Contracts

Contracts are a multiplayer feature implemented in Call of Duty: Black Ops.

Mechanics
Contracts are available to purchase with CoD Points. Different contracts have different goals, such as achieving a certain number of killstreak rewards or getting a certain amount of kills with a specific weapon. Completing a contract will yield more CoD Points than the player paid for the contract itself; certain contracts also reward experience upon completion. The higher difficulty of the contract, the higher payout upon completion.

Contracts expire eventually. Once players accept the contract, they have a certain amount of time to fulfill it. The time counted is the time passed while alive in matches. (i.e. time spent dead waiting for the next round in S&D, or waiting for a HQ to be destroyed is not counted.) Also, match-specific contracts' time limits will only count down when alive in that match. For example, players will not lose time on a Team Deathmatch Contract if they play in Domination.

There are three different categories of Contracts: Mercenary (primary weapon kills, killstreaks, etc.), Operations (match related wins, kills, etc.), Specialist (headshots, secondary kills, etc.). Players can have no more than three Contracts, one from each category, active at any time. Selecting a new Contract removes an existing (incomplete) Contract of the respective category without refund. The available set of Contracts changes daily at 00:00 UTC. Purchased Contracts can still be completed after this daily update (as long as the time spent alive in-game has not run out).

For example, the Mercenary Contract, "SPAS Cruelty", is bought for 50 CoD Points and requires the player to get 25 kills with the SPAS in 40-minutes of time alive in-game. The reward for completing this particular Contract is 250 CoD Points. The actual profit is 200 CoD Points.

Mercenary contracts
Contracts for getting kills and killstreaks.

Operations contracts
Contracts for specific game modes and playlists.

Specialist contracts
Contracts for headshots, secondary weapons, Grenades, and special objectives.

Trivia

 * The contracts available to be purchased are changed every 24 hours.
 * The contract "Smells like...Victory" is a reference to the movie Apocalypse Now.
 * "Tears Taste So Sweet" could be a reference to South Park: Imaginationland, where Cartman says this.
 * If the player buys a contract, but then replaces it with another, the first one bought will be counted as expired.
 * The Wii contains only around 30 contracts in all at one time - this is likely due to unnessessary RAM it would use.