'Call Of Duty: Black Ops Cold War's fans love the game's "creative licence".
Lead designer Tony Flame from Treyarch thinks the game series is so popular because it has such as "passionate" community behind it but is also a very "playful" game.
He said: "I think there is something playful about Black Ops. It's serious. It has historical significance. But there is some play there, and Zombies is part of that. Some of the twists and turns in the campaign are an example of that. And even in our multiplayer. There is some creative license where we get to have fun with the fans.
"And with Zombies in particular, the fans can participate in, and we really do look at it as a back and forth. Fans are participating in this, and our community is so passionate and so large now. We listen to them and the game changes in response to the community, and it's very organic in that way. That's what Black Ops has become."
And senior creative director Dan Vondrak from Raven has praised the game's link to real life, diving between real "headlines".
He added: "It's pretty simple. It's these few tenets that I think all Black Ops fans love. The other Call of Duty games, a lot of them were like these open wars, frontline headlines stuff, whereas Black Ops stuff is like no, we're going to be between the headlines. We love the deniable operations. The secret missions governments don't want you to know about. The conspiracy, grounded in real history, is what triggers that Black Ops feeling. You see this footage and it's a piece of history you know, but Black Ops loves telling you the real story behind it, and they put just enough truth in it and they blur those lines where you're like, oh man, that maybe could have happened. And then that paranoia ... That's something that gave us a lot of license. It gives you something that some of the other franchises can't necessarily get away with."
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