Infinity Ward's MW2 Propaganda Train packed with Lies ?

_{by Vrandas}

Just found this remarkable news story. It is called "Twitter's contribution to Modern Warfare 2" and has been written by Don Reisinger for CNET website. It was placed in the "Gaming and Culture" section.

The name "Gaming and Culture" is for me already enough to associate it with a dark period in Germany. But OK, lets read what this gentlemen has to say...

Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 has some inspiration from Twitter.

^{(Credit: infinity Ward)}

Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 might have been designed by a capable team of Infinity Ward developers, but the company had some help: Twitter followers.

Infinity Ward Community Manager Fourzerotwo told Develop Online in a recent interview that during the development of the highly-anticipated release, the developer called on Twitter users for help.

"During development, if we are sitting in a design meeting and we are arguing about something, no matter what it is, I can just turn to what is now 60,000 people and post the same question," 402 told game developer news site Develop Online. "'Do we think players will like this?' well why don't we ask 60,000 of them and get a good representation of what we think they may like?"

But it was the next statement that might cause gamers participating in social networking to rejoice. Bowling told site that Twitter was "fantastic throughout development" and he "would recommend many, many more people adapted that into their design schedule."

402 also said that Infinity Ward didn't ignore any responses to its design questions. He said that developers "listened to all" of the suggestions, but filtered out those that didn't match the company's "design philosophy." Suggestions that asked for more gore, for example, ran against the company's design philosophy, 402 said.

Regardless of whether or not Infinity Ward incorporated every idea into CoD Modern Warfare 2, 402 told the publication that now more than ever, gamers are getting closer to the development process.

"The average gamer is so much closer to the people who make the games than they ever were before," he told the publication. "And as a result of that they are so much more developer-aware. No longer is it an Activision game, but an Infinity Ward game, or a Treyarch game or a Bungie game. And gamers know where to go to offer their feedback."

Oh, how things have changed. When I was younger, I sent several snail-mail letters to developers asking for design tweaks in some of my favorite franchises. I never heard back. And it seemed that my plea had fallen on deaf ears.

Today, things are different. The developers of one of the most highly anticipated games to be released in 2009 were listening to gamer suggestions on a social network? Amazing. Let's hope for more of it.

Does one get paid for writing this kind of nonsense ???

Almost 200.000 signatures for something the twittering PC CoD gamers heard of only 20 days ago. And that was in a, not planned, PC COD FAN webcast interview with Fourzerotwo....

NO ONE even bothered to ask the CoD PC Community what their opinion was on the idea of removing the dedicated servers and the not releasing of the Modtools.

And till this very day a mature conversation with Infinity Ward about what we can expect in the near future is not possible. Why is this not possible? Because Infinity Ward doesn't want to talk with us. They never did and if it was up to them; they never will.

So the story from Don Reisinger contains little truth. Infinity Ward dictates and the "journalists" publish. In reality nothing has changed since Don was a young lad. The only things changed are the well oiled marketing machines and some young lads telling stories.