The new shooter Call of Duty: Modern Warfare is currently still in a “Pre-Alpha” stage. Hearing this made some players so nervous that a developer from Infinity Ward had to step in to clarify.
This is how Call of Duty appeared at E3: Activision Blizzard did not have its own conference at E3 2019 and did not make much of an appearance at Microsoft either. Therefore, the major games from Activision like Destiny or Modern Warfare held smaller talk sessions, from which some nuggets of information were extracted.
Some screenshots were shown for Modern Warfare; behind the scenes at E3, demos were also shown that sparked a censorship discussion.
A statement from Infinity Ward during E3 caused unrest in the community.
A developer said, while discussing cross-play, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare is still in the “Pre-Alpha” phase, so still relatively early in development. He used that as an excuse for not being able to make definitive statements.
This is how parts of the community reacted: The statement spread across social media. After all, the release is already on October 25: There is not much time left and “Pre-Alpha” sounds far from a release in the ears of the players.
Unrest arose. There was a video in the community where a YouTuber said he was very concerned (via YouTube). The topic has been brewing a bit over the last few days.
Tour de Force, but as far along as previous titles
This is how Infinity Ward now reacts: A developer spoke up on Friday at Reddit to provide clarification. He says it is his 4th Call of Duty and the 9th game in his career. So he has some experience.
He wants to explain now to ease the tension: The new Call of Duty is at this phase of development just as far along as CoD 2, CoD 4, and MW 2. And Modern Warfare is much more ambitious than the other games.
And lastly, many players have had bad experiences with games that should have stayed in development a bit longer.
The development is a “Tour de Force”, a feat, for everyone in the team.
There are parts of the game that are already in alpha, and others are before alpha and content lock. This is because the departments work differently. It is a huge undertaking to bring the entire game into alpha, and until Call of Duty: Modern Warfare reaches the point where one can say: “We are now content locked.”
Between alpha and beta, it will still be polished, bugs will be fixed and they will look for ways to improve the game, the developer continues.
Since the production of Modern Warfare started, they have been developing with the latest technologies and have never taken a moment for granted.
This is how players react to the explanation: The players on Reddit seem satisfied with the explanation and praise the developer for the open communication, which has dispelled some concerns.
Others say, however, that one can only really assess everything once the game is actually out.
This is behind it: When players hear “Pre-Alpha”, they think of early access games from indie developers that remain stagnant for years and make only little progress. These “openly developed games” that rely on crowdfunding are developed differently: they have to show early to generate revenue.
You don’t normally hear such terms as “Pre-Alpha” from AAA studios because games in this state are not talked about. However, for developers at a AAA studio, “Pre-Alpha” apparently is a term without much emotion and merely means: “More content is coming.”
The heated discussion shows, however, that many players are still uncertain about Modern Warfare currently as no gameplay has been shown yet – especially the multiplayer mode is still completely missing.
And lastly, many players have had bad experiences with games that should have stayed in development a bit longer.
