Call of Duty: the board game is an attempt to translate the thrilling, high-stakes action of the classic franchise of first-person shooters to the table. Developer Arcane Wonders (Sheriff of Nottingham, The Dice Tower Essentials) say their new strategy game is headed to Kickstarter this fall, with a global retail release by holiday 2024. But how will the game really work? And what can fans expect from the Texas developer’s longstanding partnership with Activision?
Arcane Wonders tells Polygon that the design goal for CoD: the board game is to recreate the experience of playing the video game using new combat, movement and line of sight mechanics. While it will feature large-scale 35-millimeter miniatures, it’s not a miniature wargame, and the action won’t be slowed down by things like charts or rulers. It is set in the era of the 2019 reboot Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, and feature the same weapons and memorable maps that fans already love. When it hits stores, the two-player base game should be available for $50, and multiple sets can eventually be combined for four-player matches.
However, the Arcane Wonders team stressed that this is not a repeat of any particular title in the series. It’s a new entry in Call of Duty’s long and storied history and, like the live-service games currently on the market, is one that will grow and expand with its player base.
Image: Arcane Wonders/Activision Publishing
“Call of Duty: the board game is a series of products within the same game system, starting with the initial core sets,” said Bryan Pope, one of the game’s designers. “From there, additional products will add new features to the game over time, such as new operators, weapons, maps and even new game modes.”
“In addition to the competitive and tournament styles,” he continued, “we are also creating cooperative campaigns for the game in the future. […] that allows 1-4 players to progress through a challenging and immersive Call of Duty story.”
Traditionally, adapting FPS mechanics to a board game has proven challenging for traditional designers. Many have tried to abstract the action from moment to moment to put another player in their sights and pull the trigger, and while there have been notable successes such as Tannhauser in 2007 and Demise in 2016 — the developers are not quite ready to show their solution in detail. But we did get a few hints out of it.
“Obviously we’ll be revealing more as we get closer to launch, but we really feel like this game captures the immersion of a first-person shooter,” said Pope. “[Players] schedule at the same time [their] secretly moves and then solve it on the map at the same time. The line of sight is simply determined by colored lines on the map, and if you spot your opponent, a battle will take place. It’s all about outsmarting and outsmarting your opponent to get into the best possible position to win in a fight.”
The first crowdfunding campaign will be for a special collector’s edition of the game, which the team says will include more than the final retail product. Additional content will be made available throughout the campaign and will also be “broken down into later retail releases as separate products,” according to Arcane’s president, Robert Geistlinger.
“We already have some future content planned, including zombies, and later, but not right away,” added Benjamin Pope, another designer working on the project. “There are so many great characters and locations in the CoD world that we want to explore and share with the fans on a tabletop platform.”
But why is Activision, one of the largest video game publishers in the world, using crowdfunding to produce this board game? Well, it’s not. Arcane Wonders is, and this type of process – using a crowdfunding platform to raise capital to launch a new product – has become the norm in the tabletop industry for projects of this scale and profile.
“It’s quite common for board games to be crowdfunded,” said Geistlinger, “and of course this is an officially licensed game that’s being produced by us here at Arcane Wonders. The Activision team has been a great partner in enabling us to to create their world and play in it but at the end of the day this is our experience that we bring to gamers and that team has kindly allowed us to use all the tools and platforms that we feel are necessary to make the best version of our game for their fans.
He emphasized his excitement about getting the collector’s edition components out into the world for people to see.
“If we just went the traditional route, it simply wouldn’t be possible for us to provide fans with the amount of content, scope and scale that we want to offer from day one,” added Walter Barber, creative director at Arcane Wonders. . “For example, we really wanted to include high-quality pre-painted miniatures in the core retail game, but try as we might, the cost was too high. We would have been forced to compromise our vision or sell the game for a much higher price tag. By using crowdfunding first, we can make exactly the game we want to make, and at exactly the retail price we want to offer.”
Fans can sign up to be notified when the game launches official website.