Inside IW: My Experience at Infinity Ward and the Scoop on Modern Warfare 3
H4wke has posted up on his blog some information on Modern Warfare 3:
More informaton is on his blog. You can click the source link below.
Source
Hello all,
As you may or may not have known, I was invited down to LA, Encino to be exact, last week to check out the latest game that Infinity Ward has been working on, Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3. This being my first community event for any game, let alone the CoD franchise, the whole experience was very surreal. I was one of two PC players, out of about ten community members that were invited, Josh Peckler, Site Director of PlanetCoD, being the other one. As I considered Josh and I to be the "ambassadors of PC gaming" at the event, I wanted to let you guys know what I saw, how I felt about it, and what it means for our community.
First let me start off by saying that this was a singleplayer event only, no multiplayer details were released. Yes, this means that we were given no information about how multiplayer will work on PC. Also, anything and everything I saw or heard is subject to change from now until release day. The team is still very hard at work on the game and, as one might expect, things are changing on a daily basis.
My time at Infinity Ward lasted about 3 hours and consisted of both a studio tour as well as a live demo of parts of two levels. The tour was lead by none other than Robert Bowling (@fourzerotwo) himself. The studio itself was surprisingly small considering the large amount of work that goes into making these games. I'd say the entire studio was about 10,000 square feet and is housed entirely on part of one floor of a larger business building. The studio is broken up into several smaller areas called neighborhoods, which house individual design teams. For example, all the scripters would be in one neighborhood, while all of the animators would be in another, the sound designers in another, etc. There were parts of the studio which we were not allowed to see, notably the MP area and several bulletin boards which had been covered up. Interestingly for me, they had a full QA team on site working full time on hammering out game bugs in another area of the studio. Robert told us that one of the design philosophies of the studio is to "never leave anything broken for more than a day." He said that this ensures that the studio is constantly moving forward in the development of their games. As far as PC development goes, he insured Josh Peckler and I that the game is currently running on all three platforms, including PC, another design philosophy of the studio. He also noted that the lengthy certification process that both Microsoft and Sony require shortly before a game releases allows them to focus their team on extensively optimizing the PC version of the game for that length of time prior to release.
At the end of the tour, we were lead into the small theater within the studio to see some Modern Warfare 3 gameplay. We were shown portions of two levels. Let me first get some things out of the way. This game is not running on a new engine. This means that it contains all the things you love about the CoD engine, including the smooth and frenetic gameplay as well as the things that make the engine show it's age such as arguably aging visuals and lack of non-scripted destructibility. Judging from what little gameplay I was able to see, I think that it'd be safe to say that Modern Warfare 3's singleplayer campaign will be an evolution of what was seen in previous titles that adds in some interesting new gameplay elements, while remaining true to what has made previous CoD singleplayer campaigns popular. This gameplay obviously contained spoilers about the singleplayer portion of the game. If you would like to read these spoilers, click the link below.
As you may or may not have known, I was invited down to LA, Encino to be exact, last week to check out the latest game that Infinity Ward has been working on, Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3. This being my first community event for any game, let alone the CoD franchise, the whole experience was very surreal. I was one of two PC players, out of about ten community members that were invited, Josh Peckler, Site Director of PlanetCoD, being the other one. As I considered Josh and I to be the "ambassadors of PC gaming" at the event, I wanted to let you guys know what I saw, how I felt about it, and what it means for our community.
First let me start off by saying that this was a singleplayer event only, no multiplayer details were released. Yes, this means that we were given no information about how multiplayer will work on PC. Also, anything and everything I saw or heard is subject to change from now until release day. The team is still very hard at work on the game and, as one might expect, things are changing on a daily basis.
My time at Infinity Ward lasted about 3 hours and consisted of both a studio tour as well as a live demo of parts of two levels. The tour was lead by none other than Robert Bowling (@fourzerotwo) himself. The studio itself was surprisingly small considering the large amount of work that goes into making these games. I'd say the entire studio was about 10,000 square feet and is housed entirely on part of one floor of a larger business building. The studio is broken up into several smaller areas called neighborhoods, which house individual design teams. For example, all the scripters would be in one neighborhood, while all of the animators would be in another, the sound designers in another, etc. There were parts of the studio which we were not allowed to see, notably the MP area and several bulletin boards which had been covered up. Interestingly for me, they had a full QA team on site working full time on hammering out game bugs in another area of the studio. Robert told us that one of the design philosophies of the studio is to "never leave anything broken for more than a day." He said that this ensures that the studio is constantly moving forward in the development of their games. As far as PC development goes, he insured Josh Peckler and I that the game is currently running on all three platforms, including PC, another design philosophy of the studio. He also noted that the lengthy certification process that both Microsoft and Sony require shortly before a game releases allows them to focus their team on extensively optimizing the PC version of the game for that length of time prior to release.
At the end of the tour, we were lead into the small theater within the studio to see some Modern Warfare 3 gameplay. We were shown portions of two levels. Let me first get some things out of the way. This game is not running on a new engine. This means that it contains all the things you love about the CoD engine, including the smooth and frenetic gameplay as well as the things that make the engine show it's age such as arguably aging visuals and lack of non-scripted destructibility. Judging from what little gameplay I was able to see, I think that it'd be safe to say that Modern Warfare 3's singleplayer campaign will be an evolution of what was seen in previous titles that adds in some interesting new gameplay elements, while remaining true to what has made previous CoD singleplayer campaigns popular. This gameplay obviously contained spoilers about the singleplayer portion of the game. If you would like to read these spoilers, click the link below.
More informaton is on his blog. You can click the source link below.
Source