Creating your first game on next-gen formats is like an awkward first date, says Call of Duty: Ghosts dev
Call of Duty: Ghosts is the first next-gen project for Infinity Ward, and executive producer Mark Rubin has likened that experience to an awkward first date.
Speaking with Edge, Rubin was asked if creating Call of Duty: Ghosts for current and next-gen formats is holding back the game from a tech perspective.
He replied, "I don’t think it’s holding next gen back. The way I look at it is the first game on a next gen console is the hardest one to make. It’s like a first date. There’s a lot of figuring out what’s going on and very little knowledge of each other. The second date, of course, gets much better, but the first date’s kind of awkward.
“Take for example Call Of Duty 2 and the way that game looked even compared to even Call Of Duty 4. It’s a significant leap forward. So I think we’ll see something similar – I hope, as a games developer in general, not just of Call Of Duty, to see massive leaps forward as the generation gets more mature.”
When asked if Rubin felt pressure by the presence of Destiny and Titanfall, and the desire from gamers to see a real shake-up of the Call of Duty formula, he replied, “Yeah, there is a lot of pressure there. It would, in a sense, just be easier for us to go just make a brand new game that isn’t Call Of Duty, that doesn’t have any limitations. That would be the easy way out.
“It’s actually much harder to know that you have something that’s very important to a lot of people, and a formula that people really love as it is. To change that every year is something that’s a huge challenge for us internally, but it drives a lot of our passion. We end up becoming our own biggest critics – when we ship, we postmortem what we did right and what we did wrong. We really tear it apart. That drives us to keep going on the franchise, and not take the easy way out, in a sense."
Do you feel that changing the Call of Duty format too much would be to destroy its identity, or is it time for a total restart? Let us know below.
Be sure to stay tuned for my big Call of Duty: Ghosts hands-on impressions and interview feature here next week.