For years, Infinity Ward and Treyarch have been like rebellious wheels on Call of Duty's shopping trolley, yanking the creative agenda this way and that. Hatchets appear to have been buried with Modern Warfare 3, however, which loans the Gun Game and One in the Chamber modes from Call of Duty: Black Ops, and Infinity Ward's Robert Bowling says the studios will band together more in future.
"I think there will always be a lot of communication back and forth. At the end of the day we are two different developers and we have different opinions about the games we make and the games they make," Bowling told OXM in an interview.
He made similar remarks to NowGamer. "Every year, we have that challenge of looking at what the previous Call of Duty has done, and trying to learn from that and better our own game because of it. do the same thing with Treyarch games, and I hope that they do the same thing with our games."
Even discounting the inevitable Modern Warfare 4, Infinity Ward has its work cut out over the coming months, with a full season of Modern Warfare 3 content drops to ship in collaboration with Raven Studios and Sledgehammer Games. Treyarch, meanwhile, is hotly tipped to be working on Black Ops 2.
Both teams have the next gen hardware question to reckon with. How should Call of Duty change during the leap to Xbox 720? "After any big project you sit down and decide where we want to go next," Bowling commented, "and in that conversation we consider what new technology is going to be available to us, what restrictions no longer apply that were there in the past and what our resources are, so especially in a transitional period in our industry that's also something we have to take in.
"Right now, we haven't decided what our next move is as Infinity Ward, but we are going to be taking all of that to our next iteration."
Read the rest of the Bowling interview in issue 83, on sale now. It's the one featuring a scary man with scary hair, also known as Far Cry 3 villain Vaas.
7 comments so far...
danhalen74 on 23 Feb '12 said:
dedicated servers as standard. use blops lack of quickscoping (how can i be killed by a sniper when im not in the crosshairs and sprinting?) keep the wager system from blops, use the slightly faster movement of mw3 and the better weapons, maybe have a mode for adults only - y'know the people that can legally buy the game, bot matches, customisation from blops, free monthly downloads of old maps that change around every few weeks....these are all just random things of the top of my head that could be done if IW and Treyarch combined the best of what each other offer...ive not thought it through too much to be fair before anyone rips it apart.....
Bezza89 on 23 Feb '12 said:
They'll need to combine efforts with treyarch to make a new engine, they can't surely use the same one for 'next gen' ones, hell iDtech 5 is on 360 already, and they haven't bumped up from iD3 yet.
comabob on 23 Feb '12 said:
Do you think its because IW have since realized that a LOT of people tend to think BloPs was a much a better experience than MW3? ANd this is their way of trying to assure people they wont make the same mistakes again?
XxJestersTearxX on 23 Feb '12 said:
If they teamed up with DICE, though it would take the competition out of it, would make an insane game. Also DICE would probably do most of the work because lets face it neither MW3 or black ops were the favorite. Call of duty games have dropped in standard after modern warfare, and they really need to think of new ideas. Battlefield on the other hand, have made games with all different aspects, every battlefield is different, and with the new release of the new Frostbite engine which was used for BF3, made the franchise move up a notch or two. Call of duty players are always going to bitch about battlefield frankly because it is a better game all round. OK, call of duty offers fun game modes, and the opportunity to add camo to your guns, but battlefield makes up for not having camo by increasing the realism, new weapons, new tactics, new game engine ect. Recently when playing BF3 I noticed modern tactics by players, mostly things like hiding in cover, fast movement to and from positions and more importantly, teamwork. Teamwork is an aspect that call of duty need towork on, Game modes like domination, team defender and sabotage are really the only ones with a [i]hint[i] of teamwork. which is why i have gone from CoD to battlefield, IW and treyarc, to DICE and EA simply because i like not being screamed at by a child that is younger than even understanding what "ni**er means and just say it like you can just go around screaming at you. Otherwise battlefield, the teammates always communicate in a way you can understand, and tactical language.
Overall if this happens, call of duty will be screwed in my opinion, Battlefield 4 will destroy it because people will be sick and tired of the same old shit that CoD offers
RANT OVER
Cypher Unknown on 23 Feb '12 said:
Really? I seem to recall it was the Battlefield players constantly bitching about COD, how it's the 'better game', the players are more 'mature', how COD is finished and that Battlefield will stomp all over it, and so on and so on.
If COD makes a big point of team work, does it not just become Battlefield? The beauty at the moment is choice. Whether you want a run and gun twitch shooter or a more tactical team based game, you're catered for. If either game starts to become like the other, then the choice disappears, which is only a bad thing.
See my first comment. Wasn't Battlefield 3 supposed to destroy MW3? Maybe next time, huh?
thecreator on 24 Feb '12 said:
I love COD single player and don't really play multiplayer, think I must be on my own in that. Battlefield was one of the worst games I have ever played (although not as bad as the latest Medal of Honor). Whenever I have a game I always play it through to the end but I couldn't with Battlefield, I just did not like it at all. Even more disappointing was that I fell for the hype on graphics etc and rushed out to buy it.
Anyway thats all personal opinion, fact is I doubt Activision will be that bothered by Battlefield really, sales figures are what matter.
Oh and btw, bring back world war 2!!
Ben1982 on 25 Feb '12 said:
With the new technology will they have much bigger maps, if so they need a sniper mode on multi player, a building for each team, sky scrapers like die hard lol, the teams have to shot across with 100s of windows and lots of different floors. even use this map for normal modes with a passage opening to get to and from both building, think how good search and destroy would be on a map like this. also needs to be a zombie sky scraper map our a massive shopping centre like dawn of the dead, having places where you can proper box your self in. be good to see if the map sizes will increase because i think thats got to be one of the main things on how to improve call of duty.