As the U.S is currently engaged in a joint military operation with Israel against Iran, it’s now revealed that Activision had once pitched developer Infinity Ward to make a Call of Duty game about “Iran attacking Israel.” Chance Glasco, a co-founder of Infinity Ward alongside the late Vince Zampella, revealed this recently on Twitter/X:
“This doesn’t surprise me. I remember after Activision took over post-Respawn formation there was a very awkward pressure from Activision for us to make the next CoD about Iran attacking Israel. Luckily the vast majority of our devs were disgusted by the idea and it got shot down.”
Glasco also revealed (in response to a comment on the infamous ‘No Russian’ level in the original Modern Warfare 2) the studio’s philosophy behind many of the early Call of Duty games which is both interesting and insightful:
“With Early CoDs, we wanted to often remind people that war is hell and not just a video game,” Glasco said. “If you play the earlier [Infinity Ward] CoDs, you’ll definitely see that throughout the series. We wanted players to feel disgust, and we purposefully sought to make them actually feel bad for war. We focus tested the level before release, and an extremely high percentage of players just froze when they realized what they thought they were supposed to do. Some of them put the controller down and said they didn’t want to play it. This, to me, is a much better reaction than 100% of players just going Leroy Jenkins on the level with no emotion at all.”
Players of the first and second Call of Duty titles will certainly get this–how there was always a delicate balance between the mind numbingly chaotic destruction of war and the sheer human suffering that was on display in almost every level. And this thematic undertone was present in the early titles of the iconic franchise and was a huge part of the reason why those games became so groundbreaking in their times.
In other news of Call of Duty, the latest entry in the franchise which is Black Ops 7, is gearing up for it’s massive Season 2 that’ll kick off in next week.
