the race. I think with Call of Duty, it was a very, like I said, we never, we were never trying to copy what the other.
Shooters were doing, we were trying to do our own thing. , In fact, we would be more interested in what other nons shooter genre games were doing in terms of systems and mechanics and ideas. And I think that once you started to see the other franchises, I guess, I mean, I don't want to, yeah. I wasn't there working on them, so I can't tell you, but mm-hmm.
When you started to see them drift a little more towards trying to compete against cod or, or emulate some of the Call of duty feel or, or vibe or style, um mm-hmm. I think that actually weakened their efforts. But they've always been great games. I mean, I was a huge halo before I got into the games industry.
I was connecting lands for Halo One and using a tunneling app just so I could play online, , because they didn't have native online support. Yeah. So to play multiplayer online, you had to use these, like, these basically hacked Xbox consoles and, and a tunneling app on your PC.
David: Yeah. So, yeah, I guess so.
Halo was maybe, maybe was in the top spot, like earlier on. Um mm-hmm. And, and so, and then Call of Duty just has been so consistently successful year over year. I'm curious if you have any thoughts on like what, on what's been, what's Enabled Call of Duty to have that long-term franchise retention? Like why do players come back every single year to, to play the next Call of Duty?
Dan: So there's a couple things, One of the things that I would always say about Call of Duty is it's a greatest hit hits franchise. Um, it was not the one blazing trails on new features and mechanics necessarily, A lot of them would be, you know, ideas that were maybe smaller ideas that were done in independent games or smaller games that seemed really cool.
And that would build a following. I mean, you look at game modes like Prop Hunt, you know? And, you know, that would get adopted in its own sort of call of D Call of Duty twist into, into the game. And over the years, you know, of course what that means is now you have something for everybody.
You've got mm-hmm. Large scale battle royale. You have extraction shooter, you have, you know. Two V two, small scale PVP action. You've got zombies, you've got, you know, wacky game modes like prop hunt and everything in between. So it's, it's just a part of, it's just like always kind of, you know, we always were driven by this idea of surprising and delighting the fans and bringing new, new experiences so that there's different variety that people can enjoy and, and attract new audiences.
David: Yeah, that was one thing.
Dan: I mean, like the, the core though, of course, just the feel of it was nobody could replicate the feel, the snappiness, the fast paced, the, the immediate reaction. I mean, we really leaned into the moment to moment and, and making sure that player feedback systems were super dialed in.
Yeah, I mean, I still wanna stay, like, as an advisor to other companies. I'm like, like player feedback systems, number one. Like, get that right. You've gotta, you've gotta do everything, go the extra mile to give every little piece of feedback to players at every, in every step of the way.
David: So that when you refer to player feedback, those are like the sort of the popups that are reinforcing sounds.
Dan: Animations, yeah. Ui, yeah. Controller Rumble, just every little piece of sensory, you know, input that you can give back to players for doing things in the world or interact, interacting with the world.
David: Yeah. I, I distinctly remember, I think it was Modern warfare too, when like they, it was just like this, there was just like a, a never ending role of feedback of like you did this, you did that, you did this. You did that. It's like, okay, cool. It's almost comical at some point. Yeah. Awesome. All right, so I wanna take some time to sort of like, you know, we've been talking about the, the history, but I, I am curious about personal reflections on, on, you know, call of Duty and, and your, your legacy there.
Like what, what stands out to you as your proudest accomplishments of your time over, over the 18 years that you were at Tray Arc?
Dan: I mean, to be honest, my proudest accomplishment is when we looked at just our internal team member retention numbers and saw that 50% of our studio had been there for 10 years or more.
So that above anything else that we did, I think the fact that we had a really great culture that kept people together and motivated them to, to stick with it game after game after game. We were always, you know, a part of it was the culture of the studio. It was the fact that we did feel like underdogs.
So we always were trying to prove ourselves that can bring people together. The fact that we, you know, we're trying to constantly innovate and, and do different things in the franchise, even though conventional wisdom would be to just keep iterating and adding more of what you're already doing well.
So we were big risk takers. The fact that we had good workflows. I think, you know, the way that people worked together was really, was really productive. Constant play testing and feedback sessions. We would, I mean we, I think at one point we had like three play tests, different play tests with different groups happening every day of the week.
And it's just, that was just kind of ingrained in the culture is you're constantly playing your game. You're constantly talking about your game. You're constantly defining what's the next thing you need to do to make it better.
David: That's amazing and it's really interesting to hear that, 'cause it's in stark contrast to like what I think a lot of people hear about, you know, Activision Blizzard and the culture there.
Like, it seems like you guys had carved out a, a distinct culture within the, the broader parent company.
Dan: Yeah, I mean I think that, you know, the original, kinda the whole business model around Activision from the early days was this independent studio model. You know, and that I think with every large company that matures over the years, that it may not be able to be sustainable for forever.
But that is definitely what built, I think, the success there. And so each studio did have a lot of flexibility, freedom, autonomy to carve their own path and define their own culture. Build games the way that it made the most sense for their team to build them. And, I think, you know, a lot of that, kind of, that autonomy is what allowed it to be a unique place, a unique culture.
David: Yeah. I mean, it's, it's wild to, to just think about like, you had been there for 18 years, half the team had been there for more than 10 years. Like, you guys must have all just been like a family. I mean, you're not supposed to say that your coworkers are family members, but I feel like if it applies to anything, it would be like that team right.
Dan: Very much so. You know, I, I'm not going to, you know, sugarcoat it, there was, it was hard. Yeah, there were weeks that I remember, you know, for months on end, I'd be putting in a hundred hours plus a week. I think the longest time I spent in the office without going home was the, I was into the fourth day.
So it's not, and it's not like, so there's, there's definitely, there's plenty of pain points, but it was something that we at least always were trying to improve. And it did improve over the years from game to game. Every game I think got better. And you know, I know, you know, the, in the last couple projects I worked on, it felt like it was way, despite the fact that it was also like, I think the standards were a lot higher.
I. If you looked at it purely relative to previous projects, it was, it was heads and shoulders above where we had been in terms of like, you know, crunch culture and things like that.
David: What, what enables that? Because, you know, presumably the reason why crunch culture exists is because you're delivering a product in a very specific time period.
And if you could, if you could do it more efficiently, everyone would, would love to, to do it. So how, how are you guys able to sort of adapt?
Dan: It starts the top, I mean, that's the number one thing. You, you do have to have a, it, it, it is a leadership challenge. And a lot of that is, it's about discipline, development, discipline.
David: Mm-hmm.
Dan: You need to be willing to cut features constantly, which I think is hard for a lot of teams.
David: Mm-hmm.
Dan: But if you can constantly cut based on an ongoing assessment of scope. You know, some teams I've, I've heard a lot of disparaging of like, production when it comes to creative game development teams, but I was a huge supporter of production.
I think that production was the glue that made everything work just so much more efficiently. And, you know, allowed developers to actually be able to add more polished to their features. Because a lot of that kind of like overhead and, and, you know, otherwise challenging interactions with other team members would be kind of bogging them down.
But we had a really just world class production team and always keeping a finger on the pulse of development and understanding where we were, how much would it cost us to do whatever x, y, Z thing was. And they weren't making the decision, they were just advising the leadership. But it, it's that, that, that awareness of what, what state are we in at any moment in time?
And are we right sizing our development to make sure that we're not gonna get underwater?
David: Is there any, are there any feedback loops in order to like cut features? Like you can quickly test something and see if it's gonna be valuable to players?
Dan: If it's not fun within the first two to three iterations, then it's going to be very hard to make it fun.
David: Got it. So, so, and is that internal testing or
Dan: Yeah. Yeah, just, just with the team.
David: Got it. Cool. Okay, so I want to sort of transition into forward looking a bit, well, and I wanna also hear more about what you're working on today. But before we, we get into that one last question, just on the COD franchise, when you look at, you know, the next 10 years, are there any sort of key, like are there any key challenges you see for the franchise or, uh, do you think that, you know, this, this franchise is just here forever?
Dan: So I'm speaking purely as an outside observer at this point. I think that it's, you know, it's gonna be important for the franchise to maintain a certain amount of nimbleness, because there's a lot of disruption happening right now. The industry is, I mean, across the industry it's very, we're we are in the midst of a dis disruptive moment and there's a lot of factors going into that from AI to, you know, lack of funding to, publishers not knowing how to, you know, kind of navigate the current market to otherwise kind of random indie hits becoming the, the, the big games of the year. I just think that there is, there's a lot of uncertainty that's happening right now, and I think it's always gonna be harder for incumbent franchises that are large and, and, and kinda like, you know, just developer development heavy to be able to navigate change in that way.
So I think that's the big thing is just being able to be aware of what's happening around and be able to constantly be able to adapt. I mean, still nobody, you know, you, you still see a lot of games coming out where people will try them and they go back to cot. Cot is still a big staple for most players that are, you know, in into that genre.
David: Yeah, yeah, it makes sense. Okay. So sort of in the, in a similar vein, so now you're a venture capitalist, you know, what are the things that you're most excited about in the, in the video game industry?
Dan: Well, in a lot of ways I've gone 180 degrees from where I was. You know, I was, I was buried deep into development in a very insular bubble for many, many years.
And then, on the outside it's the complete, it's just a different world. But I have been having so much fun because it is so different. You know, 20 years, 20 years doing one, one thing a certain way, and then now the last three years doing a completely different thing has been really rewarding for me.
I, I love working with other developers, especially startups. Because it reminds me of it reminds me of where we, you know, what I went through in the early days of my career with those, you know, early teams. And it's, you know, having that 23 years now of hindsight to be able to, to help other people do things better is, is very satisfying to me.
David: We have, we have a lot of entrepreneurs who listen to the podcast, so I'm just kind of curious to know what are some of those, those pitfalls that you're helping entrepreneurs Navigator? What are some of the common pitfalls you see?
Dan: I think, I mean, one of the things is that people, especially if they've come out of AAA or come out of large established operations don't realize even if they get a lot of funding, how hard it is to go from zero to one.
And, everybody who goes into that space needs to think of it as like, they don't have any money. They're scrappy, they're punching above their weight. They are doing everything that they can to outperform. Because that's what you have to do. So that's one thing is just even if you have a decent amount of funding, like don't act like you have a decent amount of funding, development is unpredictable.
There's always gonna be something that comes up that derails derails your, your plan. Um, I mean, every single one. I've never been on a project that didn't have a derailing moment, you know, or multiple. And uh, so I think like being prepared for the storms is an important part. Understanding that there are smarter ways to do stuff.
You know, I think, and I've kind of, you know, I've had this conversation recently with some of my friends and peers. If you are a, you know, very senior veteran at a development studio that's been, I. Managing people for a long time. If you haven't gotten your hands dirty, it's gonna be very, very hard for you to adapt to startup life.
The, the, the very, the most experienced people in the industry who are also successful as startups are able to get in and still work with their hands. Still do stuff, still build things. Because you do have to wear a lot of hats as an entrepreneur as a startup. I mean, think about like, you know, you're probably three games away from being at a, at a little bit more settled place that's closer to what you came from.
And that's kinda how you have to set your mind to it.
David: What do you mean by you're three games away?
Dan: So, you know, your first game is gonna be, even though you've learned a lot in, in your past life or whatever your career has been, it's gonna be very different and it's gonna be a lot of headache.
You're setting up your, your tech base, you're setting up your processes and pipelines. You may have new tools that you're using that didn't exist before. You've got maybe different people in the mix. There's less people. You probably don't have all of the advanced, you know, like build systems that help you optimize your build processes and QA processes and all the things that can basically drive efficient game development.
And so you have to rebuild all that stuff and it's never gonna happen in one game. It's gonna be like, I mean that's like, I generally think three games is about the, the time it takes to get to a much more stable place where, where your systems are refined, your people are much more comfortable working together and you're just kind of firing on all cylinders.
David: It's interesting. I, I was come, I'm coming from the publishing, uh, angle and I was like, three games. Like, that's too many games. Yeah. We need it now.
Dan: I mean, I know that, but it, it, and I think it's important for publishers to understand that, you know, there, it's a messy Yeah. It's a messy business.
David: How, I'm curious your perspective on just the difference between venture capital funding and publisher funding.
Like, are you think there's merits to both or what do you think the funding model for the future is?
Dan: Um, everybody's going to, everyone's trying to figure it out right now, Everyone's gonna have hot takes about this. I, you know, I don't want to give you a, my hot take per se, but I can talk about kind of what the landscape looks like.
Cool. You know, basically it breaks down into two categories. You have equity and you have debt. That's kind of how, those are the two ways that you can finance any of these ventures. VC is always focused, is 10 historically been focused on equity, you know, which means that you're, you're, you're buying stakes in a company early on, which then gives them money to fund their development, to bring their product to market, blah, blah, blah.
You hope that down the line there's gonna be an acquisition or an IPO, some kind of event. That's the only way that VC exists. That's the only, that's the only thing that makes sense for equity at all. So I think for that model to actually work better in our industry, we need more M&A activity.
So we need the, the industry itself needs to mature where there's enough big players out there that are competing at the highest levels, and are opportunistically going out and, and. And buying teams that are gonna compliment their brand or product lineup or skillset or technology. And I feel like at the moment, and, and, you know, I'm not tapped into every single like m and a activity in, in the industry, like some of the later stage folks are.
But there are, from my perspective, there's not enough M&A to sustain the influx of venture capital that's, that's come into the games in the last, call it eight years.
David: Mm-hmm.
Dan: Maybe it will get there eventually. I think we're definitely not in a place for it right now, but I'm hoping in the next few years you'll start to see it spin up again.
So that's, that's the kind of like the venture capital equity side. Then on the debt side, you have, you know, various models. You've got, you know, publishers will, you know, do dev financing, which is basically just, you know, like a rev share deal that effectively it's a loan. It's like, here's a bunch of money.
We're gonna take it back first out of your, outta your first sales until we get to a recoup point. And then, you know, you're gonna have some sort of trailing percentage beyond that of, of how much, you know, revenue share you get, That model is the, is the, the longest and most standard in our industry.
David: Right.
Dan: And I think that in the past though, it's, it's been not very developer friendly, which is why you see so many developers trying to spin out and do their own things. And so the marketplace needs to be more competitive. I think there needs to be more publishers. I you, you are seeing a little bit of this happening right now, or there's, there's sort of micro publishers coming out.
There's different models of publishers coming out. There's Shadow publishing, like, you know, what Midwest is games has been doing and talking about there.
David: I don't know, shadow publishing. What is that?
Dan: Well, it's, it's, it's sort of like publishing for hire. It's not about rev share, it's about services.
David: Okay. If that makes sense. Okay.
Dan: And so, I think that that model needs to evolve, but it's not gonna evolve from some, you know, grand, you know, person saying this thing. It's, it's gonna evolve because there's competition in the marketplace. And so I, I do hope that there's more publishers that can start up, that more publishers can be effective at different scales and they can, you know, like I, I love seeing when small publishers can have a big outsized hit.
I mean, you look at kind of like Black Myth this last year. And, you know, PM games is, is hot right now, right? Like, growing, Just talked to them the other day and it was very cool. Just kind of like hear their journey and how they've gotten to where they are. And so, I think that you need to have a, a much more competitive publishing ecosystem for, for all of that to, you know, kind of be a healthier industry. I think what you're seeing between those two models is, and it will, I could also, there's other things like, you know, venture debt and other kind of financing models that are, you know, like credit or whatever. But, those are the, basically the two. You're seeing a little bit of experimentation on both sides.
So publishers are being more, having, making more strategic investments Meaning like they're buying an earlier equity stake with the, in, as a part of that deal, they will take first writer refusal for publishing. So they kind of, that's sort of a, a way for them to protect the, the long tail upside while also making sure that they're bringing in capital return in the short term.
And then you see some VCs that have pivoted to. Dev financing or more like a publishing model. And I think really what the fundamentals are is that you just to get investment in games and game studios, you have to return capital. That's basically, you know, that's like the bottom line. And are you returning enough capital at a good enough pace where people are interested, you're bringing in a lot of outside investors are the, the capital's flowing.
There's more and more investment. And so, you know, we need to find a model as an industry where we're returning value to investors on a much more regular basis. And there's a number of ways to do that. You could start to do blended deals, like I mentioned, where, you know, a publisher might make a strategic equity investment and then they do a publishing deal for, for rev share.
VCs can do that as well. They can blend, you know, if, if they, if they set up a model where that's, that's kind of that blended models, how they operate, that would, I think return could, could return a lot more value to investors. I think companies need to issue dividends more. Which I don't, you know, I haven't talked to many folks that do that, but maybe it's out there.
So I think that like, you know, long term we have to, we're gonna all have to kind of evolve a little bit. I don't think that venture, pure venture capital in a traditional sense works very well in games, at least not right now because there's not enough m and a to, to justify all of these venture bets.
David: Well, now I just wanna know what your hot take is, but I won't, I won't force you to, to tell us. What's the best way for, for folks to follow you and, and follow your journey from, from here down?
Dan: Uh, I mean, I mostly, I don't deal a lot of social media honestly, but LinkedIn is, is where I probably, you know, deal most, do most, you know, communicating with the industry at large.
David: Awesome.
Dan: But I'm, I'm not a, I'm not a very a, I'm not a frequent poster, so it just adds up.
David: Yeah. Don't be offended if he takes a while to get back to you.
Dan: That's right. It, oh my God. It's my inbox. My messages are a nightmare. It's like 20 a day. I can't, I just can't keep up, you know.
David: Well, it's been a privilege to have you on the podcast.
I'm glad you responded to my email to, to be on this, and thank you. Yeah, thanks so much for, thanks for teaching us all about Call of Duty today.
Dan: Yeah, I mean, I just, I, you know, my, my goal and what I enjoy doing at this point in my career is helping other people and that's it. So, I just, you know, I love to be able to share whatever stories I can that they're gonna help other people be more successful in their careers.
David: Awesome. So if, if, if you're listening, make sure to share with as many people as possible so they can get all of the, the juicy insights that Dan shared with us today. Thanks.
If you enjoyed today's episode, whether on YouTube or your favorite podcast app, make sure to like, subscribe, comment, or give a five-star review. And if you wanna reach out or provide feedback, shoot us a note at [email protected] or find us on Twitter and LinkedIn. Plus, if you wanna learn more about what Naavik has to offer, make sure to check out our website www.naavik.co there. You can sign up for the number one games industry newsletter, Naavik Digest, or contact us to learn about our wide-ranging consulting and advisory services.
Again, that is www.naavik.co. Thanks for listening and we'll catch you in the next episode.
