Treyarch senior executive producer Jason Blundell, one of the lead developers on the Call of Duty: Black Ops series, announced his exit from the studio Friday. Blundell was a key member of the development of the series' Zombies game mode, and worked on games in the series dating all the way back to Call of Duty 3 in 2006, as one of its producers.
The news was shared on Friday afternoon on Treyarch's official Twitter account. Activision hasn't confirmed if the studio is working on the next entry in the Call of Duty series, but reports have surfaced of the game being a remaster of the original Black Ops, which turns 10 years old this year.
Blundell joined Treyarch at a time when the Activision-owned studio was better known for working on licensed properties, including fan favorite Spider-Man 2. Infinity Ward's work on the series elevated it to mainstream dominance with Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, but Treyarch kept the series at the top with World at War and the Black Ops series.
Fans responded quite well to the Zombies game mode Treyarch developed, which debuted as Nazi Zombies in World at War and grew beyond the studio's own entries to become a fixture of the series in general. The co-op focused, wave-based gameplay grew in complexity and depth over the course of the series, with players still finding easter eggs in Zombies maps long after release.
Blundell's work on Zombies grew from a senior production role on several of World at War's maps into an executive producer credit on all four of the Black Ops entries, where he oversaw development of the mode as a whole. The mode went from an odd experimental side project into a key part of what kept Call of Duty fans coming back to the series year after year, sometimes for the Zombies experience alone.
The Call of Duty franchise may not have the same level of sheer dominance it had at the series' peak, but Activision still seems intent on keeping it from slowing down like other once-annual franchises like Assassin's Creed. It's not clear what Treyarch's next steps for its own take on the series will look like, but fans can safely expect it to be revealed before the fall.