The developers of Call of Duty: Warzone and Modern Warfare have been working from home since March to counter the spread of the novel Corona virus. This has also brought something positive, explains a developer now. They now have a much better understanding of online gamers and their social needs. However, there are also difficulties.
Who is speaking? It is Amos Hodge, the Creative Director of Raven Software. They are working together with Infinity Ward on Call of Duty: Warzone and Modern Warfare.
How Corona positively affects development: One day in March, everyone at Infinity Ward and Raven Software got up, packed their work PCs, and went home to work from there. Everything now functions via the communication tool Slack or through web videos: testing, development, and meetings.
According to Hodge, one process has completely changed due to the new situation: the actual testing of the games in the team.
- Previously, it was a kind of “couch co-op” experience. The testers sat “shoulder to shoulder” together, able to talk to each other at any time.
- Now, testing is truly an online experience – people sit at home alone.
Developers Alone at Home
This change has altered the perspective:
It has allowed us to put a greater focus on the social elements. What kind of social elements can we bring into the game now that we are no longer all together? We are no longer shoulder to shoulder; we are all alone at home playing the game. This is a different kind of experience and it allows us to look at problems from a different perspective than we did before. So I think it has really helped us to shift our priorities to think more socially.
Amos Hodge, Creative Director at Raven Software
So if we see new ways in the future how players communicate online in Call of Duty: Warzone, it may be due to the developers having to play online together now and not huddling in couch co-op.
These are the disadvantages of working from home: As a negative aspect of working from home, Hodge sees that communication has suffered greatly, especially in the area of brief, verbal feedback immediately following game sessions.
Joe Cecot, the Multiplayer and Design Director at Infinity Ward, talks about how brief personal conversations have become in the home office. He also noted that the shift to working from home occurred right during the release of Call of Duty: Warzone. Cecot highlights the achievements of the IT department, which has solved many technical difficulties.
Cecot says: “I don’t want to pretend it was easy.”
Similar statements about working from home during Corona times were already made by Bungie, the developers of Destiny 2. They also emphasized how important technology is.
Another issue that the developers of CoD Modern Warfare and Warzone mentioned in a recent interview is the enormous storage space requirement of the game.
They revealed how players canreduce the GB requirement of CoD Modern Warfare and Warzone on PS4 and Xbox One.
