CODumentary (2017) - full transcript

ANY VIEWS OR OPINIONS EXPRESSED IN INTERVIEWS OR COMMENTARY ARE THOSE OF THE INDIVIDUALS SPEAKING AND DO NOT NECESSARILY REPRESENT THE VIEWS OR OPINIONS OF FIZZ PICTURES, IT'S PARENT COMPANY OR ANY OF IT'S AFFILIATES OR EMPLOYEES.

The following motion picture CODumentary is a fully independent documentary production. It has not been funded, authorised, approved or directed by Activision Inc., Activision Publishing Inc. or any of its affiliates, subsidiaries, agents or representatives. All copyright content and trademarks have been recognised.

Activision, Call of Duty, Modern Warfare, Call of Duty Black Ops, Call of Duty MW3 & Call of Duty Ghosts are all officially registered trademarks of Activision Publishing Inc.

Call of Duty MW3 is an officially registered trademark of Activision Publishing Inc. Brothers in Arms is an officially registered trademark of Gearbox Software LLC. Medal of Honor is an officially registered trademark of Electronic Arts Inc. Counter Strike:Global Offensive is an officially registered trademark of Valve Corporation. Titanfall is an officially registered trademark of Respawn Entertainment LLC. All other trademarks and trade names are the properties of their respective owners.

UTAH BEACH, NORMANDY, FRANCE

In the early hours of June 6th 1944

allied paratroopers were dropped behind

enemy lines close to the beaches in

Normandy, France. It would mark the

beginning of D-day and was a major

turning point in world war II. Nearly 60



years later many of the battles and

events which took place that day would

be digitally recreated to form a

historic backdrop of one of the world's

biggest video games.

IN 2002 ELECTRONIC ARTS RELEASED THE AWARD-WINNING GAME MEDAL OF HONOR ALLIED ASSAULT

IN 2002 ELECTRONIC ARTS RELEASED THE AWARD WINNING VIDEO GAME MEDAL OF HONOR ALLIED ASSAULT
DEVELOPED BY 2015 GAMES MANY OF THE TEAM INCLUDING VINCE ZAMPELLA, JASON WEST, TODD ALDERMAN & CHANCE GLASCO LEFT THE COMPANY TO START A NEW STUDIO
INFINITY WARD

Tulsa is a very Midwestern city. It's

about half a million people, very

friendly atmosphere. We were the only

game company, you know, in Tulsa.

After we had started Infinity Ward we

had made Medal of Honor Allied Assault

and we put, you know, a little over



two years into that and we had to start

over from scratch.

During my time at Amblin while the guys

were working at Tulsa I'd spent most of

my time focused on supporting the feature

film and animation divisions. Medal of

Honor was one of the flagship titles for

Dreamworks Interactive and it was pivotal

in getting the whole division up and running.

When I heard that 2015 was

becoming Infinity Ward it was really

exciting. I really loved their work on Medal

of Honor. I saw some early screenshots

of Call of Duty and I was, I was a big fan.

I couldn't wait to see what they would come up

next for Activision.

After we had

started Infinity Ward we knew that our

competition was Medal of Honor. In some

ways like I kind of see Medal of Honor

Allied Assault as almost like a

Call of Duty 0 and we didn't really have

any people telling us
not to do something.

We found a publisher that for

the most part you know recognized us as

talented group of people and said do

your thing and make a good game.

I got my start in Call of
Duty back in 2003 on

the very first Call of Duty, I actually.

This is back when like Game Stops

weren't around. We had Electronics

Boutiques. So I had gone there a couple

days early because they had the game

early and got the game, that's how

big of a fan I was then. I was following

the 2015 guys, the Infinity Ward guys

since Medal of Honor.

So yeah, Call of Duty was like

the best new thing it was the hot new

thing for us. It was amazing. I just

remember like watching all the trailers

and seeing the bullet impact effects

coming off the walls and the shell shock

effects and like the real-time craters

that would form in the ground when

something went off when an explosion

went off. Those for the time in 2003

that was like revolutionary stuff. You

didn't see that in other games. Before

that we were playing like Return to

Castle Wolfenstein or Allied Assault. So

you know just visually the game seemed

so immersive you're aiming down the iron

sights you're bringing up the sights and

that hadn't been done before. Those were

like just for its time so revolutionary

and made myself and all of my

friends think that like this
is going to be the future.

We had to start over from scratch

because we were able to redo everything

that we did poorly you know. If there was

any legacy code that would have created kind of

you know that would have created problems

in the future we could redo that and

basically make a much tighter engine.

You know I started with Call of Duty 2 - and

really got into that game more so than

the first one I played on the PC and

just being able to use the same weapons

and you know see some of the situations

you know it was really actually very

interactive and having the dialog in the

single-player campaign and just knowing

like certain situations that some of

these soldiers had to go through I think,

that's just, it just blew my mind,

you know, and I think that's what draws a

lot of people towards videogames.

There were a bunch of names thrown around. I

remember one of the names we're likely

to pick was actually Tour of Duty and I

think that at some point along

the line I think it might have been

Tod Alderman that came up with Call

of Duty and we seemed to like that a

little bit better and so that's kind of

what we stuck with.

The building that we were
in was ridiculous.

It looked like a science
fiction book or movie or

something. I believe it was like 40 to 50

floors, not sure exactly. It was really

tall. It was in the middle of nowhere. It was

flatland and then these three giant buildings.

We've been making video games

for a long time at Gearbox. One of the

earliest original things that we created

was the series called Brothers in Arms

and at the time you know it was really

interesting because there was another

franchise when we got started there was

another franchise called Medal of Honor

that was also telling stories about

soldiers in world war II and we really

wanted to capture the feeling of what it

would be like. Medal of Honor was a great

game but it was more action-oriented.

We wanted to deliver an authentic

experience. What's interesting is the

Medal of Honor game was so successful

that while we were building our game

other folks started showing up as well.

The Call of Duty

franchise got started that same way

while we were working on our game they

started working on theirs and they

showed up a little bit before us with

the first Call of Duty game which was a

World War II shooter, very much like

Medal of Honor. The Brothers in Arms game

allowed for tactical gameplay in

addition to action skill tests.

The first Call of Duty game was so great I mean I

don't know if anybody thought about

competition I mean we just loved what we

were working on, you know. We just knew

what we built there was just special.

It stood out against other

first-person shooter games. Even you know

in the same genre. So everybody was just

excited about what we're working on and

that's what we concentrated on.

Landing in the fields there was

the cattle there and you know they were

using cattle as cover from

incoming fire and it was like there'd

been shooters before but

they hadn't really tried to draw you

into that universe and the story element

for Call of Duty at the time especially World

War II which I was very interested in

anyway,and that hadn't been done before and I think

that's why it captured my heart.

With the team in place and its first game in

development Infinity Ward decided to

pack their bags and head West.

At the time no one really knew about

Infinity Ward. In fact i didn't know

about Infinity Ward. I was just doing

research and I found that there

was a game developer not too far from

where I lived and they were working on a

World War II game which I'm a huge fan of.

So I just went over and then you know

just wanted to join the team and

that's how I got in there and I had no

idea about their history with previous

titles and stuff like that. But when I

joined the team I remember it was about

20 people,was a fairly small size

and the team was very unique.

I have to say I don't think you can

replicate the original team that

was there anywhere else.

There wre a handful of our developers that were a little

bit into world war II history but I

think I saw as time went on more and

more guys were reading books and watching

all the films and the documentaries, so

even though it was a job it kind of

a little bit of a hobby for a lot of guys.

I'm not a big fan of the weapons

at that time. I was just like a general

artist but since then I have to say, I fell

in love with weapons and I studied

what is the world war II weapon, what is a

modern weapon, how weapons worked,

functionally. It helpeds a lot.
I learned a lot at the time.

As Internet bandwidth improved players began to form their own

teams and compete in
online gaming leagues.

We were playing in at the time with the competitive scene.

So we were competing in ladders and leagues and I

started to take an interest in mapping

and modding. Call of Duty United

Offensive came out, the expansion pack to

Call of Duty 1 and we were downloading

the gtk radiant which was the map editor

and we were going in and just playing

around goofing off and creating maps and

having a good time. We were organizing

and planning what kind
of mod we wanted to make

around United Offensive so that way when

COD2 came out we could get the tools

and we could go to work. So we

made a mod called Unbound Forces and

for us we wanted to bring that into the

modern day so it was set in 2049. We had

the tactical response unit which was

like the protagonist force against

mercenaries against the mercs. It was a

really cool mod for its time. It had a

lot of innovations that ultimately ended

up being in Call of Duty. I'm not saying

that there was influence there but we

were definitely going in the right direction.

When I was younger I used to

compete. I played Doom and I

played it competitively and I even

played it professionally in a few

instances where I played in tournaments

and won money and then by the

time Quake had come out and taken over I

was in the industry as a developer.

It was just getting online and playing

in lobbies you know. I had a really good

internet connection you know, something

that a lot of people were kind of

lacking back then. I mean it's still,

they're still getting better and better

but I think just what kind of happened

was that I was competitive so the

multiplayer was there, the game was

available and it became something that I

could transition from, you know, playing

video games just for like the storylines

and the single-player

campaigns and then all of a sudden you

know you have this multiplayer aspect.

Basically there wasn't even a term

eSports back then, like it started to

loosely to be thrown around because it was

essentially created as a marketing term

to be able to sell the concept of what

these games were as a package

to people like sponsors and

outside people working in the tech

industry or gaming so at the time we

never called it that actually. We used to just

call it whatever the game we were

following was. So initially I followed

Quake, so I never thought of it as eSports.

It was all competitions

for Quake and the impulse was just to

watch the best players play basically. We

just wanted to see the best action and see

the players with the top players battle each other.

I grew up playing of course

video games like Goldeneye 007, of course

a classic and then I discovered Call of

Duty and I was like this is so much fun

and a lot of my friends played so we

would always go online and just play

completely just non-stop.

Infinity Ward had taken the World War II

series to its limits but there was

still major ambition to
move forward once again.

After we finished Call of Duty 2 and it was a good success but you

know by then we had actually worked on

World War II games for longer than

America was involved with World War II

so basically we were just really sick of

World War II and so we're like hey

let's do a modern Call of Duty and so

I think Vince and Jason had a meeting,

with Activision and said hey we're

really pumped about this idea we have

helicopters you know,all this

cool technology and we're like yeah

they're going to love this and like, nope

everyone wants World War II. Look at the

charts you know everyone's buying it and

we hadn't really hit the World War II peak yet.

So we made a prototype that was modern-day without

Activision knowing and showed it to them

they loved it. They're like alright, well

sold, so that's when we made
Call of Duty 4 Modern Warfare.

In modern warfare you play as

multiple characters. British SAS and

Marine Force Recon are the main

characters in the game.

So this is actually the prototype that

we made for Activision to show how cool

Modern Warfare would be, it's the final

version that shipped with the game. So in

Modern Warfare you're going to be going

to the Middle East, you're going to be

going to various regions of Russia.

There's a cargo ship on the high

seas. It's really a huge variety of

gameplay, a huge variety of locations to

keep the player enthralled in the game

and can keep people guessing as
to what's coming next.

Jason West, Vince Zampella, Todd Alderman

those are like the original guys behind

Call of Duty. I met them all before Call

of Duty 4 came out. I'd gone out for that

community press event. They had an agenda.

They needed to sell in all these new

ideas that were coming
with Modern Warfare.

So we knew early on that transitioning

from World War II to Modern Warfare and

meant having much closer collaboration with

the military. So in that regard we set up a

lot of field trips to get in really

close with a lot of guys who are out there doing

their job at that moment.

We spent a couple days out in Twenty Nine

Palms where we just did field exercises

with guys out there. Real Marines doing real

life exercises in a mockup city in

the desert. It was 110 degrees, the guys were

completely exhausted,they had to wear the

armor, the helmets, we ran around.

It was really exhilarating and

tiring and really gave us a new outlook

towards what those guys did especially

for the developers. We pretty much

sit at a desk for most, you know, for

the most part. So going out there and

being with them understanding what they

go through, how they think, how they move,

how they talk, how Marines different

from Army, how Army's different from SAS really

helped inform our storytelling in the game.

The transition to

Call of Duty 4 Modern Warfare really gave

you this refreshing feeling you know as

a Call of Duty fan something that a lot of

people were kind of on the fence about I

think originally when Infinity

Ward announced they're making a Modern

Warfare game and it's something that was

a little bit outside of the box. But you

know as it kind of came closer to launch

day they released a Beta of the game and

I think that was really instrumental and

when people got to play the multiplayer

Beta Call of Duty 4 and talked about it with

their friends. You know I couldn't stop

playing it and it was just so refreshing

to have like the M4 the M16 you know

and you're learning about the guns. You

have the 5.56 round that goes

into it so you're literally learning

about some of the modern warfare aspects

that actually work in the real world.

I feel like it was kind of dumb luck by

Infinity Ward but those two guys that

were a part of it they made the game so

competitive and I didn't think they really

tried to do it. The game was just, it had

the basic settings of it, just appealled to

every player, every game that everybody

played in Call of Duty 4.

Everyone just had an amazing time.

Even if you lost you had fun,

just because the game played so well, it

was so smooth, you know. I think that was

one of the first games that produced

60fps. Everything when

you played it was just smooth and you don't get

that with a lot of games on console.

That's only something that you feel on

PC and that's why I think
it was so successful.

There's always games influencing your

own games. Our levelling system was 60

levels same as World of Warcraft.

The pacing, the amount of time you had to

play to level up was actually also

very similar with WOW because I think

World of Warcraft kind of touched like a

very mainstream base.

So we looked at experience bars, we looked at ways of

having a kind of stand out

attribute and characteristics that

were very personal to the player and so

all these things kind of just made sense

to incorporate into a first-person

shooter. The perks, the experience bars,

ranking up, unlocking weapons.

It just took gaming to a whole new level.

Map design was just, you know, very

very nice to play from a competitive

aspect and you just felt like you were

in a lot of situations that were fair

when you were face to face in a 1 v 1

gunfight. So parts of the map were really

important in level design for

multiplayer games to make sure that one

side of the map isn't more advantageous

than the other, right. You always want to

make sure there's some kind of level of

balance and play and I felt like that

was a level design aspect of Call of Duty 4

that was done well. They did an amazing job with that.

At first I found it really different, it was futuristic

A bit too well done. I started with the Beta

The game was futuristic, it was a perfect game.

I was squatting like a madman, it was crazy!

After success with Modern Warfare,

developers Treyarch were assigned to

produce a new game returning to World War II.

I don't think anybody was

certain that Modern Warfare was going to

be as successful as it was which is why

Treyarch was starting on a World War II

game a year before Modern Warfare came out.

The team had actually switched

away from the COD 3 engine and switched

over to what the COD 4 engine was. It was

also a follow up to Modern Warfare which

was like that was when the franchise

entered like mega franchise status.

It went from maybe 2 million units to 10 million.

World at War was phenomenal. It had such great gameplay.

The weapons you know, just the way the story

is, it's fantastic. They returned to their

roots in the game because you know it was

originally a World War game

and that's where they went back to, that's what the fans wanted.

and World at War pulled in so many people who

hadn't played the Call of Duty multiplayer.

I felt like it was another refresher, you know. You're bringing that

new population that only experienced the

Modern Warfare and Call of Duty games

back to that World War era with those

old players and it just made sense.

So you had players actually play

both games simultaneously. You would take

a party in World at War but go back

and play some Call of Duty 4.

As Infinity Ward prepared to launch

their highly anticipated Modern Warfare

sequel not everyone shared the fans and

developers enthusiasm.

game called Call of Duty Modern Warfare

is to be released. It contains such

scenes of brutality that even the

manufacturers have put in warnings

within the game telling people how they

can skip particular scenes. Given the

recommendations of the Byron Review

specifically paragraphs 32 and 33 what

steps is the government proposing to

take in order to ensure that these

violent games do not fall into the hands

of children and young people. It's not

about censorship it's about protecting

our children.

The clearest recommendation of the Byron review is

that content suitable for adults should

be labeled as such and sold as such.

It should be an offense to sell such

content to children and that's the case

under current law. It will be

the case under the law when it changes

in the digital economy Bill. This game,

the game the honorable gentleman refers

to is a certificate 18 game. It should

not be sold to children and the

government's job is to make

sure that adult content is clearly labelled and is

what adults should be able to get and that

children are not in danger of being

subjected to adult content.

CALL OF DUTY MODERN WARFARE 2 WAS RELEASED IN NOVEMBER 2009 & CONTAINED A "MATURE" & "18+" AGE RATING CERTIFICATE. AGE RATINGS PROVIDE CONCISE & OBJECTIVE INFORMATION ON A VIDEO GAME'S CONTENT. THEY ARE APPLIED & OFFICIALLY RECOGNISED WORLDWIDE.

THE GAME'S ALL-FICTITIOUS STORYLINE CONTAINED AN OPTIONAL MISSION "NO RUSSIAN" IN WHICH THE PLAYER WAS PART OF AN ARMED GROUP POTENTIALLY CAUSING MASS DEVASTATION INSIDE A CROWDED RUSSIAN AIRPORT TERMINAL.

IN NOVEMBER 2009 BRITISH POLITICIAN RT.HON.KEITH VAZ MP RAISED HIS CONCERN OVER THE GAME'S CONTENT TO THE UK GOVERNMENT & OPPOSITION IN THE HOUSES OF PARLIAMENT.

We really want the player to understand

the gravity of the moment and understand

how bad the bad guy was and how this was

a catalyst to World War III. And in

that regard I think we really achieved it.

We gave players opportunities to skip

that at the beginning of the game to

opt out of these things if you don't want

to see this material. But we found that

really worked well and we weren't

doing it for shock value. We're doing to

put the player in a position to where war is

horrible, horrible things happen and this

is a scenario that may or may not

take place in our fiction.

A lot of us here have kids, you know.

Even when we're making a
Call of Duty as cool as

it wasn't something that we could

show our kids obviously for, you know, the

violence level that's in the game.

So what do I think about the campaign to

ban Modern Warfare because of the

violence in it.It's a very important question.

All I can say is that I think

as creators whether it's for video games,

movie, television we have to have a point.

We have to have a message to send.

If we're going to do anything

with sex, violence, racism anything, these

hot button trigger kind of topics it

can't be done

irresponsibly. You have to take

responsibility for what you're going to

show to your viewers because they're

taking it in as a story. They're taking it

as something that they're participating

in and video games it's important that

our kids who are under a certain age

don't get exposed to that.

IN NOVEMBER 2011, FOLLOWING THE RELEASE OF CALL OF DUTY MODERN WARFARE 3, BRITISH POLITICIAN RT. HON. KEITH VAZ AGAIN RAISED A SERIOUS ISSUE ON THE GAMES'S CONTENT IN THE HOUSES OF PARLIAMENT

MR. VAZ CALLED ON THE BRITISH BOARD OF FILM CLASSIFICATION (BBFC) TO TAKE FURTHER PRECAUTIONS WHEN ALLOWING A GAME TO BE SOLD. CALL OF DUTY MODERN WARFARE 3 CONTAINED A "MATURE" & BBFC 18+ AGE RATING CERTIFICATE

THE BBFC WAS SATISFIED THAT CALL OF DUTY MODERN WARFARE 3 CONTAINED NO MATERIAL THAT REQUIRED RESTRICTION BEYOND THE "18" CLASSIFICATION.

THE GUIDELINES AT "18" ACCEPT THE PRINCIPLE, REPEATEDLY ENDORSED BY THE PUBLIC, THAT ADULTS SHOULD BE FREE TO CHOOSE THEIR OWN ENTERTAINMENT IN THE ABSENCE OF LEGAL ISSUES OR MATERIALS WHICH RAISE A RISK OF HARM.

The Modern Warfare series had broken all

previous sales records. Its publisher

decided the time was right to make a

difference outside of the video gaming

community and put something back.

The Call of Duty Endowment was founded in

late 2009 by Bobby Kotick. Bobby really

wanted to find a way to give back to

veterans, you know, as a group that has

certainly inspired many Call of Duty games

and as a group of

people who he just felt were really in

need. So that was the genesis of it and

you know I think the specific focus on

putting vets in jobs was also really

important because it's born out over

time that we've learned, giving

a vet a job when they come back, helping

them find a job is the best way to

help them reintegrate into society.

The Call of Duty endowment is such an

amazing thing and I'm really glad that

Activision had chosen to give back to

those who, you know, give us our freedom.

So we get a lot of fans that are in the

military and to see them play the game

and just to be able to give back to them

is just a blessing.

The notion of volunteering, raising your hand and

saying I'll do anything that's a virtue

in the military. In the civilian world

when you're looking for a job and you go

to an employer and say I'll do anything,

that's actually a hindrance. That's

something that companies don't know how

to react to. So there's things veterans

have to be taught on their way out or

transitioning service members really

have to be taught so they can be

successful in the civilian world when

they get out. They've got all the

fundamentals right. They've got hard work,

they've got great experience of

leadership, they've got discipline they have

creativity, they have adaptability, they

have teamwork. They just need to know how

to talk about that more effectively to

essentially learn how to sell themselves.

There's a Marine, severely wounded Marine

who was speaking at a major investment

bank in New York one day and he was

talking about the value of hiring

veterans. And a banker stood up and said

look it's great what you're doing I

really applaud that but I got to be

honest with you, I'm worried if we hire a vet

is this veteran going to go postal on us?

And New Yorkers being New Yorkers they

tend to speak their minds but the

Marine took it in stride he said okay

fair question let me ask you this - How

many of you here in this New York

Investment Banking office were here on

9/11. About half the room raised their

hands and said yeah we were here. So the

Marine then asked did any of you have any

of you since ever maybe had some fear

about going up a tall building, maybe

lost some sleep, maybe gotten a little

distracted at work at times. A lot of

heads were nodding and said you may have

post-traumatic stress but that doesn't

make you a bad banker, that doesn't mean

you can't be effective in your job if

you have the right help and counseling.

It's just one more issue people have to deal with.

Treyarch were given the task to produce

something in a dark and more sinister era.

A time of covert operations and

classified missions, espionage and the

threat of nuclear war.

So being able to make a whole game like Black Ops

the gloves were off. We were in the Cold

War era and then because it was Black

Ops because it was black operations,

these deniable ops, these deniable

missions we also didn't need to

adhere strictly to historical

authenticity. We could take some creative

liberties with the stories we were

telling because it's like well, you know, how

do you know that this didn't happen

during the Cold War. How do you know this

wasn't one of those classified missions.

There were some other names
Call of Duty Cold War was an obvious

one, Call of Duty Vietnam. Back

when it was much more Vietnam slanted of

a game than bigger black ops and we

were able to work with Activision to

focus test all these different

names and see what resonated best with

people and Black Ops ultimately

was like far and away like the right decision.

By 2010 the Modern Warfare

series had broken new records. Highly

acclaimed by critics and fans, Activision

had made a blockbuster.

And the BAFTA goes to Call of Duty 4 Modern Warfare.

And the BAFTA goes to Call of Duty 4 Modern Warfare.

Wow, well, on behalf of

everybody at Infinity Ward back in Los

Angeles California. Thank you for this award.

It means a lot. Every one of us, we're just

a team of just under 100 people so we

consider ourselves very small and we're

all personally invested in this game.

So this means a lot so thank you very much.

That Steelcase is autographed by Gary

Oldman. We started getting a lot of more

thletes and celebrities that love

Call of Duty who wanted to come see our

studio and I got to meet the entire

Dodgers lineup and I'm a huge Dodgers fan.

And the game award of 2008 goes to

who else but Call of Duty 4 Modern Warfare.

I think Vince and Jason went to their

regular Monday meeting over at

Activision in Santa Monica.

And they didn't come back.

I was in London. I was on a press tour

and I just remember getting done with a

series interviews and just checking my

emails and, it's like, are you kidding

me?, is this actually happening?

Where's Vince and Jason?

Vince Zampella and Jason West were fired by Activision for

insubordination and immediately left

Infinity Ward.

The next day we had security people outside our office.

Wearing regular civilian

clothes with walkie talkies,

they just watched us go into our office. As a

team we just stayed really focused and

you know we empathized with

all of our friends and colleagues who

were over there who were caught up in

the middle of it and you know we wanted

to be supportive of that and empathetic

of that and at the same time like there

was just so much like you had a

tiptoe with, just how high-profile

that legal thing was.

Keeping records and needing

to go to

meetings and tell your side of the story.

It was a tough time for everybody involved.

Everyone loved Vince and

Jason. They were just a huge part of the

success of the game and as soon as they

were fired we were kind of freaking out.

IN 2010 JASON WEST & VINCE ZAMPELLA FILED A LAWSUIT AGAINST ACTIVISION FOR WRONGFUL CONTRACT TERMINATION & ALLEGED AROUND $36 MILLION WAS OWED IN UNPAID ROYALTIES

IN RESPONSE ACTIVISION FILED IT'S OWN COUNTER-COMPLAINT STATING THAT JASON WEST & VINCE ZAMPELLA'S LAWSUIT CLAIMS WERE MERITLESS.

Multibillion-dollar lawsuits followed

and after two years the court battles

were settled.

Vince Zampella and Jason West formed a

new studio - Respawn Entertainment.

Activision brought in new developers,

Sledgehammer games, to continue work

alongside Treyarch and Infinity Ward on

the Call of Duty series.

The business and machinery side of our industry often

would wish us to do what is reliable and

what we've done before and just do it

again and do it a little bit better next

time. But a creative wants to take risks

and try new things and so we see it all

over our industry where sometimes

creative talent doesn't want to just

keep making the same game that the

business machine wants them to make and

sometimes there's a split. We saw with

the creative people that

created Infinity Ward at Activision, left

and started a new studio that made

Titanfall, what a brilliant creative new

angle. We saw that the folks that created

Halo with Microsoft regained their

independence and offered us Destiny.

Call of Duty is such a big game you have

to consider the multiplayer side, the

single-player side, the Spec

Ops side and how the features that

you're creating really integrates with all those.

Specifically with the Call of Duty

formula you got people like Vonderhaar

who have to have to craft these

incredibly complex basically living

organisms at the end of the day when you

look at what a multiplayer game is.

It runs at a higher frame rate and it looks so smooth and plays

so well. This is part of the reason why people love it.

It's not something that's glitchy, it's not something that's buggy.

The goal of the game always in multiplayer

was to keep the speed up so there's

always intense action and something new happening.

The game gets really competitive. Especially

when you start building a massive kill

streak and everyone starts focusing down on you.

And the more kills you get, the more kill streaks you get, the harder

you become to kill, the more everyone tries to focus you down.

Kill streaks function as a reward to the player. So as a player is

doing well they're rewarded with extra

points. As they build up these points

then they get to unleash a kill streak.

What a killstreak is is a special ability,

so it could be a unique weapon, it could

be a defensive ability that enhances the

entire team, it could be an offensive

action that takes out a whole bunch of

enemies. So this is the UI

from this game, the kill streaks are on

the left here.I'll show you

right here, it's a simple little system

that tells you how many kills you need

to get to get the next kill streak each

of those icons with light up. It's

essentially like it keeps you on the

edge of your toes while you're playing

the game because you want to do really

well. It makes you try hard you don't

want to die. You have to get a certain

number of kills in a row without dying

to be able to get a kill streak and then

the more and more kills that you get

without dying the higher level kill

streak you're rewarded.

You got to have high sensitivity to play Call of Duty.

I think, especially because it's getting around the corners with

shot guns and stuff. That's what it's all about.

And especially when you start to form teams around this game and you've all

got microphones and talk to each other, that's where a lot of fun comes from.

Being able to coordinate plans, attack, converging, you know, plotting a bomb this way.

The fact that teamwork comes in is a great point for the Call of Duty franchise.

Good players tend to memorize which killstreaks they have and how many kills

they've made so that as they're playing

in their mind they have a count going of

1, 2, 3, I've got my UAV 4. 5, I can put out

my next one things like that so it

really gets you. It puts the pressure on to not die.

The mappers had a really hard

time.

they're the unsung heroes because you

take it for granted you run around a

level you think about the weapons you

think about the kill streaks you think

about the game-mode and people take the

map for granted. And it really takes

someone with a really innate knowledge

of flow to be able to design a space

that'll work so that everybody can be in

there running around

together have places to hide have lots

of places to shoot other people. And so

there's completely different things

and so when they're always looking for

successful ways to accomplish those.

A lot of times they'll go back to the

favorite Maps the classics Crossfire

things like that that all the fans love.

And try to look at what are the key

points of this map that create this fun.

Every little detail, every

little facet of when you walk through a

multiplayer map is scrutinized to the

umpteenth degree like you can't imagine

how many hours are spent just

pining over every little detail.

Whether a window should be an inch

higher inch lower. Whether a waterfall

should be to the left, to the right. What

that does to the view distance, what

that does to the sight lines of the map,

you know. It's all part of it, all of that

adds up to what is the magical Call of Duty formula.

The eSports players would sit in with our

play test. We would play test all the

time every day more than once a day

often, especially when we are getting

towards the end and be able to get

immediate visceral feedback. So you can

give someone a game and tell them to

write a questionnaire but if you're

watching them play the body language

everything they say while they're

playing things like that. Their

enthusiasm or lack of enthusiasm after

they play all these things give you

amazing amounts of feedback.

Fast action multiplayer mode requires full hand to

eye physical ability but not everybody

has these gifts.

Crouch

Jump

Run

Duck

If I wasn't disabled I would

probably have been a soldier. A lot of people

play multiplayer games, they

play online

but for me campaign

mode is really important you know

I can play video games but

I'm never going to be as good as

able-bodied people.

For me, I love story the

single-player campaign for a Call of Duty

title was always an exciting thing to

work on. We had really big budgets to get

the best writers, the best actors, great

motion capture people. Everything we

needed to do a huge film like summer

blockbuster production.

The campaign mode is

something special because it has a

great storyline to it and when

you're playing in campaign mode you know

just playing it feels like you

completely immersed into it. You're

following the story and

you're completely locked into

that game and for me as a disabled person

you know to be playing a game which you're

totally immersed in feels like i'm out

of my body and into someone else's body

playing a game

which is a kind of out of body

experience.

Okay to play Call of Duty I use a chin joystick

which basically acts like a mouse. If you

move the cursor around and look around

and when I playing Call of Duty it

actually lets me control the camera. So I

can rotate to different angles and aim

when I want to shoot and to

fire I use my button which is next to my

hand. It's just a soft switch. And to

move forward backwards and change

weapons. I use a program called

GlovePie which is a voice

recognition application and the way it

works, you can actually map

keyboard keys to voice commands so

I can say the word forward and the

character would move forward. I can say

left or right and the character would move left or right.

But more importantly it also lets me do

things like change weapons. I say

change and it would switch from a rifle

to a handgun or if I say the word

grenade

it would then throw a grenade.

I work 9 to 5 every day supporting

many users around the UK with IT

problems so I do that full time.

Call of Duty ranks number one. Because I know what

to expect when I buy a Call of Duty game.

I know I'm not going to be disappointed it

it's going to have good animation good

effects. It's going to have a rhythm to it

and the storyline it's always going to

be immerseful and it's going to make

you follow the characters and

it's not going to disappoint.

Getting the story, getting

into the characters. Creating the settings of

what really is going to be happening in

this world and the story of creating. It's always

something that's been really fun for me.

Actors interestingly enough,most of them

are really big fans of Call of Duty so

don't need convincing about coming on board.

It's pretty funny actually what they do

when they're

casting for video games.With video games it's all

top-secret. Everything's top-secret,

for instance when I did Assassins

Creed or Call of Duty I didn't know what

game I was going in for. Call of Duty was

called Eclipse. It wasn't called Call of

Duty Black Ops 2 and the character I was

going in for was not even called Raman.

It was like Hassan or something like that

and I got an audition piece it was like

two pages of script and I must

have had maybe four lines and no clue

what the scene was about other than my

character interacting with this other

character and being a little bit of a badass.

Completely out of context of the story.

So I did that and she gave me a little

direction the casting director I think it

was Ivy, Ivy Isenberg who did that

and I did it again she said great.

Next thing, you know, you get called up

hey you got the job on Eclipse and just

so, you know, it's actually Call of

Duty Black Ops 2 but don't tell anybody.

Every major movie star, all the big

A-list stars are telling their

production companies telling their

managers,look for my video game. I want

to find my video game. Either you create

one for me if you're a big enough A-list

star or wait for the right game to come

along and request that I be in it

because that's going to put me in a

completely different world to a whole

bunch of new people and it's going to

build my fan base and consequently

augment my success and my reach and my

marketability and just give me more of

what it is that makes a successful actor

successful which is clout power.

There are these different certification milestones

you go through with Microsoft and Sony

and you have to make sure that the game

is all ready to be created on disc but

there's ask the actual physical part

sending out to a factory so that that

factory can make the millions of discs

that are needed which is, you know, a

little bit different for a Call of Duty

franchise than some other franchises.

Once we hit the gold version that means

it's like the ready to ship version we

celebrate in-house. So I remember that

we had a champagne party and then we

bring in some guests and it

was fun for the gold version.

And then when you're launching we

celebrate at store in the local so

we went there at night on the guest

list. So many people are lining up we

went there all together, we had some events

with signings of the posters and giving them to fans

and stuff, we celebrate that way.

So Call of Duty always brings a lot of

audiences out of the woodwork and into

these launches that we have at midnight

and we never really anticipated how

much people were looking forward to our games.

We're just making a

game. We all work at a desk just doing

our thing so it's really kind of

exciting and crazy to finally leave that

bubble and see the real world and

everything going on. For a lot of us that

week leading up to a launch meant going

out on press junkets talking to the

press go to different parts of the world

and having launch parties, just

getting everyone to understand the

developers and meet the developers. For

some guys, the coders, the designers and

the unsung heroes that had to stay and

burn the midnight oil they were making

last-minute fixes so that when the game

launched it was stable it was solid it was fun.

The reason why I queued up for six days and five nights outside

Oxford Street was to be first to get

Black Ops 2. I'd been to previous

midnight launches and I decided that I

wanted to be first.

I was currently at University. I kind

of didn't tell my lecturer but I

took a few days off.

I brought roughly about three gallons of

water with me. I had a really big red

rucksack and carried one of those

pop-up tents which unfortunately wasn't

waterproof. I found out one night the

hard way and I had a sleeping bag, my

sister's military sleeping bag which

should have kept me quite warm, which it

did until it rained.

The evenings I must admit were very cold and most evenings I

kind of drifted in and out of sleep so

I'd be awake for two hours and I'd fall

asleep again for another hour and a half

then watch a film in the middle of the

night and it was mostly

just periods of awake time and

sleep just kind of melted into each

other because I'd start sleeping during

the day you know I'd be awake at night

and it was just kind of all patchy really.

There was a lot of mixed reactions for

when I was camping on the street like

I'd say half of the people were almost

thinking of me like I'm crazy

I don't know why you'd want to do that

you're taking time out of your own free

thing to just sit here on the street and

I'd say the other half of people they

were thinking exactly the same thing but

they were saying well done.

Because I was so cold a lot of the time it actually

took a lot of energy to keep my body

warm I was eating junk food but ended up

losing weight at the end of the week

which is crazy. So on the evening of the

launch the atmosphere was really

exciting. I was let in the store first

and they had all these people come in

like taking pictures of me and doing

videos and stuff and I got to stand

right at the front of the crowd when we

watched the show with Mr Pointy head is

wax=s really good.But they didn't tell us

what was actually going to happen

in the store at the point of the midnight release.

So all the lights went out in

the store and they played zombie music

from Black Ops and it was really

awesome like they were really scary they

had actual blood dangling from their

faces and their contact lenses in

you'd completely mistaken them for real zombies.

It was really cool going up on the stage meeting Mr Pointy Head.

I was standing there in front of this sea of people

so I would see all these camera lenses

and all these faces and phones

pointed in my direction

So the producers of Black Ops II were actually there. They were signing game copies and I gave

him my game copy of

Black Ops 2 and he was going to

sign it for me and he kind of looked me

up and down and just went: You're crazy

you know that.

And then he actually signed the game box

and he wrote "you are mental" and his

signature and then just gave it back to

me and he's like thank you so much for

queuing up for this game it really means a lot to us.

I wouldn't take the week back because you know after it's all

over I got a little bit sad.

I'm not going to be waiting in the queue

anymore for the game and once you've got

it it's a little bit kind of like, oh my

the launch is all over but then you got to

play this awesome game so it kind of works out.

Call of Duty really started mostly online

with Modern Warfare One, still probably

the most popular game amongst the pro

players. This was where Call of Duty

Esports really began.

The way I got into it was just by playing a lot and getting

better and just meeting the right people.

If you want to be a recognized pro

player and you want to be

that guy that does it you need to

have three people on your team that you

enjoy playing with.

How these teams normally form is everyone thinks they're the

best when you get in the lobby and you

finish in first place and you're beating

up on some other guys who are a little bit

less skilled you get really confident.

You start by just having

fun and if you enjoy it you play it more.

if you enjoy even more you play some

more and all of a sudden you're playing

with people who are also good and then

all of a sudden you're in a better team

and a better team and a better team.

It's no different from sport. We're not

reinventing the wheel here, simply as a

case of where you put on a pair of

football boots and go and kick a ball

about now you're picking up a gaming pad or

a mouse or a keyboard and just playing.

You want to find that one partner that you

want to work with after that you'll see

a lot of two pairs join up to create a

four man team or after just playing

other opponents you'll recognize the

best player from an opposing team and

try and bring them on to yours.

TO BEGIN WITH, I DIDN'T THINK ABOUT IT

AT ALL, I WAS PLAYING FOR FUN.

AT FIRST, I DID NOT THINK THAT THERE

THERE WAS YOUTUBE WHICH WAS ON A BIG SCALE

SPONSORS WHO ARRIVED, TEAMS WHO

WOULD PAY, ETC., ETC... I SAID TO MYSELF

GO FOR IT, IT'S GOOD, SO I STOPPED

EVERYTHING AND THREW MYSELF INTO IT.

I AM PLEASED TO BE WHERE I AM

IT'S MY PASSION

When you get into a match when you're

playing for a lot of money and you know

there's a lot on the line you can lose

at any time, and that's the issue

with Call of Duty. It's a day-to-day game.

No matter how good a team you are you

there's always the possibility of losing

because every team has a possibility of

coming out and just shocking

the world. No matter how heavily

favorited one team could be another team

could win that's just how Call of Duty

is just because there's such low health

and kills are so easy to get.

You'll see a lot of team changes amongst the top.

There's probably about sixty-four guys

that could win a tournament at any point in time.

Even a lot of these players in their own right are celebrities

themselves. They have hundreds and

thousands of followers on Twitter they

go out and people recognize them in the

airports. So it's really cool to see

everything that they're doing.

I OFTEN GO TO SUBSCRIBER CONVENTIONS

WHERE I CAN MEET MY FANS

THEY ARE HUGE, THEY ARE THERE TO

CHEER US ON IN THE COMPETITIONS

AND ON TWITTER, "GO GUYS!"

THOSE CONVENTIONS WHERE THERE

ARE 200, 300 PEOPLE...

IT IS AMAZING; THERE'S NOTHING ELSE TO SAY

A lot of players will be amazing online

but when they come to a LAN and you

know the atmosphere's here they know they

got to perform there's thousands of

people watching, they kind of crumble.

The coaches now we see are motivational

tools. So if a team loses you know if

they go 2-0 down in the

best-of-five series and you know the

heads go down and they start getting

demotivated the coaches are there to say

guys what are you doing, pick this up

this is our chance we're going to win

this try and rally the troops if you

will and get them motivated for the rest

of the game and see if they can now come

back. Very rare you'll see coaches

actually getting statistical data

of different things in the game

where people are respawning etc.

The coach is a really important part of any

team. If he sees a player that normally

is going to be the lead slayer

struggling before the player even gets

some doubt in his mind the coach should

be there and tell him don't worry you're

going to get the next kill keep focused.

He is the one that keeps everyone on the

same page keeps everyone on track and

really if he's doing his job right the

team is going to stay pumped up they're

going to stay happy they're going to

keep communicating regardless if they're

winning or losing in every single game.

When they do have a coach there's

somebody who has this outside

perspective that's able to see things

that's a little bit different and

they're able to hype up their teams and

really kind of give them
advice on where to go.

Oliver Sellers is a Call of Duty team coach with mainstream sporting

grandfather Ron Atkinson was first team

manager of English soccer giants

Manchester United

As a team manager - I like to be very

involved with the players

from day to day getting what they need

whether it be a simple thing,whether

they've got the right stuff to be able

to practice at the highest level. Whether

that means we get them, anything,

from new gaming monitors the

big thing now is that people didn't realize

three four years ago how important

having a top brand gaming monitor is.

It's like any sports having the

best pair of football boots having the

the best cricket bat.It's about getting anything

and getting your players the best and allow them to

perform.Then

there's no saying what they can do.

My Grandad he is a big part of my life.

I would love to get him to go to an event one day.

I think he'd really be able to see the

comparisons between a major sport and

Esports in as much as they're physically

playing on the field we're playing

on a screen.

He's been a commentator

he'd be able to see what

they're doing for game, what managers are doing for

a game, between games talking to his team

like at half-time,him getting them in dressing

room you can turn the team around.It

would just be great to see him getting

in the environment see what it is.

Counter strike looks similar to Call of

Duty. It remains one of the biggest

titles in professional Esports.

Hello everyone and welcome to the latest stop

on the Dreamhack tour we are here in

London, England.

No applause,disappointed. I thought we were getting a

much bigger shout than that, there we are.

I think the people who put it in place, the

mechanisms that made it big now

couldn't have had a clue how successful

it would be.What basically happened

was for the first year maybe

just over a year and two months or

Counter Strike Global

Offensive was not a big game it wouldn't

even have been in most people's top

three in terms of the biggest Esports

games, the most important ones with good

prize money and a big circuit. So player

salaries were very low and actually with

the usual lifespan of games if you don't

make it in the first year you're basically

dead in the water, it's usually over at that point. So

it should have been over and what actually

happened was Valve had this weird idea

which I still don't understand how it

worked which was to add in the skin

economy to the game and create skins. A

skin is just what the gun looks like.

Having a better skin doesn't make the

gun perform better doesn't make you

perform better. It's just something that

looks cool okay, but then someone had the

genius idea that you could actually

gamble your skins. The thing you gamble

the skins on is in the Pro matches and

then, say they lose, they'll think right

well if I'm going to gamble in a pro

finding a way for people who otherwise

wouldn't normally be inclined to get

really into Esports.

It's almost like a little cookie trail,

I keep following it through and

eventually they're in eSports.

They were just a casual gamer before but

they followed this natural route of,

okay I'm getting skins I've got a good

skin collection,I want better ones and I'm

gambling them and suddenly they're an eSports fan.

I think what Call of Duty brought was more of an arcade feel in

terms of just regular matches and game

play. You know you had hardcore modes

that were more akin to Counter-Strike

but trying to make it more palatable for

the everyday person who is still

interested in World War II shooters and

modern-day shooters so that they can

respond and get back into the action. And in

terms of gunplay and feel there was a

lot of innovation that was done even

though Counter Strike did have kick and

variance with spread but I think Call

of Duty took that to another level

in terms of adding more feel to the

weapons. In Call of Duty you find how you

move in the world feels a lot more

smoother and was definitely a marked

difference that made it a lot easier for

people to jump in.

How can you boil down the

essence of why people want to watch an

eSports game? I actually think what

it comes down to is most of the time

it's just like watching any sport.

It's just a normal thing and you have a

little bit of vested interest and you are like okay, I

hope that player plays well but

because they're the best players every

now and then they will pull off a move

that's so perfect and superlative in

it's quality that you almost couldn't

even visualize it was possible but when

it's happening you just know it's brilliant.

Playing in a tournament and making a

play,just hearing a crowd roar you

know hearing people cheer for you. I mean

that's a feeling that you just

can't beat and really

gives you a sense of worth.

When the big plays happen when a player goes off

and does something crazy

you can then look down at the booths and

see that player reaction live as it

happens. You can see how intense they all

are but most of the focus is going to be

around just listening to the

commentators and hearing what's

going to be going on and really getting

involved in the experience.And you've

got massive speakers so you feel like

you're in the game yourself and it's

just a really awesome experience.

For me it's all about telling a narrative and I

can go from blistering play-by-play and

just going for it and explain the hype

in a moment to checking engagements.

I'm talking about a narrative if it's

slowed down or there's nothing going on.

I need to explain that this is a very

good spawn rotation or they did really well

staying alive here,this is what they're

looking at,this is where they're going.

It's difficult sometimes to comment

caster is perfect no driver is perfect

you're never going to get everything at

one point,but you try to keep up

as much as possible.

So I'm basically looking everywhere. I'm looking at the

mini-map for engagement, I'm looking

at the strategy, the timer to

know how long is left,all the strategies

they can put in,what spawns they

have. All this goes into where I'm

directing and going for it and it may be

I'm hitting on a

player doing well or it may be I'm

talking about an upcoming rotation or

cut they've got in the map,any number of

things or something that could be focussed on.

You have to support this with everything else that any other

traditional mainstream sport has.

There has to be advertising dollars

there has to structure to the leagues and the tournaments.

I'd say the average salary for even a top Pro is probably

like a hundred thousand and that's

probably a good one there's probably

some on fifty thousand.The

people who make the most money in

general, because it's coming top down

from investment. It's like the person

who's at the top level of the tournament

organizer and the person who owns a

team and then the person who,

yeah what else would it be, like an agent

or something and much like most sports

it's only at the end that tends to be

the player who becomes the guy that makes the most.

In 2013 as Esports continued to grow

Activision confirmed its own global

tournament the COD Championships.

Call of Duty Esports had now officially begun

There was the Call of Duty championships

the million dollar tournament put on by

Activision and Treyarch out in Hollywood.

Impact were able to take the tournament

and Bank $400,000 so they won three out

of their first three major tournaments

as a squad together. $550,000 in the

space of a month and a half.

That's just that's just crazy and the only

reason they did that was because they

put so much time into the game.

Team impact were crowned kings of the world

and looked unstoppable. But soon after

their winning streak the global COD

champions were defeated at a major event

in California by an ambitious new outfit -

team Complexity.

Two weeks later on a hot summer's day in London Impact would go

head-to-head with Complexity once again.

Impact were beaten. They were so

devastated the team broke up after this event.

The professional COD scene was now set for a new dynasty.

Complexity were about to achieve a winning streak so

great they would write themselves into

Esports history.

When it comes to a team well-rounded

well prepped having a strength in every

area there is not much that could

contest it. They had everything from an

in-game leader, even two in game leaders

to some of the best players in

the game individually.It

were frightening how good they are.

They were great in every regard

they were very very skilled, they were

highly motivated they had the mental

game better than most.Doesn't

matter how many matches that were taken off

them, they always predicted them to come back and

they just outsmarted everybody, it was

the perfect storm.

We played against them four or five

times everytime we lost,they always

win regardless.They'd

still end up winning and they did pull

through somehow.It was very difficult

playing against them, probably the hardest

team Ive had to play against.

Matt Morello, in game he was the hype man he would

build them up, he would take their

confidence so high, the mental game

was just phenomenal and playing against

that and having Matt standing over them

if you were face to face, it's

something that as a player it was

difficult because you've got this guy who's

not even playing and he's just telling you

you're awful and this guy is amazing.

He was the one that if something went wrong and

you could tell it was a odd shade of

time where the team would maybe have lost

their composure a little in their

heads.

He was there to put that back in place.

But they were always one step

ahead. I remember them being at ESWC and

they were unsure about some of the

tactics they were using and were thinking

about changing the way they were

playing and for me that was unbelievable.

I said "guys you've maybe got two

hours left of playing this ever and you're

sitting there changing up the tactics

you're using going into your next game".

Changing a player's position and a

player's role because you didn't think

it was clicking well enough.

Professional Esports performed at the

very highest level is monopolized by

male players and teams. For women the

scene is very different.

Most of the guys are afraid to be beaten by a girl

because it seems like an

unwritten rule that guys should be good

at gaming or Counter-Strike or anything

but when a girl comes and does it better

than you?

It's hard to make a living out of it for

the girls because there's not enough

support so we can't spend as much time

on gaming as the guys in competitive

terms anyway.

Riot gaming are an all-female Call of Duty team from the UK

who had to face a series of commercial

and gender issues.

We don't not want to team with boys it's more of boys don't

really want to team with girls.

it is a male-dominated game and I've

noticed that through the years.It

started to show and be brought into

companies not wanting to sponsor certain

female teams. We had a big name sponsor

not willing to sponsor us just because

of the whole girl thing and how it's know

portrayed online but our stats and our

marketing was far better than some of

the other teams it sponsored. So

that was kind of a blowback. If

you're getting abuse from a male as a

female it's normally "get back in the

kitchen"

that sort of stuff,and yes it

can get bad and escalate but you just

ignore it. It just sort of gets to a

point where you want to just prove them

all wrong just to show them that we

can exceed the expectations and rise

above everything that they're saying.

After hearing it a few times you learn

to move past it and just get carry on

your life.Just let them do

what they want because it's not really

doing anything to you.

For a woman to enter a male-dominated area

some people are very judgmental.

Other females,maybe their peers that don't play games

might judge them on that.

maybe lean into them for that and

it doesn't

help that the males who also play are giving the girls a lot of flack.

More girls are coming out to play

and there are actually decent females out

there that are playing this game

themselves. It's not as bad as it once was

but it's still there and it still

needs to be addressed I guess.

The console generation is always going to be a

young generation,a bit more immature and

you do see it rub off on social media.

There's no reason they can't play in

these tournaments with men there's no

reason we can't have mixed teams.

I've seen it happen in Counter

Strike before,COD4 on PC there's

no reason they can't be in this industry.

In 2013 for the first time in video

gaming history the worlds two major

console brands would launch their next

generation machines in the same month of

the same year.

After Modern Warfare 3 we were looking at where

did we want to take the Call of Duty

franchise? There are a lot of different

ideas, you know all over the place, like

any game company.People also started to

look at what did Modern Warfare

bring to the franchise,who are the

iconic characters and which

characters that weren't explored and

what does that mean.That inevitably

led to the people who are core to

coming up with a story, to look at, hey

Ghost is a very iconic and interesting character

what is the story of this character? what

could be the story of characters who had

this kind of iconic imagery and let's

build something out of that. So that's

the roots and seeds of where Ghosts came from.

We were always a very efficient team. I think COD 4

was made with like 60 something people

and when I left right at the end of Ghosts

we had 300 people. Of course we had good

relationships with both Sony and

Microsoft but with any next generation it's

always about, hey you know we have bigger

budgets for memory bigger budgets for

effects bigger budgets for poly counts.

There was a lot of extra work

with the next-gen consoles

more high-resolution models textures

so in the end you have to hire

more artists. The biggest challenge

actually was not so much the next-gen it

was being able to support next-gen and

current gen at the exact same time.

So that's where you know the challenge is

because you want to develop a game that

looks amazing on the next-gen platform

but then also runs on the current gen.

Can we construct this in such a way that

it works for both or do we just have two

sets of models right, one for current gen

one for next-gen. So that's kind of where

a lot of the wrangling came in.

Hey,we made this one game

it looks amazing on you know, next-gen

now let's make sure that everything

works on previous gen.

In Los Angeles four years after departing Infinity Ward

Vince Zampella and his Respawn team made their comeback.

When Respawn broke off from Infinity

Ward and started working on Titanfall

it's pretty clear that was the game

they wanted to make Call of Duty into.

And that was the game that ultimately

Call of Duty started to go in that

direction right.That's not a mistake

those guys are smart those guys are

creative geniuses.I wouldn't say that

Titanfall didn't do well I think

Titanfall did better than anybody had

expected. For a new IP for a new

franchise to be able to sell four five

six million units or more I'm sure

by now, that's incredible for a new IP

that's an overwhelming success.

Any time you start a new IP

just like Call of Duty 1. Call of Duty One

was not a huge game it was big but not

really that big. And I think you're

going to see the same thing with Titanfall. You

know Titanfall is a really extremely

polished game, really tight gameplay and

it's just fun to play over and over and

over. Titanfall is a great game, it's

sales don't represent how good of a game

it is. You need a brand and Call of Duty is a

huge brand now. You know it took many

years to get that brand recognition and

Titanfall hasn't have the time to get the brand recognition yet.

Mechanically it is

fantastic and the gameplay is

superb.The issue being, it was

massively hyped. It was massively hyped to be

this great game.I played it

early and I played the demo.I played the

Beta and the point being,the Beta

was basically the full game. I'm

wondering whether or not it was rushed

out at the end. It did feel like it

at points.There didn't seem to be enough

kind of diversity to keep the

player going and it kind of lacked that

moment that Call of Duty has where

you feel like oh "this is a great play

let me tell you about this" there were

not enough of those moments in Titanfall.

You can objectively look at that game as

a developer and you can pick up some stuff

that just wasn't quite right. It

wasn't quite magical but they

were doing something really

revolutionary and really new.For that it

was more than what it received in appreciation.

Hollywood screenwriter William Goldman

once described the non-existent formula

in making a successful movie as nobody

knows nothing. As technology continues to

evolve the same words can be applied to

the future of video gaming.

Throughout the entire human history the form of

entertainment always has been something

where the audience is sitting

sitting on a chair,removed from

the stage and the show is

happening just on the stage and that's been the

case for thousands of years. Even think

about TV, movies, you're still

sitting on your chair and things are

happening away from you, apart from you.

Virtual reality, what makes it special is

that for the first time for the very

first time,you are no longer the

audience, you are right in the

middle of the action, you can look

around if there's an enemy coming behind you.

You can totally look back and

see it coming from behind you

and all these things are

happening around you. It's not happening

within the confined space of this box in

front of your eyes. So that makes the

experience very different.

If I had to predict the future for Call of Duty, I'd see

it becoming more like Counter Strike

where they have a base Call of Duty

game and they just keep building on that

rather than releasing a new one every year. I think they

are going to, at some point

release one game and they are

just going to build on that for three or

four years. They can have

loads of maps. They can keep updating it

and it's just going to be this solid Call

of Duty franchise. The game would just

be Call of Duty and that will be

the shooter that people play.

pushing stuff and they've done a lot of

current stuff and they're pushing into

sort of near future weaponary.

How many more maps

can they make? I don't know.

Everytime I see a DLC pack

there's always an old fan favorite

thrown in.We had Skyrise which

have been released in the past so I

think as long as they've got a good team

yeah they can make as many as they want.

We are always thinking about

virtual reality and how we can make a

game in virtual reality. There's a lot of

limitations on the performance side

because of the way VR works and how much

you have to render with it for each eye and

the fact that we have to tone it down

a little. And the Toon will fit

perfectly with all the things we're

thinking about.Performance, fun factor,

style, doing things in VR that may not

seem so grounded but they're just so fun

because it's VR.

I wish I could tell you what they're going to do. I mean the

developers are really really smart

they've now got a three year development

cycle rather than two years,they've got

longer to develop their game so they've

got more time to be creative and do new

things. So I don't know, maybe they will

move towards the VR experience where

you're literally playing Call of Duty as

if you're in the battlefield.

For me it would be much better, if video game

developers would be more aware about the

needs of disabled people and rather

than making games where they have

disabled people in them, I'd prefer it and

many disabled people would prefer it, that they

would make games that disabled people

could play.They want to be able

to play games they don't want to be

in the games, you know, so that would make a

huge difference. If programmers and

developers will take time to

conside when developing games

for everyone.

Since 2009 Dan Goldenberg and his team

have helped over 22,000 ex-service

military veterans get themselves into

high-quality jobs. The work is ongoing

Call of Duty's future prospects remain

infinite and the official World League

has created a permanent home for its

elite Esports teams. But the game

developers will know that to remain at

the top, innovation and creativity must

always come first, so too, must reaching

out to a highly loyal and passionate

community of fans.

UTAH BEACH, NORMANDY, FRANCE

But as time marches on the world must

never forget Call of Duty's origins and

meanings.Where it all began and what

happened on these beaches in 1944.

The men and women who sacrificed served and

gave their lives in World War Two went

above and beyond the Call of Duty.

They are, and will always be remembered

as The Greatest Generation.