The story of the development of Call of Duty Warzone is one of late nights and an expansive vision that was not an easy sell. Starting development in early 2018, the Modern Warfare and Warzone team had an uphill battle ahead of them.
But the result was a game that reached over one hundred million players worldwide, and is still a roaring success to this day, over three years after its initial release.
Infinity Ward Co-Lead Shares His Experience
In an article from the Washington Post, Patrick Kelly shared his experience making the popular battle royale with Dave Stohl, co-head of Infinity Ward. Infinity Ward started development on Call of Duty: Modern Warfare sometime in 2016, soon after the release of that year’s game, Infinite Warfare.
But development on their new and exciting battle royale, then titled “Magma,” did not start until early 2018. It seems that the game’s development faced many difficulties along the way, from the initial pitch, a title to rival the steadily growing battle royales, PUBG, and Fortnite, it seemed that Warzone was an impossible task.
The Original Pitch For Call of Duty Warzone Was Ambitious
The pitch for “Magma” included a lot of big goals, with several questions as to how the team would achieve them. Kelly was initially inspired by his love of PUBG and wanted to bring that to COD.
So, the game would have to fit into the mold being created for Modern Warfare, which was aiming for a much more grounded and realistic tone compared to previous entries in the franchise.
The goal was to make a battle royale that was not only enormous but also broke many of the conventions established by the genre. The gulag was introduced to get a second chance at life and the ability to bring custom load-outs into the arena helped to differentiate it from the steep competition.
The Team Did Not Have Complete Confidence In The Game
Not everyone on the dev team was fully on board with the decisions being made, as progress went on and the scope increased. Some team members began to lose faith as the project did not fit into the accepted format for battle royale games.
Patrick Kelly and Dave Stohl talked about the environment they experienced every day. Stohl recounts the following:
One of the challenges in a mode where you have people playing other games like PUBG or whatever, is the religion around, ‘well that’s not battle royale’ or ‘That is battle royale’
Kelly went on to explain that some devs would even go behind his back to Stohl to make changes to the game.
However, despite fears from the developers that the project wouldn’t work, they did get on board and it all came together. Warzone has enjoyed a lot of success, so it’s clear that Kelly and Stohls crazy idea paid off in the end.
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