Call of Duty Developer Treyarch released a new video series that gives a behind the scenes look at one of the most popular video game franchises of all time.
The series, called Declassified, started off with a look at the development history of an iconic map in FPS history, Nuketown.
Since its appearance in the original Black Ops, Nuketown has been a part of every Black Ops release as a multiplayer map and was even redesigned for Zombies.
In Black Ops 4, Nuketown features on its own island in the Blackout mode, in addition to Multiplayer.
Adam Hoggatt, Senior Level Designer at Treyarch and creator of Nuketown, explained how one of the most popular maps in video games started with a random email.
“An email came out from [David Vonderhaar] saying, ‘Hey what if we make a small map based on those nuclear testing towns?’ I started getting ideas in my head instantly,” said Hoggatt.
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Black Ops producer Miles Leslie was apparently not in the original email chain, because he was not aware of the Nuketown concept, saying, “Adam came in and was like ‘hey I made this map,’ we didn’t ask you to make this map. Why did you make this map?”
Thankfully, the Miles and the team immediately recognized the potential of Adam’s concept anyway and Nuketown was born.
Adam and Miles would go on to explain the changes to Nuketown throughout the development process, like adding the bus and van in the middle of the map, as well as adapting the map to the jetpacks of Black Ops 3.
The complete Declassified episode can be found below.