Twitch streamer Dr DisRespect was a big fan of the recent beta for Call of Duty’s battle royale mode Blackout, and when a fan sent a Blackout skin concept just for the Doc, he encouraged Treyarch to get in touch on the ‘flip phone’.
Before Blackout’s week long beta, Dr DisRespect was best known for streaming rival battle royale game PUBG – in which he already has official skins in game which players can purchase.
He, along with fellow streamer shroud, are credited with introducing, and keeping the interest of, a significant chunk of PUBG’s player base, promoting the game through their streams which attract viewers in the tens of thousands.
And when the Blackout beta released, it was these two once again who were pulling in the big viewer figures. The Doc peaked at around 65,000 concurrent viewers, and shroud at over 70,000 – music to the ears of Treyarch.
Thanks to the added attention that streamers can bring to a game, potentially boosting pre-orders and more, adding skins in their likeness is often a way of repaying them, plus fans get more content to purchase.
Dr DisRespect was unsurprisingly keen on the concept a fan sent – telling Treyarch “we’re ready, we’ll negotiate.”
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The concept actually gave Dr DisRespect another idea, inspired by the face scanning feature that was possible even in games like Rainbow Six: Vegas 2, and is still used in sports games like NBA 2K.
“Why the hell can we not adopt that technology? Why aren’t we using it for every single video game? 2007 was Vegas 2.”
The full Blackout game will release with Black Ops 4 on October 12, and Treyarch have confirmed that more skins and content will be added post-launch, but haven’t gone into any specifics yet.
With the range of skins available in the beta however, it is clear that the studio are using a fairly loose artistic direction for the mode, and so some wackier skins are likely down the line.
If Dr DisRespect, shroud and others become the face of the game in the livestreaming world, it would be no surprise to eventually see outfits in their likeness at some point too.
The Blackout skin of the Doc created by Twitter user @PaddyMazz.