https://www.eurogamer.net/call-of-duty-modern-warfare-3-developed-in-just-16-months-report-claims
A new report claims Modern Warfare 3 was developed in just 16 months. That's roughly half the time of a standard Call o…
They've been churning out COD games every year for a long time now, doesn't surprise me that they take such little time to develop.
If I recall correctly they had three teams each developing their own COD on rotation. So each team would have effectively 3 years between releases. This implies this game had even less than half the dev time typically given to a COD game, but my numbers could be off.
You're close - each game would take an 18 month dev cycle, but they had a six month pre-production. So there were two main teams who would "trade off" each year. A third "team" (people moving in from other projects) would support whichever game was closest to release.
It's likely that number (16 months) includes pre-production, which is... Definitely short, and explains a lot of problems they've had.
(Source: I've worked in games for almost 20 years and know people who've worked at Activision (pre Blizzard) , Activision-Blizzard, Sledgehammer)
Didn’t ATVI at one point have no less than 9 studios flipping and flopping through making the game? Too many cooks ruins the soup as they say.
I wouldn't be surprised. One reason these games often come out so half-baked is because teams get them halfway through dev, but have never worked on the project. So by the time you've learned how to work on it, you're put on a new game.
It's shocking just how bad the largest studios are at making common sense decisions.
But the sad fact is they'll still sell an insane amount of copies no matter how bad the game is. The question becomes what will players put up with. The continued amount of players on games like Overwatch 2, the newest COD, HALO, any EA sports game, WoW, etc, all tell them they can do really whatever they want, and people will still support them.
Wasnt the whole thing supposed to be a big update to 2022 title? I remember reading there was going to be no new title for this year and instead MW2 would get a big update.
I bet they saw how dumb people are who are willing to buy a premium version of a battlepass every season on top of all the crazy skins they push out. So, instead we get a "new" title which literally plays and feels like a DLC for MW2 which it was meant to be.
A MW DLC was developed in 16 months. That’s not unusual. The scumbags that are charging the price of a full game for a DLC is the problem.
Warzone was the first time I had been into any COD game since MW4. I was actually impressed how good it was. Then it continually went downhill further and further which each horrible money-grubbing decision.
I'm super confused at this narrative trying to say 16 months is "short".
As if time === quality.
Hell, lots of games only have a year before launch.
It's totally more about treating this DLC like a full game.
At this point it's fair to say that there was some sort of scramble to get a game out by the holidays this year. I think the developer studios probably suffered some kind of set back or maybe people left, so they pivoted to selling an expansion as a full game. I think that's why everything is half baked, incoherent, and basically an expansion to MW2.
Honestly I lm surprised they have that long to develop. When all you have to do is make some slight MP changes, makes a couple maps(since most of the maps will just be updated maps from already popular COD games, because why make anything fresh?) and then figure out how to make those maps into a single player level and cobble the levels together with some packing tape.