Year after year, Call of Duty games are released. Some say they are a quick cash grab, but there’s no denying the fact that these games are pretty successful. And they are quite good at grabbing cash too; last year, Modern Warfare 3 did not take much time before crossing The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom in sales.
The reason for its popularity is its towering fanbase, as well as the fact that this franchise has no real competition in sight. The only franchise that can pose any danger is Battlefield, but EA really needs to change its direction in a drastic way to even compete with Call of Duty.
EA and Dice need to rethink the future of the Battlefield franchise
Both Battlefield and Call of Duty are long-running franchises. The first Battlefield game was Battlefield 1942, which was launched back in 2002 for Windows and Mac. It was developed by a company called Digital Illusion CE, which is nowadays known as DICE. The first Call of Duty game was developed by Infinity Ward and launched for Windows, Mac, PS3, Xbox 360, and Nokia N-Gage back in 2003. Both of them started their respective franchises with a bang.
Eventually, these games grew, and they became staple shooters for their respective publishers. To this day, the Call of Duty franchise is making an unsurmountable amount of money for Activision. Battlefield too proved to be monumental for EA, as these games became increasingly popular and successful with each launch.
The thing is that for such long-running franchises, the biggest challenge is staying fresh. How does one do it? Both of them have crossed 20 years of existence; they had to do something. Call of Duty did it by jumping the eras it was set in. Sometimes fans saw World War 2, sometimes the Cold War, and sometimes fans saw wars of the near future with players controlling characters with exosuits.
DICE did something similar with Battlefield too. They brought it to modern times and featured the Great War, which is also known as World War 1. But one thing that Battlefield did very differently from Call of Duty was to stay grounded. These games played more like simulations. DICE developed an incredible engine to feature realistic visuals; their sound design made the guns in Battlefield sound so good that people could not stop talking about them.
But by the time Battlefield 2042 came about, EA had started doing what Activision never dared. They just got a bit distracted. They made too many shooters and started releasing them too early. The result was an excellent but broken game with a massive scale. It missed its mark by a mile when it came to sales. But Call of Duty remains as successful as ever.
So, what should EA do to make it sell better? They can experiment; doing exactly what Call of Duty is doing would be a bit silly. They are basically going back to their popular games and remaking them with some twists in the story. DICE can instead choose some different era for Battlefield 6, not World War 1 or 2, but something unusual.
They should go back to the simulation mechanics rather than make action shooters. Make Battlefield 6 players fight in the Franco-Prussian War or even the Napoleonic Wars. Allow players to strategize and then fight. The reason people bought Battlefield was for its large battlefields and realistic weapons. Bring them back and put players in unusual situations. It would definitely get the job done.
Battlefield even made cops out of its players once
Everyone talks of 1942 and Battlefield 1, but people hardly remember Battlefield Hardline. This was the game that put players in the shoes of a bunch of cops. It played like a very realistic police procedural. Players arrested perps; they had to make sure they didn’t kill them. Some stealth mechanisms were also involved.
This game was not perfect, but Visceral Games really brought some uniqueness to the franchise that had started to feel very similar with every new installment. That’s the kind of passion EA needs for their new Battlefield. Let’s see what they do with the new game in the series.
