- 5/27/2025
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Short filmTranscript
00:00to be a cultural phenomenon this yearly game published by Activision to me Call of Duty
00:24has kind of become the standard bearer with its realistic cinema scenes immersive environments
00:30as well as a plethora of realistic weapons and ammunition to choose from it's no wonder
00:36it's one of the longest running video game franchises I wanted to start my own studio
00:41I only wanted to work for one game Call of Duty so long that fans don't even know Call
00:46of Duty wouldn't even be possible had it not been for another World War II game dreamt
00:55up by none other than Steven Spielberg he said take this chocolate and this peanut butter
01:00and put it together okay I'll figure it out the story of how the director of Saving Private
01:05Ryan Steven Spielberg is a gamer hired a bunch of modders we didn't really know what we were
01:09getting into living in a flop house in the middle of Tulsa Oklahoma my record staying
01:15up was three days straight developed for him a genre defining World War II epic these
01:21guys barely knew which end the bullet comes out of that not only would revolutionize the
01:25way people play games you feel like you're a part of an experience but also in the process
01:30would revive my generation play your games one of the industry's most revered video game
01:36developers I respect the developers the sea levels of Activision are greedy
02:06with over 23 titles in the series Activision's Call of Duty shows no signs of slowing down I
02:19thought I'd seen everything each game in the series brings something new and exciting from
02:25epic clashes on historical battlefields to the high-tech skirmishes of the modern era and even
02:31into uncharted realms of the distant future it's big it's bombastic it's you know over the top
02:37the goal of the game is simple band together with friends and annihilate the opposition
02:41but to tell the story of how Activision created the world's premier online multiplayer first-person
02:49shooter we need to return to the battlefields of yore in the early 1980s where for disgruntled
02:55Atari programmers known as the gang of four were well disgruntled and here's why marketing
03:02at Atari sent out a memo and that memo contained the games that were sold as cartridges in the
03:09previous year they were ranked 1 through 20 the gist of the memo was do more games that will be
03:15in the top of the list and stop doing those games they're at the bottom of the list and we said okay
03:20let's see I did this one and this one and this one and you did that one and that one and that
03:23one in between the four of us we had done 60% of the games on that list and the four quickly
03:30realized we were making Atari money hand over fist David alone calculated he made Atari about
03:3720 million dollars in sales which was considerable for my $20,000 salary in between the four of them
03:42they calculated they were responsible for 60% of Atari's revenue that past year so you take 60% of
03:50100 million dollars it's pretty easy to calculate 60 million dollars it was time for the gang of
03:55four to take matters into their own hands we made an appointment to speak to Ray Kassar so the four
04:01of us went in and just pointed out this simple fact that the four of us had been responsible for
04:0660 million dollars of their sales last year and there were no credit for us there was no royalty
04:14there was no benefit for us to make great games for Atari and Ray responded very quickly and very
04:21simply he said you're a dime a dozen Ray Kassar had been hired by Atari's latest owner Warner
04:29Communications to usher Atari into its new era he had no knowledge of video games he didn't care
04:34about video games you know he was a top-level bottom-line manager and he had one goal to keep
04:40the cost low for Atari's parent company Warner Communications and when Ray Kassar told us that
04:46we were not important we walked out of that meeting knowing that our future was not at Atari
04:51for the gang of four the question became where to go to next Alan Miller was really the driving force
04:58wanting to do a company but we didn't have any experience running a game company or a company
05:03at all but we knew between the four of us we could create a product line that would sell and make
05:08millions but to keep developing the games they were renowned for the rogue programmers would
05:13need help running their fledgling business that was the first thing is finding a person that we
05:19would have as a co-founder who runs the business and we stumbled upon Jim Levy we understood
05:25marketing and dealing with creative products he was a pretty good fit Jim Levy the president gave
05:31himself 7% of the company and he gave each of us two and a half percent of the company and I was
05:37not happy with that at all for Larry it seemed like history might be repeating I said well I'm
05:42I'm dropping out I'm not the joining you guys so the gang of four was now a gang of three we
05:48actually incorporated as computer arts Inc and then very shortly after that came up with the
05:54trade name Activision thereby forming the world's first independent third-party console video game
06:00developer meanwhile their friend Larry looked on from afar I went off and did two more startups
06:07neither of which did very well and by December I had run out of concepts and so I rejoined
06:13Activision they let me back in and the gang of three was back to being a gang of four although
06:20if they cut my stock in half so I ended up with one and a quarter percent a gang of three and a
06:25half then but in any case Activision was rolling when we founded Activision we had a philosophy
06:30that as new consoles get a million households we would start doing games for them we waited until
06:36they were successful before we jumped on their bandwagon so it was all Atari to begin with insert
06:44the cartridge into your Atari video computer system and saw over the hills all those moguls
06:49and then Mattel came out with their Intellivision and they hit a million installed base we started
06:55doing in television Activision was changing the industry by putting power in the hands of their
07:00employees it was a founding principle of Activision to give credit to the game designer which in many
07:05cases was David himself David Crane's amazing tennis I mean he made the boy in his blob he
07:11would just get an artist and he would do the whole thing design it and program it and soon our CEO
07:17said let's turn these guys into brands and the game manuals would have a picture in the back of
07:22just the game designer and some tips and that strategy paid off Activision recently opened
07:28its 92,000 square foot manufacturing and distribution facility and it's turning out
07:33cartridges faster than ever by 82 we had moved to Mountain View we had our own private chef she
07:39would come in to make sandwiches at lunch we were traveling first class we had limos and they bought
07:44everyone a company car why are we doing this that's not me I've got my Volvo station wagon you guys
07:50what's wrong with you couldn't get along with them and the company and Jim and so once again Larry
07:57was left with no choice I'm quitting in June of 82 and returned to his old employer Atari where he
08:04discovered that things had changed Ray had paid a lot of money for Pac-Man and that's when he
08:10decided to do royalties on pre-sales of a game you'll get 10 cents a cartridge which seemed like
08:16great news to many of Atari's young programmers by that time everyone had left Atari that had
08:21any kind of experience and they pre-sold 8 million so Todd Fry got $800,000 for doing
08:28Pac-Man because of the pre-sales he of course blew it on to Austin Healey's and two pounds of coke
08:34allegedly but he was completely inexperienced and so Pac-Man was a terrible game but the game that
08:41followed Pac-Man was so bad that it was truly out of this world E.T. video game
08:47with the movie E.T. Steven Spielberg had created an instant classic and Ray Kassar wanted some of
08:57that magic and in August of 82 Ray bought the rights to E.T. from Spielberg for 22 million
09:04dollars but to make up for that kind of investment he had to get the game out by Christmas and all
09:10the programmers said yeah that's six weeks that's not gonna happen and so nobody wanted to do it
09:16actually there was one person Howard Warshaw walked into his office and said if you write me
09:21a check today for $165,000 which was the mortgage on his mother's house then I'll do the game so Ray
09:29wrote him a check and E.T. made it onto shelves by Christmas I mean I for one I put the E.T.
09:36cartridge in I plugged it in and I started the game and I fell in a hole and I was done I was
09:41dead it sold very well at the beginning but then word-of-mouth was it was terrible and a billion
09:47dollar loss in December the retailers were very up in arms Atari was in a hole and soon so were E.T.
09:53games Atari had to go and and bury all copies of E.T. in the landfill in in New Mexico meanwhile
10:00David Crane was literally in a hole I fell in a hole so he phoned home I knew people at Atari and
10:08I call them and say how do I get out of the hole they didn't know and the two games E.T. and Pac-Man
10:14combined destroyed the industry Atari announced a loss of a billion dollars in December mostly
10:20because those two games were terrible the video games industry cratered and Larry knew just who
10:26to blame nobody at the level of an executive anywhere in the company looked or played the
10:31game they didn't believe it was necessary so there was no quality assurance at all that any of the
10:36games were being released everybody at the top level coming from directors on up were actually
10:41not interested in the product so severe was the implosion other companies like Activision would
10:47become collateral damage Activision did not respond very well to the crash the investors the board of
10:54directors and such didn't have the patience and in history repeated again they eliminated Jim
11:01Levy and brought in a person who really had no skills is very much like when Atari brought in
11:07Ray Kassar and they decided to change the company from a video game company to a home computer
11:13software company and changed the name of Activision to media genic which we always said sounded like
11:21some sort of a disease but the question became would media genic survive because after the video
11:27game crash of 1983 it would take years for the industry to recover and having been burnt in such
11:34a public way it would take a decade for Spielberg to come back to video games but in 1995 his film
11:41studio DreamWorks partnered with another behemoth Microsoft to form DreamWorks interactive I would
11:48say the ET was a motivation for him to start DreamWorks interactive part of the reason he got
11:52burned on ET is they just like licensed right and they just sent it over the over the wall and so
11:58that's why I think he had something to prove Chris was at ground zero for the inception of Greenworks
12:03interactive it was one of the first transmedia sort of attempts at having a game company that
12:10would have some relationship with a movie studio but also be able to do its own things DreamWorks
12:16interactive came out the gate with a string of fairly lackluster games all right okay we get it
12:23including a cooking simulator called someone's in the kitchen and a role-playing game starring
12:28gothic horror star Elvira mistress of the dark oh they also had Jurassic Park the franchise had
12:38some success but Steven said oh Jurassic Park's gonna be a dead license soon he said you know
12:44what I'm playing right now with my kids Goldeneye Goldeneye is amazing you guys should do Goldeneye
12:49World War two because you want else I'm working on I'm working on saving private Ryan he said
12:53take this chocolate and this peanut butter put it together you guys go figure it out the chocolate
12:59Goldeneye a groundbreaking first-person console shooter for the n64 the peanut butter saving
13:06private Ryan Steven Spielberg's World War two action movie that would gross 482 million dollars
13:12and go on to win five Academy Awards and the sandwich would be the n64's main rival the
13:19PlayStation we don't know how we're gonna do a first-person shooter on a PlayStation 1 it didn't
13:24exist like there are only two games before that that were in the first-person mode that I knew
13:28of it was jumping flash and then the other one was a game called disruptor that was done by
13:32insomnia and that was much more like very gridded 90-degree corners it wasn't very organic feeling
13:38there was also a PlayStation version of the popular PC first-person shooter doom but it
13:43wasn't considered true 3d as the enemies and objects were rendered in 2d at fixed angles so
13:50November 11th of 1997 Chris and his team set off to design PlayStation's first World War 2 based
13:573d first-person shooter which was given the name Medal of Honor so when we first got into doing
14:04Medal of Honor this is from Steven Spielberg said oh I did boot camp with all my actors
14:10your guys should get out there and get a feel for World War 2 with Captain Dye I'm Captain Dale
14:18Dye United States Marine Corps retired and try not to piss me off noted as a decorated veteran
14:26of the Vietnam War Captain Dale Dye brought his extensive experience to the set of saving
14:31private Ryan while we were staging saving private Ryan Steven was waiting for all the sets to be
14:38made and he had his laptop open he was fooling with it and he said look at this and he turned
14:43his laptop around and he'd been playing a military video game and said you ever played one of these
14:49and I said Steven no I didn't know anything about video games I think I'd played one in my life so
14:55I wasn't very interested but nevertheless Spielberg persisted and he said listen I want you to meet
15:01some guys I got this outfit called DreamWorks interactive and they do video games and I think
15:08they could use your input so after filming wrapped in Europe Captain Dye accepted a new mission and
15:13paid crisscross and the rest of the team a little visit I met the producers and the designers they
15:20were kind of pencil neck geeks yeah and you know they were techies and all this sort of thing and
15:26I said okay well you show me what you got and he showed me these little stick figures bouncing
15:31around and I said well that's crap I don't know about that what what I don't know I said no it's
15:36crap and it was obvious to Captain Dye that these men were in need of a military education and I
15:42loaded them all up in some trucks and I took them up to the high desert video game makers at that
15:48time weren't the most fit people and Captain Dye began to drill them like an army unit yeah yeah
15:59the initial training was experience with World War two weapons I had an m1 and I had 98k Mauser
16:07like an m1 Garand is like 20 pounds and to heft that thing and then the trying to imagine walking
16:12with it all day it was a circus it was a zoo these guys barely knew which end the bullet comes out of
16:18you know but I trained them with how the weapon works what the recoil is like how hard it is to
16:25get back on target was something it gave you this authentic feeling that we tried to replicate in
16:30the game it's a physical thing and you need to bear that in mind when you're designing these
16:35characters and then we began to get into individual tactical movement where we did paintball where
16:41would a guy go well he doesn't run right up the street there look at cover over here all the best
16:47latest plans wash away when that first paintball flies right like it totally goes out the window
16:53and I found myself enjoying it not only because I was torturing the pencil neck geeks
16:59but because it was just great fun to see the light bulb go on the authenticity that we were
17:04able to put into the games really was built out of those experiences with Captain Dye
17:09so the team had survived Captain Dye and they managed to mostly not piss me off however when
17:16it came to the real captain perhaps it was Steven Spielberg himself that was the only one they needed
17:21to be worried about so the thing is is you have to remember Steven Spielberg is a gamer so like you
17:26can't give him the regular executive dog and pony show you have to actually show him gameplay
17:34after several months of work and a few key military exercises DreamWorks Interactive finally
17:40had a demo of their first person shooter medal of honor for Steven Spielberg to see
17:45we're cruising around he's looking at stuff
17:50we shoot a barrel it blows up it was oh my god that's amazing and he says wouldn't it be cool if
17:57you shoot the oil barrel and the oil comes out right and then you ignite the oil and then it
18:03explodes right I go yeah that's super cool I don't know how to make that happen okay I'll
18:09figure it out and Chris of course did later on in the project we did a thing where you sabotage
18:14cars and I figured out how to make the oil like actually look like it puddles for me it was like
18:18oh I finally figured out how to do Steven's thing and while Chris and the team continued toiling
18:23through other challenges okay I'll figure it out we now need to leave Hollywood behind and turn
18:29our attention to the southwestern front Tulsa Oklahoma that's right Tulsa Oklahoma that does
18:35not seem like a gaming hub well it wasn't really but DreamWorks had plans to take medal of honor
18:41off the playstation and onto pcs with a new gig medal of honor allied assault and for the small
18:49Tulsa based company 2015 it was the big break they were looking for this opportunity sprung up and
18:57had a studio called 2015 and they were still in a house in a residential neighborhood in Tulsa
19:02Oklahoma but 2015 didn't create games they modified existing ones like Quake and Sin
19:09essentially what Tom Kadurka did was he had brought together modders from all over the
19:14United States and moved them to this house in Tulsa Oklahoma to create 2015 and because the
19:20margins in the mod world are kind of slim Tom had another business he was in real estate and this was
19:26one of his houses and these game modders had made some modifications to the house from the outside
19:32you know it definitely looked like something suspect was going on there you know windows
19:36with aluminum foil over the top of it an overgrown lawn the living room was literally just tables
19:41surrounding the living room with computers on them and while Justin's job interview started
19:46out in a relatively normal way my interview process was to actually create an asset it quickly became
19:52evident that sleeping on the job was a prerequisite and I actually spent the night on the floor there
19:58with like a sleeping bag and although Justin didn't know it it was a sign of things to come
20:02that was my introduction into 2015 and had it not been for Medal of Honor his time at 2015
20:08would have been quite short a couple of our different projects had fallen through it was
20:12basically like a you know a saving grace for the studio Medal of Honor was bigger than anything
20:172015 had done before and honestly when we started it we didn't really know what we were getting into
20:23so to make sure they were up to the task they called in try not to piss me off you know who
20:29they sent in Captain Dale Dye and just like the group at DreamWorks Interactive
20:34Justin and the boys at 2015 came away with some real war knowledge one of his points was when
20:40someone gets shot they don't you know flail all over the place or get knocked backwards
20:45he said usually what you see is they just hunch over like they've gotten hit
20:49so that was something that we definitely kind of took to heart and played up in the game
20:54but to learn that Justin simply could have looked at himself as he slumped over his computer
20:58due to lack of sleep I think my record uh for staying up was three days straight
21:04trying to get the character spaces to work properly and look good in engine it was quality
21:09work amid long nights in a flophouse full of dudes yeah it was not the most cleanly conditions I
21:15would say meanwhile back in California Chris and the team at DreamWorks Interactive released
21:21their PlayStation version of the game first one on PlayStation wasn't a breakout hit but it was
21:27profitable like successfully profitable and while it brought the single-player first-person shooter
21:33genre to a whole new level the guys at 2015 were about to show Chris and Spielberg a little
21:40something about how things were done in Tulsa Tulsa Oklahoma they were two years off the game's
21:46They did the D-Day opening from Save It Private Ryan almost shot for shot and somebody took a
21:53build of that and showed it to Steven and he flipped his wig like he was excited he was ecstatic
21:58he was like oh my god that's amazing it's almost shot for shot right but at the time like with
22:03the effects and the music and the sound and everything it was like oh my god that's amazing
22:09he was ecstatic he was like oh my god that's amazing it's almost shot for shot right but at
22:14the time like with the effects and going underwater it was the pinnacle of graphics
22:19and experience at the time and while it was only a demo it was clear that what the guys at 2015
22:25could do on a PC was the future however they still had the rest of the game to finish lots of long
22:33hours lots of learning curves lots of things to overcome and figure out and then in May of 2001
22:40Justin and the team would find out if all those sleepless nights were worth it it was being
22:46released into the wild but first they did a preview at E3 they did this big setup which
22:52looked like one of the Higgins boats and you know people could go in and play the game and you know
22:57we started watching the awards rack up and that's when we kind of knew that maybe we had something
23:01that people were really going to enjoy and soon hope started to build that they could win the
23:06coveted game of the year award there was a bonus check we would get a certain amount of money if
23:11it got game of the year and we would get a certain amount of money if it didn't well we'll find out
23:18finally released in January of 2002 medal of honor allied assault would rake in around 32 million
23:25dollars in sales this is a design shift that happened at that time the audience was starting
23:31to not care about the old arcade style of game ramping right which was it gets progressively
23:37harder and more rewarding they were more looking for a cinematic experience as opposed to how far
23:44can you get can you beat mario however medal of honor allied assault missed out on the game of
23:50the year award despite having stacked up eight or nine other awards which left tom with only one
23:56thing to say to his hard-working team and as the speech goes because you messed up and we didn't
24:03get game of the year we're giving you this amount of money and that was our bonus check and that was
24:08the lead into the conversation so was definitely that that little sting that little sting would
24:14become the straw that broke the camel's back we were tired because like the gang of four at atari
24:21justin and his co-workers at 2015 thought they deserved better but would history be set to repeat
24:28once again our future was not atari in 2002 tired of being overworked and underpaid we were tired
24:392015 team we're at a crossroads after medal of honor completed myself a couple other people
24:45had started a discussion about possibly separating off and starting something new
24:49like the gang of four who started activision before them the guys at 2015 knew they deserved
24:55better we had a desire to change that culture into something a little bit different more
25:00developer focused so three of the senior members of 2015 vince zempela grant collier and jason west
25:06would leave to create their own brand new company called infinity ward and they wouldn't be leaving
25:13alone the rest of us kind of trickled out over the next coming weeks in total 23 of 2015's 28
25:20employees would leave kind of emptied the studio unfortunately i don't think that we were all
25:26fully aware of just how risky it was because we were all riding on this high level of confidence
25:32at the time from medal of honor allied assault but they should have been worried because back
25:36at dreamworks interactive spielberg had decided to get out of gaming actually i'm not entirely sure
25:42steven wanted to sell it i actually think that was a little bit more about the tightening economics
25:47around the bigger business of skg skg being shorthand for spielberg katzenberg and geffen
25:54three owners of dreamworks and also the video game industry starting to grow big like becoming a
26:02capital i industry and i would suspect that the k and the g in the skg were like dude well you're
26:09gonna keep putting money in this like you gotta get rid of this like i met both of them once
26:13right and it was just one of those things where it was like clearly they're here doing is this
26:17worth my time ultimately it wasn't dreamworks interactive was sold to electronic arts to form
26:24ea los angeles the good news for infinity ward was that ea wanted to keep the medal of honor
26:30franchise alive and maybe even a little bit more than that at a certain point there started to be
26:36rumors ea wanted to potentially purchase infinity ward and why wouldn't they having a whole team
26:44to offer to a publisher that has a very specific skill set in a genre that's gonna be big super
26:50valuable they were founding this brand new studio called ea los angeles and you know they wanted a
26:56medal of honor leadership team to help run and direct these new medal of honor projects so it
27:02seemed like a match made in heaven almost what they didn't tell us when they came into the studio was
27:08that they didn't actually want to buy us what they wanted to do was hire us all out as individuals
27:12not a lot of people were happy about that we formed infinity ward because of the team because
27:16we wanted to stick together a lot of people were really reticent about going and mixing with a much
27:22larger team you know diluting our creativity and so the guys at infinity ward decided to bet on
27:28themselves we turned down the deal that was unfortunately the thing that was funding our
27:33company so we did that even knowing that this could be the end we're literally within days of
27:39closing the doors infinity ward was in trouble and along with it medal of honor however there was one
27:48company who themselves years before had been quite unwell they changed the name of activision
27:55to mediagenic which we always said sounded like some sort of a disease and mediagenic nearly
28:01didn't make it however after being bought up in the early 90s a group of investors restored
28:07restructured and brought back the activision name and now it was their turn to resuscitate infinity
28:14ward and activision essentially rescued us and they said we will give you x amount of money right
28:18now if you will sign up and do this new franchise for us whatever that new franchise would be
28:25and so for just 1.5 million dollars activision bought a 30 stake in infinity ward i think it
28:32was a collective cheer but the cheering continued when infinity ward found out exactly what this new
28:39franchise was actually all about and they told us that what they were interested in was creating
28:43a new world war ii franchise wait a new world war ii franchise yes almost immediately yep not
28:51medal of honor actually no you see it obviously excited us because we just wanted to continue to
28:57exceed the expectations we set with medal of honor highlight assault we helped bolster this franchise
29:02for electronic arts and dreamworks and now we were tasked with creating a franchise for activision
29:08and so the company that began with four disgruntled atari employees was now ready to
29:13embark on creating a new franchise i was one of the only oklahoma natives so the decision was made
29:20to relocate the office to los angeles we kind of looked at ourselves and we said what are we good
29:25at what can we do and what can we do better an infinity ward would answer the call all the puzzle
29:31pieces seemed to start to fit together for us and we were obviously elated to hear that they wanted
29:36us to kick off this new franchise for them it was a great catchy title that all of us could grab onto
29:42you know serving above and beyond the call of duty no doubt justin's call of duty would involve his
29:49regular sleeping arrangement because activision needed their new franchise game for the 2003
29:56holiday season which was just 18 months away most valuable asset in video games is a team when you
30:02have lightning in a bottle with a certain makeup of people it's irreplaceable we had kind of that
30:08unspoken code that everybody was able to speak with each other so i think that shorthand really
30:13played a lot into being able to ramp up very quickly and so infinity ward got to work in their
30:19own special way there were scooter races in the hall where they would run into into artwork and
30:24break them and everybody's like hey that happens there were nerf wars there were wednesday night
30:29poker nights i think a couple of us got a little bit spicy and named our source control mohk that's
30:36medal of honor killer but activision mea had a rivalry and so that's the right pitch hey we're
30:44gonna make a medal of honor killer called call of duty and as fun as all the nerf wars and scooter
30:49races sound infinity ward had a job to do there was a culture of excellence and they're willing
30:55to put the hours in to to make it happen definitely wasn't uncommon to stay up for two
31:00days straight pull all-nighters i think the difference was there was a lot more camaraderie
31:07and a lot more praise a lot more acknowledgement you definitely became closer i think with
31:13infinity ward colleagues then then maybe at other companies but make no mistake this tight-knit team
31:19were ready to take out medal of honor but would it take them down in the process
31:28for game developer infinity ward the battle had begun medal of honor was very much about you know
31:34one kind of super soldier going out there and doing these missions call of duty was very much about
31:39a group of soldiers kind of sticking together through missions now we had to think in terms
31:43of like how do you have other characters flank your character how do we make it feel like you're
31:47part of a team a part of a group going into combat even though it's a single player game
31:52it feels less lonely than playing maybe a more old-school shooter and then beyond that we had
31:58to do three different campaigns we wanted to do a british american and russian campaigns with those
32:03specific character leads in those campaigns where medal of honor had pioneered the use of in-game
32:09cinematics seems to work he was ecstatic he was like oh my god that's amazing call of duty would
32:16triple down making the gameplay itself cinematic there's the stalingrad sequence you're coming to
32:22shore and you're seeing like hundreds of soldiers marching up the side explosions going off you're
32:27being handed a rifle and you know anybody that turns around is going to be shot we're trying
32:32to create is almost a cinematic experience that you can be part of and i think that's one of the
32:36hallmarks of call of duty is not only did we pay attention to all of the historical accuracies and
32:41idiosyncrasies but we also wanted to give a little bit of a window into maybe what that moment
32:46of absolute fear might be like with the game nearing completion it was time to whet the appetite
32:57of the audience at e3 in may 2003 all the indications from e3 was that we had another
33:03hit on our hands so i think we were all just elated to once again see that kind of response
33:08from the audience and where they'd missed out on game of the year with medal of honor
33:13call of duty would be awarded game of the year more than 50 times in 2003 and over the next three
33:19years would sell nearly 800,000 units and pull in just shy of 30 million dollars and activision
33:26didn't want their golden goose getting away so activision fully purchased infinity ward for 3.5
33:34million dollars for the remaining 70 it was not a great sum of money probably lower than the
33:39development cost of the original call of duty but that money was split out amongst the various
33:44members of our team at the time so that was definitely a nice bonus this was like free
33:49money coming in i had never imagined in my wildest dreams what a royalty paycheck would look like and
33:55everyone was keen to keep that money rolling how do we make it bigger how do we gain momentum
33:59and that momentum exploded two years later with the release of call of duty 2
34:04it was a launch title for the new and improved xbox 360 and the first to have a truly functional
34:11online multiplayer gaming experience and that launched a whole new generation of people playing
34:17making multiplayer online games but now that activision outright owned the studio activision
34:23said hey you know we want to make call duty a yearly product can you get this out in a year
34:29to which infinity ward only had one answer no way that we're not doing that so activision found
34:35someone that could and they said absolutely affinity ward had become victims of their own
34:40success because the appetite for call of duty games in the marketplace was insatiable and
34:47affinity ward simply couldn't keep up so activision went elsewhere and hired the services of treyarch
34:54so essentially they would leave truck one company would take two years to build something and in the
34:59middle of that the next company would leapfrog and release the year after with a two-year product
35:04but when you split an ip between a bunch of different studios then each of those studios
35:11is going to have a different creative direction each one of those studios is going to have a
35:15different maybe standard for quality that is of course if quality is the priority it's really
35:21a shareholder thing it's really just to try and make mavericks every christmas and not to point
35:25fingers but when the creation of games is just about money things don't always work out so to
35:32ensure that history didn't work out in all the worst ways to activision's credit games are just
35:37getting more complicated to create so at a certain point i think they realized that two years was not
35:43enough to create this the fidelity of game that they were trying to create infinity ward couldn't
35:49make it by themselves they needed help so they introduced a third studio with sledgehammer to
35:54alternate between the three of them i wanted to start my own studio i only wanted to work for one
35:58game call of duty trey arc was one we were one meeting the next call of duty game for infinity
36:04ward would be the fourth in the franchise the game that i got hired for was call of duty 4
36:11and this would herald a new era of gaming because call of duty 4 modern warfare was the very first
36:18installment to break away from the world war ii theme bringing the franchise to the current day
36:24we made the right call sir what about your house the scope of the game improved it got larger and
36:29better but also i think it's just more relatable when you go to this modern context i'm watching
36:34things like the ac 130 and then you go online and you're like is are these things real is this stuff
36:39really happening the thing about call of duty is you can get experts you go visit things i've flown
36:46in attack helicopters i've been in tanks i've had shot all kinds of stuff you can do everything to
36:50get research i think that provides an extra level of interest but it was time to find out
36:55if the gamers would be interested call of duty 4 modern warfare was released on november the 5th
37:052007 it was pretty crazy when call of duty 4 launched i think nobody really expected it to
37:12be the cultural phenomenon that it was with upgraded and expanded multiplayer functions
37:18it was a game designed to be played with friends that was a huge part i played many hours of modern
37:24warfare multiplayer you're running around you're seeing explosions you're having your friends
37:29you know shout at you and give directives and stuff like that and i mean you feel like you're
37:34a part of an experience the multiplayer mode that had begun in call of duty 2 as an additional
37:39element to the single player focus campaign was now fully realized in modern warfare so after
37:46modern warfare came out it was like oh they've got their own sauce online multiplayer stopped
37:52being a side project and became the whole reason for playing the game one of the differentiators
37:58of call of duty is their multiplayer that really set it on the trajectory for success i think with
38:04the the call of duty 4 multiplayer adding in things like perks and the experience bar so you actually
38:11level up like it's an rpg and all of a sudden it becomes something that feels like oh now we have
38:17these progression systems now now we're getting somewhere that was an important part of why
38:22the multiplayer became so successful and honestly i think without the multiplayer component they
38:27wouldn't have become as as majorly successful as they are now without it call of duty's success
38:34continues and activision still launches a new title annually and it's become one of the biggest
38:40video game franchises in history i mean we're seeing an ad on the superbowl i'm watching a tv
38:46show they're talking about call of duty why did you do that just killing germans anyway i can
38:52we're on the german team it's mind-blowing and the franchise keeps evolving tracker has been
38:57successfully coupled with the target for advanced warfare everything about it is is brand new for a
39:02rendezvous with guardian five at the drop point and secure the cargo and this is where things have
39:07definitely evolved from the field trips with captain dine i took this trip to nasa jpl and
39:13this guy took me around everywhere and at the end of the day he goes oh you are in for a treat i'm
39:19going to show you a walking tank it was it was like this big mechanical spider and he said yeah
39:24we're going to put a drill on it we're going to put it on asteroids to drill for whatever they
39:28have it ended up being the first scene in the game i put the walking tank today call of duty
39:35has become a phenomenon and there are some who wonder if maybe there's too much of a good thing
39:41personally i wish there was a little more time between the games because it would be easier for
39:45me to play one if i knew i had time to finish it but according to some gamers activision cares more
39:51about money and continues to pump out cosmetics for exorbitant amounts of money and with the call
39:56of duty games hauling in billions of dollars combined something very predictable began to
40:01happen as they grew in success activision began to make those same business decisions ea was kind
40:07of doing that messed up medal of honor in 2009 infinity ward studios head vince sampel and jason
40:14west were fired while trying to renegotiate their contract and the employees at infinity ward could
40:21feel the change people were angry i respect the developers the sea levels of activision are greedy
40:28however the wheels of fate continued to turn they got screwed over so they started a company
40:34called respawn and of course they took nearly half of infinity ward's developers with them
40:40and ending up right back where they started with medal of honor above and beyond you know but that's
40:45the way this industry works activision began as a group of game developers from atari angry at
40:52being cut out of the financial rewards of their creations the sort of vicious irony cycle of tired
40:59of working for the man i'm going to start my own thing oh we're the man and as long as there's the
41:05man they'll be the artists making the man there were no credit for us there was no royalty you're
41:12a dime a dozen if you've done your work you deserve the credit and those of us we just want
41:18at the end of the day you know like an artist signs or painting you just want your name on it
41:23for what you did the cycle continues credits are important so as this war rages on next
41:31we'll turn our attention to a different kind of war game that's taken the world by storm or even
41:36a blizzard
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