CoD Veteran's New Shooter Is "Not A Call Of Duty Killer," Inspired By David Lynch
Overview & Key Takeaways
One of the best-known Call of Duty developers, David Vonderhaar, is making a new game that is "not a Call of Duty killer" but is instead something that sounds quite different.
It will be a shooter, but Vonderhaar told Bloomberg it's "definitely not" another military simulation-type game. Instead, people can think of it as "if David Lynch made shooters."
Players will work together to fight environmental challenges and also each other, the report said, suggesting it will be some type of PvPvE game.
One of the best-known Call of Duty developers, David Vonderhaar, is making a new game that is "not a Call of Duty killer" but is instead something that sounds quite different.
It will be a shooter, but Vonderhaar told Bloomberg it's "definitely not" another military simulation-type game. Instead, people can think of it as "if David Lynch made shooters."
Players will work together to fight environmental challenges and also each other, the report said, suggesting it will be some type of PvPvE game.
Invoking Lynch's name is sure to bring attention to Vonderhaar's project, as the iconic filmmaker made some of the most surreal movies and TV shows, chief among them being Twin Peaks. He died in 2025, but his legacy lives on, obviously, and his distinct style led to people describing works like his as "Lynchian."
Alan Wake and Control developer Remedy, for example, cited Lynch as an inspiration for many of the studio's projects. In fact, the internal code name for Alan Wake 2 was "Big Fish," which was a reference to Lynch's autobiography, Catching the Big Fish.
Vonderhaar is no stranger to surrealism, as his former Call of Duty studio, Treyarch, was known for instilling mind-bending and trippy narrative features in the Black Ops games over the years.
Vonderhaar is developing this new project at his studio, BulletFarm, which is funded in part by GreaterThan Group (GTG), after the studio previously lost funding from NetEase.
Vonderhaar told Bloomberg he hopes to finish this new game in about three years, and fewer than 50 people are currently working on it. He said he doesn't necessarily want to ramp up his studio in part because, "Money doesn't make it good. People make it good."
Vonderhaar worked on Call of Duty for nearly 20 years, spending all of that time at Treyarch. He quit in 2023 and started BulletFarm in 2024. After leaving the Call of Duty series behind, Vonderhaar reflected that Treyarch "can only do so much" with the juggernaut FPS series because its legions of fans want mostly the same things each year.
GTG is also helping to fund Star Wars: Fate of the Old Republic from Mass Effect veteran Casey Hudson.
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