A new report published by Bloomberg states that development of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 was completed in less than a year and a half, which is less than half the three years it usually takes to produce games in the series. The developers worked nights and weekends to meet the deadlines set by Activision Blizzard.
According to Jason Schreier’s sources, this reduction in development time has compromised the final quality of the game and contributed to the negative press surrounding the single-player campaign, which we know is, among other things, decidedly shorter than previous Call of Duty games.
Echoing what has been reported in recent months, Bloomberg states that the game was actually born as an expansion of Modern Warfare 2. However, due to the delay of another Call of Duty scheduled for 2023, Activision Blizzard has decided to make it a “temporary solution” to maintain the series’ annual release rate, turning it into a full-fledged game and resulting in a tedious production pace
Some anonymous employees of Sleldgehammer Games, who also worked nights and weekends to complete development, felt betrayed by Activision Blizzard as management promised that they would no longer have to go through an intense production cycle after the launch of their previous game, Call of Duty: Vanguard, which, Apparently, it was created under similar conditions.
The report goes on to explain that in the early months of the project, the story was intended to be a small Modern Warfare spin-off set in Mexico, which would certainly be easier to pull off in a short development time. However, last summer, Activision Blizzard executives decided to reboot the story and asked Sledgehammer Games to create a direct sequel to Modern Warfare 2, dedicated to the villain Vladimir Makarov. This essentially forced the team to start a new single-player campaign approximately 16 months before release.
The developers also said they were disappointed that content was being handled by Infinity Ward, the Activision studio usually responsible for the Modern Warfare series, due to the ineffectiveness of sharing feedback and making significant, sometimes unwanted changes.
Obviously, this unofficial information should be taken with a grain of salt, even if it comes from someone as reputable as Jason Schreier.
