The following interview with Infinity Ward’s Vince Zampella over a Joystiq gets my dander up for a couple reasons.
First, and I’ve been getting this sense for a while now, the developers of Modern Warfare 2 seem like dicks. I understand they aren’t real happy with the way Activision has farmed out editions of their baby, Call of Duty, to other developers. But the tactic has been undeniably successful. After the blockbuster success of CoD4 in 2007, last year’s CoD: WaW also sold like 8 million units. What’s more, World at War was actually a really fun game, and Treyarch, that edition’s developer, should be commended for their contribution to the health of the franchise. They certainly don’t deserve the kind of very public derision demonstrated by Infinity Ward’s representatives like we see here:
What about something like the Zombie Mode that Treyarch did for World at War?
[Silence.]
It’s too bad our audio recorder doesn’t record the sound of eyes rolling.
That’s why I did it! [Laughs.]
Classy, Vince. Try and remember their post-game bonus mode was a lot more fun than the airplane take down included at the end of CoD4.
The other thing that annoyed me was just the poor interviewing skills demonstrated by Joystiq’s Kevin Kelly. Zampella doesn’t go out of his way to help him which results in a lot of very short, extremely pointless responses. The worst comes at the end:
What do you guys think about Six Days in Fallujah? The developer of that game took a real world event and made it a game. You all went with a fictional setting.
I honestly know almost nothing about it. I have been distracted with other things … yeah, I don’t know how to answer that.
The topic of the question is actually an interesting one. But you have to phrase the question in the right manner, one that requires a real response. The ol’ “hey, what about that thing?” tactic will never work. To get an honest reply he only needed to ask something like:
“The first Modern Warfare was very much informed by the conflict in Iraq. Did you ever consider setting the game in the real world, attempt something like what Six Days in Fallujah is trying? Your previous games all take place in a real war, depicting actual battles. Why the switch to a wholly fictional conflict?”