Exclusive Interview With Call of Duty: Warzone Mobile Developers On Gameplay, Graphics & The Game's Legacy

Call of Duty: Warzone Mobile is gearing up for its worldwide release on March 21, 2024. The game promises to combine the best elements of Battle Royale and Multiplayer action into a truly unforgettable FPS experience on mobile.

Other impressive features include its shared progression with 2023's Modern Warfare 3 and Call of Duty: Warzone, its support of up to 120 real-player lobbies, and its intuitive controls.

With over 50 million pre-registrations recorded so far, to say that the excitement is high would be an understatement.

We managed to interview two of the leading minds behind the development of Call of Duty: Warzone Mobile regarding its upcoming launch, Activision's future mobile strategy, and what makes the game stand out in the mobile gaming scene.

Here is an edited transcript of our interview:

In a COD Mobile community update released in September 2022, the COD Mobile team assured players amid chatter about Warzone Mobile that "the two games are meant to coexist and thrive in the same mobile ecosystem." What would this "co-existing" look like after the release of Warzone Mobile?

Chris Plummer: Call of Duty Mobile is a hugely important part of our ecosystem. We know there are millions of players around the world who love Call of Duty Mobile as much as we do. We're also excited to have Warzone Mobile coming out and bringing something new to the table.When we look at how big the audience is around the world for games of this genre, there are really some different flavors and different tastes to appeal to. We know that there are a lot of players out there playing Battle Royale games that we think that we can over-deliver on with Warzone Mobile.So, we're excited to bring Warzone Mobile out to complement what Call of Duty Mobile has already been able to do in sort of reaching a new audience, with a new offering, with a different style, and really bring something that's unique. Both games are going to live a long and healthy life and we're looking forward to supporting both of them.

In Call of Duty: Next 2023, Activision offered a firm commitment to improving nearly all aspects of Warzone Mobile such as gameplay, touch controls, and menus. Can you give us an insight into any major improvements you will be making to the game soon? Especially regarding graphics, since this appears to be an important topic of conversation for the community.

Chris Plummer: I think that graphics is a great one to point out because that's been a particular area of focus for us. We've always imagined Warzone Mobile delivering the most cutting-edge visual experience on all the supported devices. But, when we looked at the newer devices, we weren't really hitting the visual fidelity that we wanted.In fact, there were even some bugs on other devices that needed to be addressed, which we found through our limited release process. Over the past month and a half or so, this has really been a huge focus for us so much so that we've been able to really bring the fidelity level up and introduce new technologies to deliver it such as streaming.So, when you're playing a game right now, it's streaming the higher fidelity visuals in real-time. When you first boot it [Warzone Mobile] up, it looks good. But when you play a match or two, it looks better. If you play several matches, you're starting to get the best visual fidelity you can get on a mobile device. So that technology, processes, and tuning has really been a big focus for us over the past couple of months – and it's worked. We're still putting the final touches on it right now as we finish up for our worldwide launch.But, graphics are still a big area for us. I think graphics are so important to this genre. Obviously, the gameplay is king but it needs to look the best that it can possibly look. For us being under the Call of Duty engine, being able to use the COD renderer and adapt that to mobile, there are so many unique capabilities there that just took us a little bit of time to get the power out of and now we're in a place where we're feeling really good. We're not done with all the things we have to say about the visuals between now and the worldwide launch. But right now, we're feeling like we're in a really good position and the visual fidelity is improved quite a bit.When I think about some of the commentary that I've seen – we have obviously watched what the community is saying as well – there's actually some pretty old material out there that people are referencing. I think anyone who has played the latest builds will see that the visual fidelity has really made leaps and bounds even since December 2023.

Is there an ultimate goal or legacy you want to achieve or create with Warzone Mobile?

Chris Plummer: Absolutely. This starts with trying to complete the circle of connectivity for the Call of Duty ecosystem. So, if you think about what the introduction of Warzone in 2020 did, all of a sudden there was a new free-to-play experience that grew the audience for Call of Duty in a really significant way. People could play the premium experience or they could play Warzone and have this kind of shared progression. They could share with people who maybe don't buy the premium game and they can play with their friends who are only free-to-play players. It really opened up a whole new kind of belief that playing together is really where it's at and that Call of Duty is ultimately a social experience.With Warzone mobile, we really want to complete that circuit and allow connectivity on all platforms. So whether you're a mobile-first player or you're a console or PC player, you can now engage in Warzone with your friends, grind the same weapon grind, and level up your own military progression. We really just want to bring that together so that there's a shared community experience across the heart of the Call of Duty ecosystem. That was really the original intention. But, in order to do that and stand out – we already have a successful mobile game out there – we really needed to think about how else we could push the envelope and get much more magnitude out of the Call of Duty engine. So, things like having a 120 player lobby where you have real players is a scale you just can't experience on any other mobile game. We're using some of the same rendering features that console and PC use. We also have our own. It's a custom design just for mobile. We have the real progression that's shared across everything. We have the real content that's the same Battle Pass and the same Operators. Now the content that the world-class developers are making for console and PC is now available to you on mobile as well. If you strip all that away, the gameplay is really the most important part. We have 20 years worth of COD gameplay that is now adapted to mobile. You don't flip a switch and all of it just works great on mobile. We have to spend a lot of time tuning it right. There's a lot of secret sauce there, in terms of what makes the weapons feel like each of them has a personality, in terms of what makes the responsiveness snappy, and in terms of what makes it feel like you can feel the weapon in your hands. The way the encounters feel, the way the shootouts feel, the way all that gameplay feels like, and even the physics. So much of that detail, we were able to get all that and adapt it to mobile to get something we feel really, really stands out. So, those are some of the things that really set it apart today but also will set it apart in the future because this isn't a one-and-done – this is a project that we see living for at least 10 years. As the franchise evolves, innovative new features will be developed, innovative new technologies will be created, and new phones will come out. We want to able to move right along with it. Today, we're looking at the game approaching a worldwide launch on March 21. In a year from now, three years from now, or five years from now, let's just continue to evolve, continue to stay on the cutting edge, and still work on the devices that we're launching with today.

Xavier Carrillo Costa: Warzone Mobile is being developed using Call of Duty tech so, for us, that's a big difference because this unlocks a lot of possibilities in terms of content, in terms of gameplay, and in terms of future. As Chris was saying, this is only the beginning and we are only scratching the surface.

Are there any rumors regarding Warzone Mobile that you wish to address? For instance, there were rumors last year about Zombies being a future game mode for Warzone Mobile.

Chris Plummer: To some of these rumors about future modes and future features, as Xavier was talking about with COD tech, anything is possible. Anything you see in the COD universe is possible. It doesn't necessarily mean it's going to be fun or good or appropriate on mobile. That's where we spend time to make sure that it feels right. There are features such as how the movement works in Warzone Mobile where it feels a lot like Modern Warfare 3. But right out of the gates, we didn't have all those features there because we wanted to make sure that we adapted it and got the feel right on mobile and not just port it. I think a really important guideline for us is to not just straight port but rather to take advantage of the technology and take advantage of all those innovations. It's also important we make sure we're adapting and tuning it to feel really, really good on a touch screen.

With so much of the community focused on core gameplay aspects such as Battle Royale, graphics, and weapons, is there a feature in Warzone Mobile you believe is underappreciated by players?

Chris Plummer: I have a lot of friends that play on other platforms and recognize that mobile may not be the first-choice platform when playing this genre since it can feel weird. Just as if you're a PC player and you switch to console, the console thumbsticks can feel weird for the first time. One of the things that Xavier's team spent in the last two years doing is really trying to develop ways to make it really easy for people who have friends that want to try to get in and maybe want to get an extra session in. If you're a Call of Duty fan, you're going to want this extra session to grind your camos up. Players can get into the game super easy thanks to the smart automations present.

Xavier Carrillo Costa: Yes, the idea is that we are going to have a really big and really diverse audience. We want to make sure that everybody has a good experience – and that includes console players as well. As Chris mentioned, sometimes they're afraid to play a mobile game. So we've put a set of invisible systems to help them such as auto-aim. Sometimes it's difficult when you play on mobile for the first time to control, walk past some objects, or just turn a corner. We have a full set of systems that will help make your first experience really easy. If you're a pro player and you want to have hundred percent control, you can configure that and disable anything you want. The truth is that Warzone Mobile works really well. As a console player, you can play seamlessly on Warzone Mobile.

Chris Plummer: There's a pro feature as well that's kind of underrated which is the Combat Record. In it, you can go and see not just what your K/D is and what your performance has been in. You can also see exactly which weapons you have been using and get a really cool breakdown on the stats and performance of each match. If you're trying to get better, those are some interesting tools that you can use.

We thank both Chris Plummer and Xavier Carrillo Costa for their time in this interview. Warzone Mobile will be available to download from the Google Play Store and Apple App Store when it is launched on March 21, 2024.