The campaign of Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3 has received devastating reviews. Many criticize especially the low scope. The well-known industry insider Jason Schreier has spoken with employees of Sledgehammer Games and reveals what went wrong during the game’s development.
What is the problem with the campaign?
- The campaign is shorter than usual, lasting only 3-4 hours
- According to fans, the story lacks tension and is poorly written
- The monotonous mission design also bothers many fans
The first test scores also suggest that the MW 3 campaign was a flop. On Opencritic, the shooter currently has a score of 53 out of 100 possible points. Our colleagues from GameStar and GamePro have also given devastating verdicts for the campaign.
After all, Activision promoted the campaign beautifully:
Insider report uncovers grievances
Why is the campaign so bad? Industry insider Jason Schreier has authored a report on the situation for Bloomberg. He was able to speak with several developers from Sledgehammer Games who expressed their dissatisfaction.
On the one hand, the development time was only half as long as usual. Normally, there are about three years of development for each CoD game. For CoD MW 3, there were only 1.5 years. The reason for this is the fact that MW 3 was conceived as a filler.
Originally, the game was supposed to be presented to the development team as an expansion for MW 2, but it only developed into a complete sequel months later. Activision denied this to Bloomberg, commenting that MW 3 had been a “premium game” from the start.
However, much worse is that crunch supposedly once again was on the agenda. Sledgehammer Games was promised during the development of CoD Vanguard that this would be the last title where they had to do overtime. But even for MW 3, night and weekend work was allegedly not uncommon.
Actually, the story was supposed to have a smaller scope and take place in Mexico, but last summer Activision allegedly decided to reboot the story.
The development team supposedly only had 16 months to create a complete campaign. Analysts believe that this misstep should not have any impact on the franchise.
However, analyst Kevin Tsao thinks that Microsoft might consider suspending the annual cycle that Call of Duty has maintained since 2005.
Another problem may have arisen in communication with Infinity Ward: The development team at Sledgehammer Games had to wait a long time for feedback and sometimes had to make unwanted changes.
It remains to be seen whether the multiplayer and zombie mode of CoD MW 3 will perform as poorly as well. MeinMMO author Christos is already looking forward to one of the two modes in particular:
I would have ignored CoD: MW3, but one mode will surely entertain me for months
