Bobby Kotick’s Activision Blizzard Games Among Top 10 Most Played in 2022

Call of Duty Warzone and Vanguard, produced through Bobby Kotick’s Activision Blizzard video game company, are in big demand with gamers. So are Minecraft, The Sims 4, Fortnite, Among Us, and Grand Theft Auto V. According to NPD Group’s PlayerPulse list, those games are among the most played in 2022 Q1, which is usually from January to the end of March. Evergreen and live-service games ranked high because they are “gravity wells for player attention, time and spending,” said Mat Piscatella, NPD’s executive director.

Here are the Top 10games on NPD Group’s PlayerPulse List of 2022 Q1:

Activision CEO Bobby Kotick Discusses the Call of Duty Franchise

Activision CEO Bobby Kotick once promised that there would always be new Call of Duty games. That’s excellent news for fans of the first-person shooter franchise. According to the PlayerPulse list, gamers have been engrossed in multiple versions of the war game for the first part of 2022.

In Call of Duty: Vanguard, players step into the combat boots of World War II soldiers fighting for victory across the Eastern and Western fronts of Europe, North Africa, and the Pacific. According to Activision Blizzard, “Witness the rise of the Special Forces as players drop into new locales with authentic World War II loadouts. Players will also be able to prove their mettle as they try to survive the relentless onslaught of the undead in a chilling new zombies experience, developed by Treyarch Studios.”

In Call of Duty: Warzone, players need to join forces to battle two iconic monsters, Godzilla and Kong. “Squad up against these legendary creatures and harness their power in Operation Monarch,” notes Activision. For a limited time, players can purchase the Kong bundle, which includes special Blueprints that feature Rock Slab effect and Gorilla Green Tracers, or the Mechagodzilla bundle, which comes with Blueprints that include Cyber Crimson Tracers and Photon Scream Dismemberment. “I have tried both bundles and asking me to pick a favorite is like asking me to pick my favorite child,” says a longtime CoD gamer. “Both bundles add a whole new level of fun to the Warzone franchise.”

It takes an army of talented employees to bring the battle to life for players. “On a game like Call of Duty, there are 1,600 people in six studios around the world creating content on a regular basis,” shares Kotick. “There are usually hundreds of thousands of people [involved] in a franchise.”

How involved is Kotick in the game-making process? “I participate in the process of determining what new ideas we are going to pursue,” explains Bobby Kotick. “But remember the company was founded in 1980, and so we have a rich library of content [from which] we can create. We have hundreds of franchises, so we can go back to that library and look for new ideas. 90% of our business is just direct digital to the consumer, and about 10% are physical products.”

What Keeps Gamers Coming Back to the Call of Duty Franchise?

The game has resonated with players since the first version of CoD was released in 2003. To date, it’s helped Activision Blizzard amass 100 million active monthly users to their games. The franchise is reportedly worth $9.7 billion.

“Activision’s Call of Duty is a true and undeniable legend in the gaming industry,” says Thomas Lupfer, a New York City-based gamer. “The story is lengthy, well structured, detailed, and packs an action-fueled journey through different parts of the world and periods in WWII.” And Boston-based player KD Bell believes that Call of Duty: Warzone deserves to be on the list because “the map is a decent size for the number of players and the money system is great.”