Infinity Ward "lifers" working on MW3
Activision calms fears after mass exodus.
Many of the developers who made Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 are working on Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 – despite the mass exodus following the sacking of Vince Zampella and Jason West.
That's according to owner and publisher Activision, which told Industry Gamers many of the Modern Warfare 3 developers are Infinity Ward "lifers".
"A lot of the guys working on Modern Warfare 3 are the same guys who worked on Modern Warfare 2 and Modern Warfare," Activision Publishing boss Eric Hirshberg said.
"A lot of them are Infinity Ward sort of lifers and have been there from the beginning. A lot of what you’re referring to, a lot of the turmoil, it all happened before I got here, so I never got to work with the old Infinity Ward. I only got to work with the new Infinity Ward, and all I can tell you is while they went through a huge transition, and while there was a lot of rebuilding that had to happen and they had to bring in some new talent to replace some of the people that had left, this is one of the most dazzlingly creative group of people I’ve ever met in my life."
A number of key Modern Warfare developers left Infinity Ward last year after Zampella and West's exit, including designers Steve Fukuda and Zied Rieke.
Zampella and West founded Respawn Entertainment, and signed with Activision's publishing rival EA to create what's rumoured to be a science fiction shooter.
Activision signed up Sledgehammer Games, formed by former Dead Space developers, to help the embattled Infinity Ward create Modern Warfare 3.
"Sledgehammer truly has treated them as partners, and the game is a reflection of a combined vision between those two studios," Hirshberg said.
"And so anyone who tells you, 'This is not the real Infinity Ward,' is wrong. This is an unbelievable developer, an unbelievably talented studio... and they’ve got something to prove, too. I think they’ve taken a lot of pride in proving the sceptics wrong and so far, the reception of Modern Warfare 3 has been pretty great."
Modern Warfare 3 launches this November.