Treyarch Explains Why Black Ops 4 Doesn't Have Single-Player

When Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 was revealed, fans were baffled as to why Treyarch were forgoing a single-player mode. They announced the standard multiplayer mode, but rather than producing a narrative-driven campaign, they opted to include battle royale with Blackout. The Blackout beta is ongoing right now and fans are loving it, but Dan Bunting & David Vonderhaar have spoken to Game Informer and gone into detail on exactly why the game doesn’t have single-player.

"Development is a journey," co studio head Dan Bunting said. "We try a lot of different ideas and a lot of different things. The game that we are making has evolved over time, and that's just a part of development. I can't remember a single game that we've made that hasn't had a dramatic change in the prototyping stage. That's what prototyping is for. You prototype ideas; some of them work out great, some of them don't work out great and you pivot. You find a new idea [and] focus on that. We follow the fun." Vonderhaar followed by explaining that Blackout has also changed considerably in development: “It’s normal,” he said about games in general changing significantly during development.

Bunting carried on by saying that Treyarch always wanted Black Ops 4 to be a social experience, across every gamemode. Even in the planning stages, Vonderhaar said that “it wasn’t a campaign as people usually refer to it”. Nothing “happened” to the campaign, since it’s apparently always been a multiplayer title.

When asked about whether the inclusion of battle royale detracted from the potential campaign mode, Bunting didn’t answer directly. “Everything tends to work together for a reason," Bunting explained. "Internally, we have built a culture of adaptation. The most important aspect of game development is being able to adapt. If you can't look at something that you're doing honestly and say, 'This thing isn't good enough' or 'This isn't what we want,' and 'We need to make a change.' If you can't do that yourself, then you're not adapting. You're not going to evolve in a way that's going to constantly deliver exciting experiences for your fans."

Robert Kostich, Call of Duty executive VP said earlier this year that they’re telling stories differently this time around. The zombies mode is as narrative focused as it gets with Black Ops 4, to the dismay of many but the joy of others. In other Call of Duty news, Splyce has dropped Bance from their roster going into the new title.