Call of Duty: Verdansk
Call of Duty: Verdansk came to its audience in their time of need—during lockdown, when many craved connection, escape, and something that still felt alive. It offered just that: a virtual battlefield that doubled as a social space, bringing people together in a time of distance. But while it gave us thrills and camaraderie, it didn’t always evolve with the players. Even now, there are ways Verdansk could push its boundaries further and better reflect the dynamic, ever-shifting nature of a true survival experience.
Game design is all about the way that the designers manipulate the player’s environment so that player act a certain way. Games get harder to design when you have more people to control in a given area, which is why we always incorporate multi-dimensional elements into the mix: we try to balance player impact with game complexity & size.
Game Designer tip: games that include a large amount of people are almost always 3D, as it gives the individual players more to interact with, keeping them engaged.
At first lick, Verdansk seems perfectly in balance: you team up with others to survive as long as you could in a vast map. Along the way, you are rewarded for entering houses (Verdansk’s reward system is thoroughly balanced) through caches and supplies, which all help you last longer in the game. Verdansk is like a massive game of hide-and-seek in an abandoned city. At first, it’s thrilling—everyone’s scrambling for gear, making noise, taking risks. But once the player count drops to around 100, the city falls silent. Everyone's found their hiding spot, waiting, watching, barely moving. What started as a pulse-pounding chase becomes a waiting game. The individual players aren’t making an impact because the game is not complex enough. So here’s the question: how do we turn that silence back into action—how do we bring the thrill of the hunt back into the game?
Why?
Well, I like to think of first-person shooters as a tightly wound clock. At the start, everything ticks in harmony—movement, gunplay, loot, strategy—all meshing together with precision. The movement of the clock runs on the gears: the many element of the game keeping the gameplay fast paced. But once the action dips and players bunker down, that clock starts to lose rhythm. The gears grind slower, and the energy that once drove the game forward begins to stall. So maybe it’s time Verdansk found a new gear—something to wind the tension back up and keep the momentum alive. Verdansk doesn’t need something giant to keep the players going, instead, a little nudge in the right direction might just do it.
The Verdansk map is huge (as shown below), which poses a great question: how do we get everyone involved?
Dam in the top left, Arena in middle right, and Prison in bottom right.
How to we solve this problem?
Lets go back to what I said earlier: games with a large number of people should be guided by balancing player impact with game complexity & size. The next gear in the clock that will keep the game fast paced has to involve all players, so that the action stays.
When creating a game that must keep many people involved all at once, the best way to engage everyone is chance. Chance keeps people on their toes, an in Verdansk’s case, it’ll keep campers on the move.
Game Designer Tip: Chance works only when you have a large amount of people in one area, and it does not fit well with smaller games. Playtesting is the best way to get a feel for what keep your specific audience going.
Chance based ideas:
Randomly Marked Hot Zones:
For all the sneaky players who like to camp in one place and wait out the game, Hot Zones add a much needed element of surprise as player now tradeoff disparate looting for all in combat. Loot Quality in the given area doubles, Buy Station items are discounted, Airdrops land more frequently in that zone, and for all the players who sit out on the fun, caches provide less supplies while a Hot Zone ensues & the map closes in around the areas that are the farthest away from the given Hot Zone.
Instant action magnet.
Teams Work Together to Eliminate Bounties:
By bringing together 2 teams that were once against each other, the game becomes a lot more multi-dimensional for the players and teams: imagine the interaction between two teams that are tasked with eliminating one team! They’d need to balance cooperation with mistrust—do they work together until the target’s down, or do they turn on each other the moment an opportunity opens up? Through connecting random squads against one other squad, every decision has weight. The bounty would only last 4 minutes, giving incentive for the two partnered teams to hurry, and the defending team to find a strategy. Voice comms become a weapon, positioning becomes a bluff, and even survival feels more political. It’s no longer just a shooter—it’s a shifting alliance of strategy and betrayal, where teamwork is temporary and timing is everything, aligning the game more closely to it’s large amount of players.
Decay Systems for Loot:
After a certain time in one random location, loot begins to decay, prompting squads to move across the map and utilize game elements like helicopters and buggies to buy better resources. Keeps players circulating.
Ways to Add More Incentive for Players
Aside from the chance elements, there are some other ways to keep the game active.
Gulag Revival:
Squad members who have already died can compete one last time near the end of the game to fight their way back to their squad. Oftentimes, the wait for a dead gets quite long, and to promote squad solidarity, having a sort of “one last chance” would prove powerful for the team and the player.
Cash Pressure System:
If a tea hoards cash without spending, the prices in "Buy Stations for them increases. Spend, or lose your edge.
ZOMBIES!
Imagine: time is running out, it’s the final few zones of the match. You cut it too close, get swallowed by the gas—and instead of going to the Gulag, you come back... different. You're a zombie. Not to win. Not to survive. But to sabotage. You get one shot—fast, brutal, relentless—and your only goal is to ruin someone else's perfect run. Maybe you take down a sniper who’s been hiding all game. Maybe you scramble a team’s plans just before they claim victory. You can’t win anymore—it’s about impact. About making your last breath count. And in a game that sometimes slows down near the end, what better way to keep the heart pounding than to rise from the dead and throw one last wrench into the fight?
Overall, the game provides an insight on overlooked aspects of Game Design: player impact with game complexity & size. By critiquing the game, a developer and designer can take away the weight chance has on a game and how it balances out games that have many players.
Developers and Designers everywhere: I hope you are able to apply this to your own projects, and that’s it for my latest blog post!
