Robert Bowling, Infinity Ward’s creative strategist, has heaped praise on Treyarch’s take on the Call of Duty brand, saying the combined efforts of both developers allow gamers to experience a ‘different style’ with each new game in the series.
Chatting to GamerZines at a Modern Warfare 3 event earlier this week, Bowling said Treyarch has managed to inject its own personality into the military shooter franchise while still retaining the core Call of Duty experience.
"What Treyarch has done – and what I actually think is fantastic where we are now – is they’ve really taken Call of Duty in a different direction. No longer are you getting the same game every year, but you’re getting a different style of the same core Call of Duty design," he said.
"Every developer has their own personality and their own direction, and more so than ever we’re seeing people who really enjoy this style and the other. And it’s not a black and white good and bad; they’re very different experiences but in the same core gameplay.”
Bowling used the hugely popular zombie mode as an example of how Treyarch has calved out its own identity within the series, though admitted Infinity Ward wouldn’t go down the same path as them in that respect.
"Rather than trying to cannibalise each other, they do things that we would never do but have turned out fantastic – like their Zombie modes – and added new features to multiplayer that we would never add, just because they’re a different style," he said.
Elsewhere, he spoke on the importance of gathering fan feedback on various hiccups that have plagued past CoD games, even if they weren’t actually developed by Infinity Ward.
He also said the studio is making it a priority to ensure that the PS3 and Xbox 360 versions of MW3 run equally, something which Bowling said was a hot topic during the early stages of development.
"When we go into development we’re making sure that we’re aware of what people want to see even if it wasn’t something that was in a game that we did. All I can say is that it’s our responsibility to make sure that we’re attending to anything," explained Bowling.
"I know a big question early on for development on Modern Warfare 3 was ‘what’s the difference between 360 and PS3?’ We made it very clear that it’s always been an Infinity Ward standard to make sure that both platforms run equally and to make sure that they’re receiving the same attention, dedication and quality."
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 is due out in November 2011.