A former Call of Duty developer from Sledgehammer Games has suggested that not enough people realize the amount of work that goes into making a Call of Duty game.
Sledgehammer Games' former General Manager Glen Schofield has detailed the amount of work that goes into making each Call of Duty game in an effort to challenge the perception that the series is put "through the grinder." According to Schofield, each entry in the series requires a vast amount of research before development can even begin:
"You’re working with experts – I studied World War Two for three years. I worked with historians. I spent eight days in a van in Europe going to all the places that were going to be in the game. I shot different old weapons. All of these things that you have to do when you’re working on a Call of Duty game,” explains Schofield.
Call of Duty games are released annually, so it's easy to see where this public attitude comes from, but most people don't take into consideration that Call of Duty is a series that has three development studios working on new games almost constantly. Besides Sledgehammer, there's also Treyarch and Infinity Ward, both of which are also responsible for a number of Call of Duty titles.
In regards to the output of these other studios, Schofield explains that there was "internal competition", albeit coming from a healthy place:
"It’s weird because you really rooted for each studio because you needed and wanted every Call of Duty to do well. But you always wanted to get a higher score. You wanted to achieve more sales if you could. So yeah, we pushed each other, we really did."
As for the next entry in the Call of Duty series, we have a prospective name, but not much else is known. Call of Duty 2021 is allegedly going to be named Call of Duty: Vanguard and is rumored to be getting a WW2-inspired map, although other leaks also suggest a remastered version of the Modern Warfare 2 map Terminal will also be coming to the game as DLC.
Source: VGC