Infinity Ward kept Modern Warfare 2 secret from Activision

Tuesday 27-Oct-2009 10:05 AM Dev tells us why CoD was kept under wraps from its publisher

Infinity Ward is definitely calling the shots when it comes to Modern Warfare 2's development. Speaking to OXM, Community Manager Robert Bowling said that publisher Activision was only shown the game once development was well under way.

"We know the game we want to make, and especially with Modern Warfare 2, we didn't even show Activision the game until very much later in the development process. Because we want to stay focused, really the only opinion we care about is what our fans think."

He also reaffirms statements made in recent days that social networking has allowed Infinity Ward a direct connection with fans, outside the usual marketing channels.

"So that's why very early on, we got in touch with our fans via Twitter and Facebook and said 'what's the one thing you wanted to see in the game?'"

"So we got all that feedback and later on we asked a few more questions, and as we're designing, we have all these boards in the office that we can gut check ourselves and say, 'this is what they'd like to see, this is what we have planned and this is what we already have, and let's try to get those more in synch.'"

planned and this is what we already have, and let's try to get those more in synch.'"

"That's really what's important, our relationship with us and our fans, and not so much us and Activision, or us and retailers or anything like that."

http://www.oxm.co.uk/article.php?id=14687

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This is GOOD

Best to keep games from corporates!!

Respect +

awesome, IW should go one step further and break away complety from Activision / Blizzard

Fans asked for the removal of dedicated servers on PC version???

Best to keep everything away from Activison, I still can't believe that they are charging £55 for the game

yeah, console fans lol

That's nice and all but doubt it did too much as Activision is still going to have final words on a lot of things. I can almost say for certain it was Activision making sure it was still called "Call of Duty". I mean unless you have a developer that has just an undeniable reputation (Kojima Studios, Valve, Miyamoto's team) then you are going to have the publisher have most of the final say... even with those I just mentioned to a smaller extent.

So it's nice to see IW is getting a good relationship with Activision where they have a lot of trust in their judgment but a little overstated that I'm sure Activision still had a lot of say in the project.

@munkeh111

they couldn't keep its price away from it lool

lol the fans didnt want cheating bastards on the pc so bye dedicated servers, i hope they add the function in for lan games

surely IW can be there now

COD4 was like a GTA3 hit

I doubt after a couple of good games you can get the reputation of those studios who have just been solid for a very long time.  But I'm sure they are getting quite a few benefits considering the past successes of their franchise.  We'll know how much freedom they get if they are allowed to expand outside of COD after this game.