Black Ops DLC - Treyarch tells all

Call of Duty: Black Ops map pack First Strike crushed sales records when it launched in February, clocking up 1.4 million downloads in its first 24 hours. OXM spoke to Treyarch's community manager Josh Olin about the studio's DLC strategy.

Do you feel that you have to introduce new gameplay features such as added ziplines and monkeys into DLC now - like just doing maps won't cut it?

Yes, it's paramount. It's more than making downloadable content, it's more than just the new map, it's more than new locales. We've done that before and it's a priority at Treyarch to bring fresh, new experiences to players - things they haven't done before.

All through the year we've been talking about "ratcheting the bar up", so for DLC we've got to figure out how to ratchet up the levels themselves. One thing a lot of fans loved about Black Ops multiplayer was the interactivity on our multiplayer maps. They loved that on Radiation the base doors could open and close, and they could launch a rocket out of them. They said they wanted more, so that's why you see things like the ziplines and the bridge in Discovery.

Then you look at Zombies, in which there's a lot more creative freedom because it's a completely fictional world. That's why the Zombies map had new enemy types, new weapons, new perk changes - all the things you see in Ascension.

Are there any limits on what you can do with Zombies, or do you just throw in the maddest ideas that you can?

The only limits are what the fans would receive well. We'd never make a new Zombie level just completely out there - it'd be in the face of every single thing we've built to date. There's very much a sort of grey line that sets in part over time and it feels very sparse, but we tell the story in a very indirect manner, and we toss hints throughout the maps. Fans love that so we would never mess that up.

Black Ops has been a huge success - will it become a separate brand like Modern Warfare, and will there be a Black Ops 2?

Your guess is as good as mine. We're so happy with Black Ops - it was incredible. Everyone hoped it would have this kind of success. We all knew how well MW2 did last year, breaking all entertainment records, so the fact that Black Ops broke through it for a second year in a row and reset that record was incredible. We're still really glad that we hit the ground with the DLC when we finished the game, because we knew we wanted to get it back out there.

We've been fascinated and horrified by what's been designed in the Emblem Creator. Have you been impressed by what the community has come up with?

There's never a shortage of creativity within the CoD community, and that's why we have that feature. We wanted to let their colours shine through, and let them really express themselves and create their own online identities. For every one bad emblem out there, there are thousands of really awesome, impressive and artistic ones. And of course we've our enforcement policy to weed out those bad apples, and you can report offensive emblems so it's a totally fair trade-off. We're not going to let bad apples spoil that extra appeal.

Are there a certain number of complaints you have to get before something gets looked at? Or a cut off where you get so many complaints and it gets pushed to the top of the queue?