Black Ops - Case Study

Production

The game was developed by Treyarch, a subdivision of Activision, for all the major consoles and by n-Space for the DS version. The game runs on the IW engine, which has been featured in all of the major call of duty games since call of duty 4, it also supports 3-D imaging and is the first call of duty game to do so.
Motion capture, similar to that used in Avatar, was used to fully capture the facial expressions of the actors to make the game more realistic, which was also achieved as Treyarch consulted special forces veterans from both sides, the MACV-SOG and the Spetsnaz representing the US and Russia, respectively. Due to the classified nature of the Cold War's black ops, Treyarch was quite free in creating a narrative, that was entirely fictional but also allowed it to be believable.
Treyarch have updated the game frequently fixing any bugs and improving things that the community have highlighted, the biggest update was probably to the spawn system and improving to prevent players from spawning in the same area or near enemies. They also keep developing new DLC to be released frequently in the form of map packs.

Distribution


The game is distributed by Activision using DVDs to supply the game for the major consoles, the Nintendo game card for the DS version and various online stores such as Steam. The DLC is distributed via the consoles native store, the XBOX Live Marketplace and the Playstation Store, for the consoles respectively and via Steam for the PC.

Consumption

The main form of consumption for players of black ops is the online multiplayer which throws together between 8 and 16 players, depending on game mode, from all over the world in a contest to see who wins. The multiplayer is very deep with 50 levels to be reached and 15 prestiges, where you give up everything and start from level 1 again, and hundreds of different ways to customise your weapon. There is also a singleplayer mode for those without access to the internet, and Zombies, which is a co-op wave defense mode, for both online and offline play.

Marketing


The marketing strategy for black ops started off as a viral campaign when USB drives containing audio and text files were sent to gaming new publications and high profile call of duty fans which lead to a teaser site for an unknown game, but was found to be related to Treyarch as time passed. A similar thing was done with the poster that was received by people who pre-ordered the game in the states which linked them to a website that was under-construction and had various clues that people solved to learn more about the game. The first trailer shown was shown during the NBA finals and many other trailers aired during sports games, to be received by the widest possible audience. The game was also advertised through social networking as it has a facebook page that contained new information about the game it also utilised sites such as youtube to put adverts on. The map packs have helped to keep black ops in the public eye with trailers demonstrating the new maps and attracting new customers at the same time.