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A former Call of Duty developer revealed in an interview about a free-to-play COD Zombies “Live Service” game he was working on before Raven’s Software decided to pull the plug on the project. The standalone Call of Duty Zombies was under development from 2011-2012 but didn’t get through the design phase.
The game was supposed to be fully supported and updated as a live game with flexible customizations and microtransactions based on Call of Duty Online. He also disclosed that COD battle royale was planned before PUBG but Fortnite beat them to it and established the primary battle royale trend.
The idea for the Call of Duty Zombies live service game was named “Project Zed”. According to the Project Zed product statement, “Project Zed combines the best of Call of Duty: Zombies with the addictive replayability of Call of Duty Multiplayer, adding the robust microtransactions model of Call of Duty: Online to deliver monetization to the franchise and a constant stream of new modes, maps and character customization content that will hook Zombies players old and new and keep them coming back for more!“
Key Elements of the Scrapped COD Zombies Project
The developers were given complete flexibility and freedom to experiment with the game modes as long as the main COD titles were not affected. This led to the devs getting really creative and expanding their horizons with new ideas. A few of the key features of the scrapped project include:
- Character and weapon customization.
- 1-4 players co-op based.
- Open World Map
- Players start off as gladiators fighting zombies in an arena.
- The arena was round-based.
- Players would get an opportunity to escape to the open world, fight zombies, and save citizens for rewards and boosts.
- Game modes included waves.
- New seasons and updates.
The standalone COD Zombies game seemed to have tremendous potential and a one-of-a-kind approach. While the subsequent Call of Duty games have transformed the face of the gaming industry, Project Zed remains buried in the records.
