If all of the wars of the world were tallied up for the amount of revenue they have generated from books, television, movies, and videogames, World War II would certainly top the list. Even more embedded in the videogames industry, WWII has become a standard done one too many times. Agreeing to this principle is developer Infinity Ward, the visionaries behind Call of Duty 4.
In the latest issue of Game Developer magazine, as highlighted by GameSetWatch, Infinity Ward’s Zeid Rieke and Michael Boon explain what the future possibly holds for their next COD project and how WWII may not be in those plans.
Infinity Ward explains:
"Call of Duty 4 was Infinity Ward’s third Call of Duty game, and as such we approached it knowing we needed to do something fresh. We don’t want to pigeonhole ourselves any more than we have to, and many members of the team came off Call of Duty 2 promising never to work on another WWII game"
This is how the modern setting featuring the Middle East and Eastern Europe surfaced. In return, COD4 ended up being their biggest endeavor with impressive sales figures and a booming online community.
"Coming off Call of Duty 2, we knew we wanted to do something different for our next game,"
However, Infinity Ward believes that while things need to become more progressive in terms of war settings, WWII is not completely dead.
"…we don’t agree with some critics who say that WWII as a genre is dead.” And continued with, "But we couldn’t muster the same passion for the subject that we had in our first three WWII games (Call of Duty 1 and 2 and Medal of Honor: Allied Assault)."
If World War II were ever to surface up again, it would be interesting to see more of the Pacific theatre, something that has been pretty much ignored in the shadow of the German/European front.