Now firstly i want to say Im not doing this thread to bash activision , infinity ward or modern warfare 2. Activision is in my eyes a great publisher , infinity ward is one of my favourite shooter developers , and MW2 is my curent gaming addiction.

I first thought of the idea that the terrorist level might have been for publicity when I was reading 360 gamer(its a UK based magazine , i dont know if its published anywhere else) . In the magazine it had a six page article about controvesy in games and how there thought about by people outside the gaming industry. It was talking alot about games like manhunt and GTA. It eventually came to a part about the terrorist from modern warfare 2. The magazine explained that newspapers which complained and created contrvesy about games was basically a small eco-system for games : Newspapers get to act like they hate all this stuff in games so the public likes them thinks the newspapers are against the same things parents are , while at the same time developers get lots of attention . The line in the article that really explains it was ''It gives the developers the publicity that money cant buy ''.

Thats when you can think back to when activision was first announcing MW2 and they said they wanted the marketing of the game to be huge and had other companies besides infinity ward finding original ways to market the game. The article in 360 gamer clearly showed that the terrorist level got lots more peoples attention than just a simple trailer on the tv.

The final thing that makes me think the level could have been for publicity is that the level just feels jumbeled on. Even before you play the level it says that by skipping the level you dont miss anything which just asks the question why would you include it then? This makes me think that the people activision worked with to market the game just quickly thought of the level and made infinity ward throw it in near the end of development , the leak of the level could have also been on purpose.

Undoubtedly

No question. I mean...there was really no good reason to include that part besides publicity. It was very boring.

I felt the terrorist level was a good addition from a story-telling narrative perspective. I found it troubling, and that is exactly what Infinity Ward was going for. It is probably one of the best pieces of storytelling in a game that went all over the map in the single-player campaign.

There definitely was likely a consideration it would generate publicity.

the whole game's plot is for publicity!
they do that in every call of duty game.

No? Why does Activision/IW have to do ANYTHING for publicity? Do you think that level added an extra 2 million sales or something? Don't be ridiculous.

It wasn't for publicity, it was for immersion. They don't need to do shit for publicity, hell they probably didn't even need to advertise the game at all. All they had to do was release it, we the fans would have created all the hype it needed. They could have sat at their desk with their thumbs up their ass after they finished and still broken sales records.

Publicity? Not at all.

Reserved for lulz.

Well, I don't quite get what your 'lulz' will be about.  Am I wrong?  Are you saying this game wouldn't have sold millions of copies if they didn't spend a hundred million dollars advertising?  Give me a break..you obviously don't know the power of Call of Duty.  That's like saying MS has to spend a hundred million dollars advertising the next Halo.  Give me a break..

Well it kind of drives the plot [spoiler]US agent involved in massacre[/spoiler] so Im going to say it was not for publicity.

To be honest the level was shit. I really don't know why they included such a lame level =/