Video game developers continue to push the boundaries of advertisements for games. From star-studded trailers to the hacked website of a bee enthusiast, game-makers are not afraid to take risks on new methods of building hype for their titles. Still… few creators have taken to updating old games in order to push out hype for their next one.
It seems Activision may have gone that route earlier this week when an update was pushed to console versions of Treyarch’s Call of Duty: Black Ops 2. Savvy players stumbled across an item believed to have been included in the update. A Snaptag, an image similar to a QR code but only used by messaging service Snapchat, was found within one of the game’s multiplayer levels. Scanning the code allows Snapchat users to quickly add friends and view Snapchat messages.
Youtube user Drift0r posted a video of finding the Snaptag:
Twitter user @Nipple_Nicholas then posted the results of scanning the Snaptag:
@TmarTn @OMGitsAliA @Drift0r On Callofduty’s Snapchat! pic.twitter.com/P7cD3ozAa5
— Nick (@Nipple_Nicholas) April 7, 2015
The video doesn’t really reveal much on its own, but the way it was discovered can be enough to fuel the idea that a third game in the Black Ops series may be on the way.
The Call of Duty series is on a three-year development rotation now that Sledgehammer games has joined series veteransTreyarch and Infinity Ward. If the rotation is holding true, 2015 is Treyarch’s year, since Black Ops 2 launched in 2012, followed by Ghosts in 2013 and Advanced Warfare in 2014. There had been rumors of a potential return to the World War II setting for an upcoming Call of Duty game, with the last WWII title being Treyarch’s World at War in 2008. With this recent find coming from Black Ops 2’s update, however, it is more likely that Treyarch will instead follow-up on the success of the Black Ops series. That said, very little was actually reveled in the short (and very cryptic) clip, so it really is anyone’s guess. We’ll most likely know more at E3 in June, so for now these teases may be simply the start of a viral campaign that leads into the formal announcement.
Stay tuned to LevelSave.com for continuing coverage, as more of these teases will most likely keep being discovered. We’ll keep you updated.
UPDATE – April 9, 2015:
Well folks, we didn’t have to wait long. Here is a teaser for what is most certaintly Black Ops 3, with roman numerals confirming the speculation
As you can see from the ending, an actual trailer will be shown starting April 26.
