The Standalone, 2011-2012 Call of Duty: Zombies Sounds Absolutely Bonkers

Call of Duty as a franchise has always been known for its fun and engaging online play. While many fell in love with its war gameplay, others found enjoyment in its zombie mode. 

Enter Call of Duty: Zombies, a now canceled live-service project that was conceptualized around 2011-2012. We learned about this after Michael Gummelt, former Lead Designer at Software, revealed the project in a recent interview. 

It was a standalone zombies experience for the Call of Duty fanbase. A live service game that featured microtransactions for character customization options. It was all only on paper and never made it to development but the concepts alone sound crazy.

Gummelt has a lengthy history with the Call of Duty series. Starting at Call of Duty: Black Ops before transitioning into Call of Duty: Online for China, everything he did for the franchise was leading up to the Call of Duty: Zombies live-service game.

 

It was going to be a four-player co-op experience where everyone would start in a gladiator arena. Gummelt described it as a “Mad Max post-apocalyptic zombie arena.” Fighting off waves of zombies round after round before transitioning to the open world map.

There would be areas with survivors who needed your help to fight off zombies. Conquer the area by clearing the waves of zombies and save the survivors. 

As opposed to the more serious side of Call of Duty, the zombies live-service project embraced the more silly, colorful, and wacky side of the franchise. 

At the time, Gummelt said Treyarch might not have wanted to continue making zombies after Call of Duty: Black Ops. Offered this project, Gummelt and the rest of the team at Raven Software started to work with Activision to develop Call of Duty: Zombies. 

Gummelt had a ton of freedom when he was on Call of Duty: Online because Activision wasn’t worried the project would interfere with the mainline Call of Duty image in the States. Through that freedom, he was able to experiment with the series from the zombies mode to the building blocks of Call of Duty Warzone.

Now tasked with Call of Duty: Zombies as Lead Designer, Gummelt put a ton of work into conceptualizing the title. However, they never developed it.

Talks with Activision and design documents were being shifted around but it seems that Treyarch did want to continue developing zombies. The impression Gummelt got was that Activision did not want Raven’s Call of Duty: Zombies to compete alongside Treyarch’s zombie modes in future Call of Duty: Black Ops sequels. 

Make sense business-wise but ultimately leads to the cancellation of Call of Duty: Zombies, a live-service zombies experience.  A crazy timeline to live in if Call of Duty: Zombies became a reality. What do you think of this canceled concept? Let us know in the comments what you think!