Dressed in tight black suits, the two performers take positions for a fight scene. The cameras surrounding the huge stage in Playa Vista begin to roll.
One turns slowly in pantomime and carefully, deliberately arches back, gasping for air, before the stunt coordinator helps him approach the black mattress.
This movement is translated into dots and lines on a nearby computer and transmitted by round white sensors embedded in the suits' colorful almond-shaped spots. They will later be embodied in the characters and scenes of the new game Call of Duty: Black Ops 7, which will be released on Friday.
It's all part of a blockbuster effort to create one of the most popular video game franchises of all time. “Call of Duty,” from Santa Monica-based publisher Activision, has been the best-selling video game franchise in the United States for 16 years running, and has sold more than 500 million copies worldwide since the first installment was released in 2003.
And since it's one of the few franchises with an annual release schedule, it takes an army to meet that deadline. About 3,000 people worked on Black Ops 7 over the course of four years.
Activision executives declined to discuss the game's budget but called it a “significant investment.” The top video game franchises can cost $250 million or more to produce, higher than most big-budget Hollywood films.
“It’s like we have to launch a new Star Wars every year.” Every year we have to release a new Avatar,” said Tyler Bahl, Activision's chief marketing officer. “So we need to think about how can we do this in an unexpected way?”
“Ultimately, we want to treat our games like the ultimate blockbusters,” said Matt Cox, Call of Duty general manager at Activision, who has worked on the franchise for more than 10 years. “Investment for them.”
Activision's game production studio Treyarch produces the Call of Duty video game.
(Robert Gauthier/Los Angeles Times)
According to analysts, the franchise has become a key factor in Activision's success.
More than 20 million units of the base game are sold annually, not counting the live services components that are updated after the game launches and keep players interested, the monthly battle passes that unlock rewards, or even the mobile game. It all adds up to estimated annual sales of about $3.5 billion to $4 billion, said Eric Handler, media and entertainment analyst at Roth Capital.
In fact, the huge popularity of “Call of Duty” spurred tech giant Microsoft's interest in acquiring Activision. The $69 billion deal will be completed in 2023..
“He revolutionized the first-person shooter game and has done a great job year after year of becoming best in class, building the largest community and growing to reach video game players around the world,” Handler said. “There are others [shooter] franchises trying to replicate its success… but none have matched the consistency of Call of Duty.”
To maintain the annual schedule, Activision rotates game development between several of its studios, including Playa Vista's Treyarch, which was simultaneously developing “Black Ops 6” and “Black Ops 7” – the first time two “Call of Duty: Black Ops” games have been released in subsequent years.
While the previous game was set in the '90s, the new installment is set in 2035, meaning the designers and animators had to imagine what gear and gadgets might look like in the future (“Call of Duty: Black Ops 2” was is surprisingly accurate in its predictions for 2025.).
“This was a huge opportunity for us to tell two unique yet connected stories,” said Yale Miller, senior director of production at Treyarch.
Unlike the linear nature of filmmaking, when creating a game like Call of Duty, many things happen simultaneously. The game features a story campaign, multiplayer with friends, and the ever-popular zombie part. That means each assigned team is simultaneously thinking about things like tone, features and gameplay moments they want fans to experience, Miller said.
While the actor is recording the lines, another team can create said weapon and make it interactive, while another group creates an explosion that the lines and weapon will be a part of.
“It’s not just, ‘Oh, we have a chance. We're done for today,” Miller said. Acting is “the anchor for a lot of the things we're building, but there's a whole world going on at the same time, and that's how we get to these big teams working on something, and everything has to be thought about.”
The franchise has become known for its intense cinematic quality, with a reputation bolstered by the live-action film and television experience of many who work on the games, including some of the stuntmen and Treyarch performance capture director Mikal Vega, who worked on the 2017 NBC drama Brave after a long military career.
“It’s theater in the circle,” he said during a Zoom call from the stage. “In some cases it is more like theater than cinema, and very similar to cinema in other stages.”
And there is a bit of a learning curve, especially due to the motion capture technology used, which can make movements awkward.
The new game stars This Is Us star Milo Ventimiglia as Lt. Cmdr. David Mason, a character who first appeared in Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 in 2012, is now hunting for the former arms dealer who caused the death of his father and was previously presumed dead.
He said playing “Black Ops 7” was “more technical” than his previous film and television roles, as it required him to get used to having a microphone or camera in front of him. In one of the first instances, Ventimiglia went to scratch his itchy cheek and the crew advised him not to put anything between his face and the camera and to pretend to scratch off camera, not realizing it was not acting.
Then there were four-hour sessions in a sound booth where lines were said dozens of times in dozens of ways with any number of weapons.
“It’s very, very tiring, hard work, but fun at the same time,” Ventimiglia said. “When are you going to talk about summoning grenades and flash bangs and using different weapons? Very rarely.”
Adding to the cinematic quality are hyper-realistic images of actors, equipment and costumes, which are the result of scanning on a light stage that can recreate objects in 3D. The main and supporting characters sit on a chair inside the sphere and strike poses, surrounded by 16 mirror cameras and dozens of hexagonal lights that emit a hazy glow. More than 256 images will be captured in 1.3 seconds. Main characters like Ventimiglia typically strike up to 120 poses, all to accurately capture the nuances of someone's face.
Evan Buttons, Director of Technical Projects at Activision, poses for a photo in the facial scanning studio.
(Robert Gauthier/Los Angeles Times)
In the next room, with a 22-foot ceiling and black, soundproof walls, is an even larger sphere with more than 140 cameras and several video cameras that allow scanning of the entire body, equipment and suits. Everything captured is then passed on to the character art team, who will tailor it to their specifications and put it into the game.
Even days before the game's release, the team was still busy. In an era where Internet speeds are faster, the work does not end with the first release of the game. Content will be released regularly over the months following Black Ops 7's debut to keep it fresh for players who can log more than 1,000 hours of play time.
“The number one reason they play Call of Duty is actually because their friends are there,” said Activision's Bahl. “Those bonds and those social connections, I think, are what really make this game special and strong, and what will make it last this long.”
