Simon Cardy
Guest
In recent months, there has been more than one suggestion from members of the games industry that Call of Duty games are “lazy," and that the threat of EA's rival shooter, Battlefield 6, will force a change in approach from Activision. In a recent interview with IGN, we put both of those suggestions to Black Ops 7 co-developer Treyarch to get its response.
The studio’s words follow a series of claims from industry peers that the annualised shooter series is in need of some healthy competition. At this year’s Summer Game Fest, Splitgate 2 director Ian Proulx stated that he was “tired of playing the same Call of Duty every year." That sentiment is seemingly shared by former Blizzard president Mike Ybarra, who posted last week in relation to the latest Battlefield 6 open beta:
Battlefield will boot stomp CoD this year. But the real win here is CoD won’t be lazy anymore, and we’ll all get better FPS games for it.
— Mike Ybarra(@Qwik) August 8, 2025
Speaking to IGN ahead of Black Ops 7's Opening Night Live 2025 reveal, associate creative director Miles Leslie said Treyarch tries to shut out the noise and focus on delivering the best game possible.
“You just don't worry about it, right?” Leslie said when asked about the "lazy" claims. “When we start, it’s not like ‘what are they going to think?’ It’s like, we have a vision, we’re going to hit that vision, and there’s always going to be people that are going to try to knock you down and not have positive criticism, which we do look for. So, it’s like noise, right? You try to cut through that and stick to your vision and plan.”
And from what I’ve seen, it really would be unfair to call this year’s Call of Duty lazy. You can read all about it in my full Black Ops 7 preview here.
As for the threat of Battlefield 6, we asked Leslie if DICE's game pushes Treyarch on or even if the developer thinks about the game at all. Leslie said he'd played DICE's game but is focused squarely on Black Ops 7.
"I got to play this weekend," he said. "It's a fun game. We're fans of all games and I think we look for inspiration anywhere. But we're focused on our own craft. They're doing their thing. We know if we can hit our goals, we're going to deliver what the fans want and that's the key, because if we're happy when we're play testing, then we know fans are going to be happy play testing.
"We're fans of the FPS genre. We're fans of lots of games. Let's all have fun."
Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 was revealed at gamescom Opening Night Live 2025.
Simon Cardy is a Senior Editor at IGN who can mainly be found skulking around open world games, indulging in Korean cinema, or despairing at the state of Tottenham Hotspur and the New York Jets. Follow him on Bluesky at @cardy.bsky.social.