"There are lists and lists of ideas that didn't make it in. There’s a mountain of them. You could go swimming in all of the ideas," enthuses Miles Leslie, Creative Specialist at Treyarch when we ask about the ideation process season-to-season for the game, and if anything -- this time around -- was so outlandish it couldn't see the light of day.

"Good ideas don't disappear. They just get pushed to next season," adds Raven's Associate Creative Director, Amos Hodge.

Indeed, we go into the above and more in our Season 3 developer interview for Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War and Warzone.

Here's another snippet:

AusGamers: It’s great that a consistent narrative permeates the seasonal releases, is there any reason the story wasn’t continued solely in single-player Campaign as additional story beats? Or with the inclusion of single-player chapters as part of the overall update(s)?

Miles: Something we talked about was “what's the best way to continue telling the story?”.

For us continuing the narrative into multiplayer is brand new. And when I say multiplayer, I mean across Cold War and Warzone.

What was really interesting for us was our campaign really set up the world of Cold War and this really intriguing story with Perseus and everything that happened. And we wanted to use, again, Multiplayer and Warzone in really new ways to engage players in the story.

Click here for the full Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War and Warzone developer interview Q&A

Activision have confirmed the PC and PlayStation 3 release date for the Rezurrection DLC pack - September 22nd.

Moon, the first Call of Duty level to catapult players into orbit, delivers outrageous new weapons, high-tech gear and unstoppable hordes of low gravity zombie beasts, delivering the most epic, challenging and otherworldly Zombies experience yet. Rezurrection also brings back four of the original maps that spawned the Zombies phenomenon. Amplified by the firepower and visual fidelity of Black Ops, players can relive the nightmare of "Nacht der Untoten," escape the Zombie madness in the asylum of "Verruckt," battle back the undead Imperial Army of "Shi No Numa," and pull the plug on "Der Riese," the zombie factory that started it all.

In case you missed it, check out the awesome live action trailer featuring the (very gory) zombie research facility on the moon.

In an investor meeting in Los Angeles, Activision CEO, Eric Hirshberg, revealed that the average spend for Call of Duty: Black Ops with post-release map packs, was USD$76. 18 million of these map packs have been sold since the game's release.

You don't have to be good at maths to see how astounding that is.

According to Hirshberg, there was an 18 percent increase on DLC sales over previous titles. Modern Warfare 2, for example, sold 11 million map packs while World at War sold just 9 million.

"There are over 30 million unique players of Black Ops who collectively have amassed, incredibly, more than 2.3 billion hours of play," he said.

"To put that number in perspective, that's more than a quarter of a million years of play and that means our millions of fans spend more time per day on Black Ops multiplayer than they do on Facebook."

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 rocks the boat this November, but will it maintain this significant trend with Battlefield 3 vying for top-spot? Only time will tell.

Call of Duty: Black Ops developer Treyarch sure do love their zombies and for their next DLC offering, they're really pulling out all the stops. If going back to World at War's Nazi zombie maps wasn't enough, they're also going to the moon. Yeah, fighting zombies on the moon.

The Rezurrection pack is due on Xbox Live for Xbox 360 on August 23rd 2011 with PC and PS3 due to follow at a yet-to-be-disclosed later date.

Watch the trailer below or click here for HD.

As we close in on the anticipated release of Modern Warfare 3 and the media slaw it will bring in the lead up to November, Treyarch are just reminding everyone they had their way with the franchise most recently, with a look at what will likely be their final DLC for Black Ops, Rezurrection.

There's no denying the most loved part of the Treyarch games is their zombie maps, in with Rezurrection, the team have gone one better; serving up a host of World at War original maps as well as an all-new "Moon" map with plenty of 50s and 60s throwback components and the ability to literally blow zombies up.

Watch the trailer embedded below, or click here for the HD option.

Activision have let us know when PC and PS3 players can arrive at the Call of Duty: Black Ops "Annihilation Map Pack" DLC party, fashionably late, as usual.

“With Annihilation, the team at Treyarch and Activision has shown its continued commitment to bringing new and unique content to our fans,” said Treyarch Studio Head, Mark Lamia. “Players are getting four of the best multiplayer maps to date with Hangar 18, Drive-In, Silo and Hazard. They also get a brand new dose of thrills in Shangri-La, our latest Zombies offering, packed with deadly traps and dark secrets buried within the shifting walls of an ancient and mysterious temple.”

According to ATVI local, you'll be able to grab the content on the 28th of this month. We've hit them back for specific pricing, so watch this space for details.

You can also check out the Annihilation DLC trailer embedded below, or right here for the HD option.

Further to yesterday's leaked information of a new map pack coming for Call of Duty: Black Ops, Activision and Treyarch have today confirmed the leak with a brand new trailer, detailing four new competitive multiplayer maps and one all-new zombies map.

Unlike Escalation, Annihilation looks to have a lot more variety; both in visuals and in size and recourse. The video runs through each of them in decent detail, and as both an Area 51 enthusiast and a player of the game of golf, I'm kind of interested in playing both Hangar and Hazard. Of course, like all other CoD DLC, this one is a timed exclusive to Xbox Live and releases on June 28.

Watch the trailer embedded below, or click here for the HD streaming option.

GameStop have continued the retail tradition of leaking information earlier than it's supposed to be (thanks Black Ops 24/7), confirming minor details on the next Call of Duty: Black Ops Map Pack DLC, which will be the third released from Treyarch since the game's release (Modern Warfare 2 only had two, and both had rehashed levels from the first Modern Warfare).

Again the DLC will feature four brand-new maps along with a new Zombies map. "Hangar 18", "Hazard", "Drive-In" and "Silo" are the names of the four maps, while we know very little regarding the new Zombies map, but it would be awesome if they put as much effort into as they did the previous star-studded one.

Beyond the map names and the DLCs existence, not much more is known, but last time this happened, Escalation wasn't too far away, so we're expecting official word from Activision shortly.

Among the listed changes in the weekend's Steam PC patch for Call of Duty: Black Ops was the following quiet gem:

- Added support for mods in preparation for the upcoming tools release.

Along with the (restricted but delivered) dedicated server support, mod support was another feature planned by Treyarch prior to the game's very successful launch last November, but 6 months on, has still yet to materialise.

Here's the relevant developer quote from last August

We plan to open the game up for modding sometime post-launch. We do not know yet to what extent you will be able to mod the game. There are some purely technical issues related to engine and internal tool enhancements that do not easily fit the modtools paradigm. We have looked at it close enough to see that it is non-trivial and we will have to pick it up again post-launch. Right now we are completely focused on finishing the game.

While it's obviously nice to see this still happening at all, one can't help but wonder the reasons why it's only now -- when the attention of Call of Duty fans has been diverted to the next game in the series -- that it's coming to fruition. Letting users create their own maps and game mode modifications does have the potential to undermine DLC sales, yet that didn't prevent Valve from opening up Portal 2 within weeks of launch. The PC versions of two high profile titles from Bethesda: RAGE and The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim also both promise to be wide open to modding when they launch later this year.

A big stumbling block for modding with Black Ops -- that has yet to be acknowledged by the developers -- is that the dedicated servers are only operated by a single private company, so even if the tools do give the mod community enough access to create some cool new game modes or custom maps, they can't run their own servers for people to actually play those on anyway. So is it even worth it?

What does everyone else think? Or are we all too busy playing the console versions to care about PC modding these days anyway?

Say what you will of pricey DLC and the new content delivery model the games industry has adopted, but today's information regarding the upcoming "Escalation" map-pack for Call of Duty: Black Ops is pretty nerdtastic.

Activision and Treyarch have unveiled the talent line-up to feature in the new zombie map coming with the forthcoming downloadable content, "Call of the Dead", which is "inspired" by George A. Romero and features the likeness and voices of Danny Trejo, Sarah-Michelle Gellar, Robert Englund, Michael Rooker and the aforementioned king of zombie flicks and lore, George A. Romero.

Could be worth the price of admission now. Watch the grindhouse-inspired trailer below, or click here for the HD option.

According to a Twitter from one of the Treyarch Developers, PCDev, states that mod tools for Treyarch's critically acclaimed Call of Duty: Black Ops should be released in May, with no set date just yet. It was also re-tweeted via community Manager Josh Olin, helping quash it as a rumour. This comes with Treyarch last year stating they would release a mod toolkit, due to Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2's lack of modding capabilities.

News: We are shooting for mod tools release in May. #codblackops #pc

Here is hoping this can invigorate the modding community to bringing out some really cool ideas. promoted forum item

According to the Facebook status and the Call of Duty website, the next map pack for Call of Duty: Black Ops, Escalation, will be released first on Xbox Live on May 3, 2011. This comes rather quickly behind the recent release of the PC version of the map pack one, First Strike (http://www.callofduty.com/intel/453).

Escalation contains 5 maps, with 1 adding onto Zombie mode for singleplayer/multiplayer. The 5 new maps are Zoo, Hotel, Convoy, Stockpile and Call of the Deed for Zombies.

Here is a little summary from the website

"In Multiplayer, battle it out in "Hotel", on the roof of a Cuban luxury hotel and casino against the vivid backdrop of old Havana; "Convoy" delivers intense, close-quarters combat at the scene of an ambushed US military convoy; "Zoo" takes you on a wild ride in an abandoned Soviet Russian Zoo, with danger at every turn; "Stockpile" pits players in a remote Russian farm town housing secret WMD facilities.

For Zombies fans, "Escalation" features a unique Zombies experience. We can't wait to take the wraps off of our new Zombies map, Call of the Dead, a very special creation for all Zombies fans."

Additionally, to celebrate the upcoming release, there will be a Black Ops Double XP weekend beginning Friday, May 6th. promoted forum post