DAY 2 - Monday started early (a bit too early for me) and fast. Luckily though I got too meet up with some familiar faces to start off from our friends @OPM_UK (Official Playstation Magazine UK), PC Zone, OXM UK and many others. What exactly we talked about I can’t say. As I said, it’s all about pacing with this type of stuff and trust me, it works on in your favor in the long the run. While the middle of the day is under wraps, dinner that night introduced me to a new love of mine…. MEXICAN DONUTS. An absurdly delicious and near-deadly of donuty-powdersugared-toffeetdipped dessert served at the restaurant in our hotel. While 2 could probably be considered unhealthy consumption of sugar, I snuck about 8 more orders onto the bill and stuffed my face like I was dying the next day. (which I felt like doing after the 9th Mexican Donut)
I’ll be honest, I’m not sure where French Fries got their name or if France is related at all really, but these will the most killer Fries I’ve ever had. Fantastic homemade french fries. I also got a desert of ice cream in the form of French Vanilla (honestly, I wasn’t just eating food with ‘French’ in the title on purpose, it just worked out that way…… REALLY!).
Ended out the day back at the hotel fighting with the local wifi to try and receive some assets from the guys back at IW studio for approval. Once that was done, it’s time to get some well needed sleep before another 7 AM start to the 2 days in Paris. Rinse and repeat then we’re off to Germany!
Check out the most recent feature on Gamasutra.com where one of our lead designers and I discuss Achievements in games.
Achievements are “like a topping on a pizza,” explains Robert Bowling, community manager at Infinity Ward. They enhance the gameplay experience and reward dedicated players for their effort and skill.
That is why unlocking all the potential points in a Call of Duty game is such a grueling process. They are badges of honor — particularly achievements like “Mile High Club,” says Bowling.
In reference to the question, “Do you design the game first, then worry about achievements, or do you design around achievements from the start?” - Achievements are “like toppings on a pizza”, as to say they are purely meant to enhance gameplay, not determine it. You make the pizza taste fantastic with it’s core ingredients, then you work on how to enhance that flavor in the same way you make the core game great, then comes the process of adding the extras.
Only 2.8 percent of the 10 million Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare players who have ever logged into Xbox Live have earned the achievement, which is awarded for completing COD4 on veteran difficulty.
Achievements like “Mile High Club” should be rare — perhaps only one per game, Bowling explains. “It is one of the hardest achievements to achieve and you lose some of that weight when they are all that hard. It would be more frustrating than fun.”
Players, however, complained that the achievements in Call of Duty 2 were too difficult to obtain, says Call of Duty 4 lead designer Zeid Rieke. All but three of the 13 achievements had to be completed on veteran difficulty. So the studio compromised for COD4.
We decided to pull some numbers on Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare this past week, which Slothy (one of our coders) so graciously put into a perspective we can all relate to.
As of Jan. 3rd we hit 10,006,606 unique users who have ever played Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare on Xbox 360 and have connected to Xbox Live at least once after playing.
That number got us curious as to how many of those 10 Million+users finished the F.N.G. mission, or beat Airplane on Veteran (among other things). Well, it turns out:
71.1%, or 7,111,508 people have completed F.N.G.
That’s more than the entire population of Hong Kong (which is 7 Million).
68.8%, or 6,886,509 people have completed Cargo Ship.
This is the same number of adults in the US who were morbidly obese in 2005.
46.5%, or 5,654,643 people have beaten the game on any difficulty.
This is more than the current population of Finland!
2.8%, or 283,632 people have completed Airplane on Veteran difficulty.
The population of Stockton, CA is 280,000.
So if you’ve beat Airplane on Veteran difficulty, then congratulations. You’re in a very elite club. Considering less than 3% of players have been able to do it.
Now keep in mind, these are only players on Xbox 360 (who have also connected to Xbox Live at least once). So there are more than this playing Call of Duty 4, we just can’t track them. For PS3, we pulled MP-numbers only, and it looks like theres approximately 4,381,276 unique users playing PSN (not including SP-only players).
I’m back from Las Vegas and most importantly the Call of Duty 4 National Champsionships that were held there this past weekend as part of the MLG National Finals. While I was there I met with up team FeaR (seen above) who took home the title as the best Call of Duty 4 players in the country. I watched over their shoulders as they shut out EnvyUs three games straight in some of the most impressive COD4 skills I’ve ever seen.
I caught up with (Robert) FeaR Assass1n, Kevin (FeaR Choppy), Joey (FeaR Moho), and John (FeaR PacMan) just after their win, before they scored their giant check, to congratulate them and talk about flying them out to the Infinity Ward studios at some point in the future.
While team FeaR came out as the best, 2nd place EnvyUs, 3rd place Head Trauma, and 4th place TBRE (seen below) were still some of the best Call of Duty 4 players I’ve witnessed. The fucking speed of some of these guys was incredible.
While sheer speed and skill will get you far, it definitely won’t get you the National Champion title which takes a lot more than just the ability to get quick headshots. The most impressive part of watching professional teams play is the level of communication they use (keeping the mics clear of useless information) and relaying the location of every enemy, what weapon they’re using, and any other useful information as they see it.
Overall the entire event was impressive, and a great debut for Call of Duty 4’s first live national champsionships. It was great to meet up with the MLG staff, and I have plans to meet up with them more formally once we get back to the studio and talk about how we can make Call of Duty 4 and it’s professional players a more prominent role in future seasons / tournaments.
Congrats again to FeaR on taking home the cash and title. Expect to hear from me once I get back to the studio.
In addition to those competiting in the tournament, I met up with several of our community members to talk “shop” and discuss Call of Duty 4, Infinity Ward, and get some of their direct feedback on what we can continue to improve on in the future (in terms of game development and a CRM point of view). I had lunch with Chase (Th3 Wiz4rd) and Brett (Th3 VerDict) on Saturday as well met with DpG Witness (when he wasn’t coaching teams). It was great to meet you guys and learn the meaning of “Jugger-twatting”.
Treyarch’s Call of Duty: World At War hit today, so if you haven’t already picked it up, GO GET IT NOW! If I haven’t stressed it enough, Zombies are awesome. What’s even better than run of the mill everyday zombies? Nazi Zombies!
I’m going to spend most of today powering through the 4-player co-op single player in order to unlock the Nazi Zombie mode at the end. So who’s with me?
I wasn’t kidding when I said this is one of the most awesome things about World At War.
If you’re not familiar with what the hell I’m talking about - Nazi Zombies is a bonus mode after you beat the single player campaign. Essentially, it’s you (and 3 other co-op buddies) defending an abandoned house. Every window / door is boarded up at the start and there are weapons lining the walls around the house.
Each weapon costs money, once you own a weapon, you can go to it’s place on the wall to replenish ammo (for a cost). To get the money to buy the weapons / ammo, just kill zombies. Bonus points for headshots! Every once in a while a zombie will drop a power-up (Instant Kill, Double Points, etc.) and even one that allows you to explode all zombies on screen at once (save that till you need it) which lasts for a set duration.
The zombies will come in waves, so you have to work as a team to cover all the windows and doors, and most importantly work on rebuilding the barricades the zombies tear down in their attempt to get in. Once you hit wave 10 and over, fuck the windows, just find a secure location to defend from because your ass is going to be swarming with the nazi undead. It’s awesome.
Once you get $1000 though you can unlock more portions of the house which gives you access to even more weapons. Move a couch to access the upstairs, knock open a door to get to the basement, etc. Once you’re in the basement, you’ll have access to a random weapon box. Essentially everytime you open the box you’re entering a lottery for a random weapon. Could be a shitty pistol, or a bad ass flamethrower (which is only available in the box, not on the wall) as well as a few “special” weapons that you’ll definitely want to shoot for.
It’s all about working together to cover and secure the windows, going for headshots, reviving your teammates when they go down into last stand, and calling out zombie positions so you can defend a certain area of the house. The highest we got in-house before it went retail was about Lvl 20, so that’s what I’m aiming for.
So if you’re down for some co-op zombie action in World At War then hit me up, send me a message and I’ll try to add you to my friends list.
I’m currently 32 hours into Fallout 3 and I’m STILL fully addicted to it. Now that says something about a game. What is really blowing me away about the game is the fact that I can come into the studio today and start talking about it, and everyone I talk to has completely different stories about what happened in their game. Despite us doing the same quests. The reason being, and what makes the game so unique, is every quest has multiple ways it can be solved - in many ways changing the entire course of events for that and other quests. I don’t want to spoil anything, so I won’t go into great detail, but I’m really loving this game right now.
Other than that, Gears 2 has finally arrived. I’m making my way through Single Player co-op now, and have already completed all 50 levels of Horde Mode. They have definitely brought a lot of cool new features to the table with Gears 2, especially on the UI front with their in-game friendslist via the LB button. Completely independent from the Guide system and it works beautifully. They also did an amazing job with their Achievements; making me feel like I’m ALWAYS getting rewarded for what I do. The pacing of achievements if perfect, even when I’m not getting achievements, their in-game achievement progress tracker is always reminding me that I’m working towards a big one. I love that shit! It’s the kind of stuff that pushes you to keep playing (besides the awesome gameplay). For example, I’m in horde mode, and it’s getting hellish. There’s locust coming out of the wood work and every locust I drop is a potential chance to get that sweet sweet reminder that I just hit my 400th / 500th kill. Good stuff.
So whats everyone else addicted to at the moment. It has to be something, because there are WAYYYY too many amazing games coming out at the same time. Mirrors Edge tomorrow, then Left 4 Dead, and Call of Duty: World at War. I feel sorry for our loved ones.
“Tony Stark Chris Lai was able to build this in a cave the IT dept! With a box of scraps!” Well, I’m sorry. He’s not Tony Stark…. that’s just Chris… from IT, soo…
So what are you guys doing / playing this weekend? I kicked mine off by taking (and loling) at the picture above just before the IW Halloween party. Other than that, most of my weekend has been focused on knocking out some playtime on the shitload of games that have been coming out recently in prep for the ones coming out over the courseof the next 3 weeks. My gaming backlog hasn’t been this long in a really long time. With LittleBigPlanet, Fable II, Fallout 3, Gears 2, LittleBigPlanet, CoD: WaW and all these other awesome games coming out back to back it’s like monsoon of awesome gaming just after a drought.
I Broke The Portals :sadface:
Started off by downloading and replaying through Portal on the Xbox Live Arcade via Portal: Still Alive. It’s essentially a stand-alone Portal with some 14 bonus “Advanced Maps” and some extra bugs for you to enjoy:
Towards the end of the game, I sent a rocket through to blow open the pipe, and just for kicks decided to try and send a rocket through the vent I was suppose to crawl out of. Instead - The entire pipe went crazy and filled the room with several hundred cubes bouncing all around.
Room filling with cubes…frame rate slowing…Xbox…Freezing…and FROZE.
Other than that, it was fun to replay through Portal again and ended up finding a Rat Man’s Den that I never saw before while seeking out the Rat Den achievement. Still can’t figure out how I’m suppose to get myself stuck in a test chamber so GLaDos has to help me out for the “Trapped Like A Rat Achievement”… anyone got that one?
Fable II Money Doesn’t Buy Happiness
The rest of the weekend was mostly spent obsessively playing Fable II (till 5 AM last night). I’ll admit, I was on the fence on whether I’d get sucked into Fable, but it’s great. A really nice break from the avalanche of shooters I’m use to playing all the time.
When I turned it on I was greeted by a big +$1,563 pop-up over my character (kind of like when you get XP in COD4), and just like getting XP in COD4, it’s a damn good feeling. Essentially, you can buy stalls / shops in town while playing. Since you own the shops, you get income from their sales every five minutes, and the best part, that counts even when you’re not playing the game. So after taking a break for a day, you get greeted ony our return with a nice chunk of change. After telling one of the guys at the studio how awesome that is (it’s always fun to be rewarded as a player), I got a hunch… that hunch led to an experiment, which lead to an exploit, which allows to get unlimited gold. BE FOREWARNED though! With great power, comes great responsibility, and I do not recommend using it… and here’s why.
It’s fun to get XP, it’s fun to get gold. When you don’t need XP or gold anymore, the fun value drops…. FAST. With that said, just be warned that I don’t advise using this because it takes away part of the fun of the game (finding / getting gold), but if there’s a sweet weapon you really have to have right now and only need a little bit, then this might be for you.
Essentially, the “get paid while not playing” mechanic was awesome, so I wanted to tinker around with it and see how it works. So I bought up a few stalls (didn’t have a lot of cash so only got 3 or 4). Saved my game, and returned to the Dashboard. Once you do that, disconnect the internet connection from your Xbox 360 and scroll on over to Console Settings > Clock > Change Time And Date. Now for testing purposes, I just put it to the furthest date possible (12/31/2025). Accepted, and loaded up Fable II again.
Loading….Loading… Loading… the anticipation was palpable.
Then there it was…. the glorious +$53,957! I’m RICH!
… but wait… just a few thousand more and I can afford to buy the Blacksmith… which mean discounts on all the weapons… And then just a few more after that and I can buy the book store… and this rifle.
It’s gets you. The hunger for more. Next thing you know you’re turning off and on your Xbox to switch the date back and forth like an addict at Crackapalooza. DON’T DO IT. I’m telling you. DON’T DO IT. The fun will be ruined.
I did it.
A few more times. Till I was getting nearly $300,000 each time, but I saw the errors of my ways. I was no longer excited when I found a chest in the wild containing a measly $300 gold, and I missed that feeling. So I gave it away. Made the people love me! Well…. at least one Beggar on the way out of Brownstone loves me now, as he’s nearly a million gold richer as well as some donated to the Temple of Light (which donating to them is a quest, so might as well do it).
The moral of the story, Money doesn’t buy happiness. Finding it does.
NAZI ZOMBIES!!
Call of Duty: World At War has FINALLY announced their Nazi Zombie mode, although the video they premiered and description of it on GametrailersTV doesn’t NEARLY do the mode justice.
I’ve been biting my tongue on this ever since I found it it hidden at the end of the World At War campaign and it is awesome. I don’t want to over hype it, because I’m a bit biased… not because its COD, but because:
1) I love Zombies.
2) I love shooting zombies in their head.
3) Like any real man, I’ve been planning my zombie apocalypse plan since I was 9.
I WILL be playing this mode more than the entire campaign. 4-Player zombie co-op, held up in a house, fighting off the Nazi undead, working cooperatively to use the money (from killing zombies of course) to buy new weapons, ammo, open passages, move furniture, and block windows? YES! YES! YES! and YES! Okay… that’s all I’m going to say on the matter. No more WaW talk from me.
Gears of War 2 Hype Train - in FULL FORCE!
I’m not going to lie. I’m extremely hyped for Gears of War 2 and on Friday that hype went into full force when I “found” a Gears of War 2 Cogtagg (pictured above in the hands of one awesome “12 inch tall Marcus Fenix”).
Epic has been doing a pretty cool viral marketing campaign of hiding actual, physical, massive, heavy ass, COG tags around major cities from Los Angeles to Syndey Australia and giving out subtle hints to fans in those areas as to where to look. Once found, a code on the COG tag leads you to their website where you can unlock an asset. I was able to snag one on Friday and it’s just as glorious as it looks.
The next month is going to be one hell of a month for gaming. I hope a get quite a bit of Fable II done before Fallout 3 hits, but I’m not going to have anytime between Fallout 3 and Gears 2. This is the year of the sequels and they’re hitting hard. Anyone else feel overwhelmed? (in a good way)
Gah - I’m finally back to twittering and blogging again after being pulled into my shell for the last few weeks. The time spent away has been productive, regretfully not the kind of progress I can talk about, as the last two weeks have been mainly focused on meetings, planning, brainstorming, and work on our future project.
In regards to Call of Duty 4, we just finished up our latest promotion with the PS3 and 360’s Double XP and Variety Map Pack sale which was a huge success. It pushed us well over 2 Million Map Packs sold on 360 and made us the #1 most sold DLC on both platforms. Thanks to everyone who picked up the map pack.
Oh, International PS3 users: I almost forgot. Our international users on the PS3, you have not been forgotten. We’re currently working on bringing the Half off Map Pack promotion to you as well, it’s just taking a bit longer to get it all set-up with SCEE and Asia but it is happening. Just so you know, you won’t miss out on the deal.
I also wanted to let those with the Game of the Year edition, who have been attempting to redeem your free map pack token, that we’ve been going back and forth with Microsoft on getting us those tokens to refill the database as fast as we can and discussing how they can improve their ridiculously complex and time-wasting token distribution system in the future. Essentially it’s the most needlessly bureaucratic and mindnumbling extensive procedure you’ve ever seen. It’s a serious joke, and not the funny kind, but we’re doing everything we can to get more tokens from them and to you. I’m sure the process of creating randomly generated strings of numbers and letters is complex something well deserving of the month (and counting) it’s taken to supply them. On the PS3 side, no problems. Their token process was quick and painless and GOTY tokens are fully stocked. /rant
The last bit of COD4 news is the playlists; which are currently in a holding pattern in MP design territory. They’re working on the issues I spoke about several weeks ago where the gametypes needed some gameplay balancing (i.e. Spawn Camping in Second Chance SD, Round ends too quick in Sudden Death Sabatoge). So at this point, I’m not going to make the same mistake twice and just hold off on saying anything until they’re completly finished. So…. just know we’re working on them and once they’re amazingly fun and finished, I’ll let you know. they’re coming out. Bummer. I know, but despite my willingness to cave under the sheer crave for the new playlists the MP Design team refuses to let anything out of their grasp until it is completely up to standard with their very high bar of quaility for multiplayer in Call of Duty 4…. and I don’t blame them.
This weekend was great! After lurking at Prestige 1 lvl 55 for nearly a year; the double XP this weekend enticed me to finally prestige again. That, coupled with watching 007 Casino Royale on Friday night, made me want to get to at least level 37 to unlock the suppressed G36c for some stealthy action.
All said and done, I was able to rank up 45 levels between Friday and Sunday night; I could have done a bit more, but that was without neglecting the family.
I experimented a lot with Perks I never used before this weekend and have found a pretty sweet combination for playing Hardcore Team Deathmatch and Hardcore Search and Destroy (which is where I mainly hung out this weekend).
First of all, screw the M16. I’m done with it. It’s dead to me. The G36c is where it’s at.
Add a little Bomb Squad for picking up enemy claymores in Search and Destroy so I can stay alive and warn team mates where to plant.
Some obligatory stopping power (although it’s not really needed in Hardcore); Once I unlock a more stealthy perk I’ll switch it out.
Finally, Last Stand. Which I never used before but have gotten damn good at this weekend. You couldn’t imagine how pissed off people get when they put you down and then you headshot with a pistol. Hilarious and makes you not so angry when you get killed. All in all, I was bringing my a-game most of the weekend with this set-up.
So how did you guys do this weekend? Any one rank up an an entire 55 levels or more?
Now that the Xbox Live weekend is finished, we have the PS3 weekend coming up this weekend (I believe). We’ll have official confirmation on that soon and a full post detailing it, but I as I said before you guys can expect the same treatment for the most part. Minus the prestige picture pack, as regretfully PSN avatars are reserved to 1st party devs only :sadface:. I’ll get you PS3 players all the details on the weekend soon.
