December 11, 2023 9:00 AM
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There’s no bigger game than Call of Duty. And so it was a natural for us to discuss its cultural impact at our conference GamesBeat at The Game Awards.
We were lucky to open our event with Johanna Faries, general manager of Call of Duty and senior vice president at Activision. I spoke with her and TikTok’s Annie Bellfield, team lead for console and cross-platform gaming at TikTok, about how the game has maintained its cultural relevance over the past two decades.
Here’s a story about the talk. You can also watch it yourself in the video. TikTok sponsored the session.
Bellfield opened by asking Faries about the history of behind the cultural relevance. She noted how TikTok trends may take off and last for minutes, days or event years. But staying top of mind for 20 years is quite a feat. The hashtag Call of Duty has garnered 98 billion views to date on TikTok alone, Bellfield said.
Faries noted the recognition is appreciated as video games often launch and they’re talked about for a brief time and then never mentioned again.
“I think part of that secret sauce that we talked about why 20 years, why is that significant. In many ways, Call of Duty’s both positioned itself as more than a game. So, brand love has come in from culture,” Faries said. “When we talk about relevance — the franchise was really thinking about that — and putting on a masterclass in many ways well before any of us were in the industry, and it set a new tone for the cool factor around gaming writ large. So that that’s one piece of the marketing positioning.”
She noted that the slogan, “There’s a soldier in all of us” was meant to think expansively about the blockbuster intellectual property, well beyond just the core game loop. It also mattered a lot that Call of Duty shifted from occasional releases to a yearly cycle for new releases. That came from having three studios working on a game simultaneously, with staggered releases.
“People were setting their watches to every October or November because they knew a big Call of Duty was about to come,” Faries said.
The cadence shattered expectations about franchise game publishing, and it is still very singular in that way, Faries said.
I noted there is a lot of pressure and responsibility that comes with staying on top for so many years.
Faries noted that the brand is “always on.” The company has a bias for action with both the big annual releases as well as the live operations with Call of Duty: Warzone and Call of Duty: Mobile,