Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 developer Infinity Ward released the follow up to their critically acclaimed re-imagination of the Call of Duty franchise late last year. Publisher Activision boosted awareness with a huge advertising campaign and hype no other franchise has seen. The result? MW2 sold 4.7 million units within the first 24 hours of being released in the US and UK. It was immediately donned the “biggest entertainment launch in history.” Dedicated fans made the online multiplayer one of largest communities a group of consoles have ever witnessed. Everyone seemed to get what they wanted out of the deal, and so the story continues..
Late last night it was reported that security was brought to Infinity Ward’s offices for unknown reasons. It’s also worth noting that IW heads met with the higher ups at Activision and essentially went missing. Some thought “this is just a PR stunt!” or “viral marketing ploy.” I, like most of IW’s employees I’m sure, was simply confused. But the situation was addressed today, and it is clear, to me anyways, that Activision is simply being a bully. An announcement issued by them stated a new development team would take over the next CoD game and that IW heads Jason West and Vince Zampella would be replaced. Most notably, is the mention of “strategic plans” for future entries in the CoD series. Anyways, now for my take..
It seems like what happened is that the heads of Infinity Ward stood up to Activision in some way or another. The accused “insubordination” looks to be the result of Activision trying to bully Infinity Ward, and West/Zampella simply saying “no.” I’ve heard a myriad of reasoning as to what Activision wanted, but I’ve narrowed it down to three major things: bring on a third CoD developer, make the next MW subscription based, or simply milk the franchise with yearly sequels (Guitar Hero, etc). The first would certainly cause disarray because IW seems to already hate sharing the load with Call of Duty: World at War developer Treyarch. Competition for developers within the same franchise seems pretty stupid to begin with, but really? And IW has proven with MW/MW2 it is quite obviously the more successful of the two. The second reasoning would just prove that IW was willing to stand up for their fans and did not want to charge loyal customers more money, just for Activision’s benefit. And the third goes along with that same concept, that IW has proven themselves and don’t want to rush products just for the sake of a buck in Activision’s wallet. Whatever the reason, the story is so bizarre. Rather than come to an agreement, Activision just tossed the franchise to some dev I’ve never heard of and got rid of two of their most talented workers.
I never really dug war games until IW came around. The idea of essentially leveling up your character and being rewarded for getting multiple kills in a row is great. Playing MW2 online reminds me of how I felt first playing Goldeneye 64. Since then, First Person Shooters have usually been mundane, but IW pushed the genre forward and made some spectacular advancements as far as I’m concerned. I’m literally hooked on MW2.. hooked. It’s a daily routine for me. Now that things have been rattled, I just have hope that we’ll see a MW3 made by IW, and not some random company. That’s the way it should be.
As far as consequences, Activision has turned their back on the few fans who still respected them. There’s no doubt in my mind that hardcore fans of CoD are going to side with IW on this one. I know there are some people who won’t care or notice at all, but it’s a big deal to me. Even aside from the gaming aspect, this could easily be about money and greed; two terms usually associated with Activision. The fact that they’d just fire people and replace them to royally screw their customers is disgusting.
I leave you with a quote from Corp. Dunn in MW2 that I found incredibly ironic: “Did command just tell us to go ‘f’ ourselves?”
glory by the gram 