THANK YOU! - To everyone who took the time to show your support and vote for the GAME Award of 2008. I just got back from BAFTAs last night, and have had a bit of time to re-coup from the whirlwind trip. While there, we were lucky enough to walk away with THREE BAFTAs (Best Gameplay, Best Story / Character, GAME Award of 2008). A feat that is absolutely humbling. Most importantly though, the GAME Award which is the only award voted on by the players really meant a lot because it meant all of YOU took the time out to show your support for what we’re trying to accomplish here at Infinity Ward.
At the end of the day, it’s all about how the players feel when they play the game. We make these games for all of you, so awards voted on by the people ALWAYS carry a lot of weight.
That said, the entire trip to London was fantastic. I met a lot of great people and was floored with how friendly EVERYONE I met was. I left with a fantastic impression of London and it’s people and can’t wait to return in the not too distant future. Be sure to check out the BAFTA’s official site for a complete list of everyone who won awards and check out some of the videos.
Thanks again to everyone who voted, and of course to the Academy for everything.
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”.
The MTV Game Awards is this weekend in Berlin, Germany and we’ve been invited to attend thanks to our nominaton for the “Let’s Play Together Award” for Best Multiplayer Game. Regretfully, we won’t be able to make it out to Berlin for the live show, but we’ll be recording a little video tomorrow morning to show our appreciation and thanks to all of our German players who voted and supported the game in the awards, just in case. So if you’re part of our German game community, be sure to check the show this weekend, more info here www.mtvgameawards.de.
My Fallout 3 character. (Feral Mask + Chinese Spy Uniform)
Over 60 hours of gameplay later, and I’ve finally finished Fallout 3 this weekend; Holy hell was that an amazing game. You can definitely beat it in half that time, but I savored the gameplay, and completed every main and side quest before beating the main story line - as well as maxing out my character at the level 20 cap. I love the amount of detail and thought that went into every aspect of this game. Bethesda did a great job of really immersing you in their world and I’m kind of depressed it’s over. I still need to find a few bobbleheads and do a few random achievements, but for the most part it’s over, and I’m gonna miss it.
Although, thankfully I can get back to living a productive life now that it’s over, not to mention focus on finishing up Gears of War 2 (on the last level) and Mirrors Edge (on Chapter 6).
Hopefully I can finish them both up before Friday, because my entire weekend is being spent in Vegas. I’ll be flying in to attend the first ever LIVE tournament for Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare at the MLG’s National Championships. There will be over $340,000 in cash prizing up for grabs overall this weekend - which will promptly be blown on hookers and blow immediately following the event. So be sure to drop me a line if you’re in Vegas or competing in the tournament. I’ll be held up at the Hard Rock where the event is taking place, so stop by and say hey. We can get together and gamble our life savings away in a horrible drunken rage.
Call of Duty 4 will be making it’s First Live Circuit Appearance at the 2008 National Championships in Las Vegas in two weeks (November 21st - 23rd) at the Hard Rock Hotel and Casino. Several of us here at Infinity Ward, including myself, will be flying over to Vegas to celebrate and support our community members competing in the event.
Check out what MLG had to say about the event:
Call of Duty 4, MLG’s first Online Pro Circuit title, will be featured as a live competition at the November 21-23 MLG 2008 National Championships. Throughout the 2008 Season, Call of Duty 4 teams battled it out through the course of three Online Pro Circuit Competitions. Come Vegas though, the teams will meet face-to-face for the first time this season as they do battle for some serious cash and the title of 2008 National Champion.
The Top 8 Call of Duty 4 teams will compete in a double-elimination bracket in Vegas. Six teams have automatically qualified for the National Championships by finishing in the Top 2 in any of the three Online Pro Circuit Competitions. The other two teams have been determined by cumulative ranking points. These teams will play using a closed-circuit internet connection, ensuring the highest match quality possible.
MLG will be providing editorial coverage of the Call of Duty 4 National Championships all weekend long, so be sure to tune in and see who will win the first Call of Duty 4 National Championship. Be sure to check out the prizes, rules, and schedule below, and remember that Vegas is open to all spectators. Best of all, spectatorship is completely free, so don’t miss out on the most intense Call of Duty 4 action of the year!
I’ve booked a suite at the Hard Rock (where the event is taking place) so I don’t miss a single part of the action. If you are competing or going to be in Vegas during the event, be sure to drop me a line and let’s meet up. Especially if you’re competing and I don’t know about it, because we need to hook you up with some IW / COD4 swag to represent at the event. Good luck to all of our teams competing for some cold hard cash.
The 26th Annual Golden Joystick Awards were held in London this past weekend, and I was stoked to get the call that we had won Four awards during the ceremony this year. Included in those four was the Ultimate Game of the Year award as well as three other GOTY awards included below:
Nuts All-Nighter Multiplayer Game of the Year
Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare - Infinity Ward
PC Game of the Year (Sponsored by The United Kingdom e-sport Association)
Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare - Infinity Ward
Games Radar Online Game of the Year
Call of Duty 4 - Infinity Ward
Virgin Media Ultimate Game of the Year
Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare - Infinity Ward
What made the awards even more humbling was the fact that they were voted on and the winners determined by over 850,000 gamers; which personally are the most rewarding accolades to get.
A huge THANK YOU to everyone who took the time to vote in the awards and honor us with these, we really do appreciate every recognition we get. Thank you!
It’s getting closer and closer to, quite possibly my favorite holiday of the year, Halloween. While most chumps are putting up the same old tired Halloween decorations they’ve used every year up in the yard of ghosts, tombstones, and a talking skull that sings when you walk by the door step, Luke had different plans. More awesome plans. Plans that involved this awesome Call of Duty 4 carved pumpkin you see above.
Check out these awesome Russian gas masks I found on eBay. They’re identical models to the ones we used in the game for the (above) Russian SMG character model. With a little color altering, they’ll be perfect. So why do I have them? Well, I’m working on a little side project, and I plan on creating a character bust from scratch, using real world materials. I figured, since all of our characters are based on real world soldiers and gear. I could easily re-create a bust using the actual gear it was referenced from.
I figured I’ll just throw it all on this Indiana Jones bust that’s been creepily lingering around my house since I impulse bought it (also off Ebay)…. you know what. I really need to stay the hell off eBay and quit buying creepy shit on impulse.
Regardless, I’m confident that all these random assortment of junk things off eBay, WILL result in something awesome when it’s finished. Essentially, I’m protoyping to see how cool a character bust of a real world character actually is. I mean, typically busts are cool for sci-fi stuff or fantatsy stuff, because it’s something you never see. So it’ll be interesting to see how cool this will be. If all else fails, at least I’ll have materials for a bad ass COD4 halloween costume in the wings. Although I’d much rather go as Green Man….
Unrelated to the busy, but still related to the prototype side-project. I also scored some of the real-world medals the Prestige Icons are based off. Including the Navy Commendation Medal and the Liberation of Kuwait medal.
The two medals which represent Prestige 1 (left) and Prestige 5 (right). I hope to mount these and add custom labels with the corressponding Prestige Level and include a message encouraging them to stop being pussies and keep prestiging for a few select community members. Essentially, they’ll act as prototypes, as if they look good and have a good response from the two I’m planning on sending them two, it may light some fires to get more produced. However, these I’m just doing by hand, and for the fun of it. Would any of you be stoked to receive one of these unexpectedly in the mail?
Once I get it all done, I’ll be sure to post pics and details on how it went. I’m finally feeling up to par again as of today. The past week and a half I seriously thought I was dying. Constant headaches, blurred vision, dizziness, and fatigue. It was horrible. Essentially determined to be from an excess of sugar…. fyi Skittles and Dr Pepper for breakfast, lunch, and dinner will apparently kill you. So unless you have the will power of a 5 year old when it comes to sugar additictions like me, then you should be fine. Sadly though, for the time being until I get to a real doctor (not the Urgent Care fucks that looked in worse shape than me), then I’m officially giving up my Dr. Pepper (*sobs*). I almost don’t want to live in a world without it…. but I’m pushing through. I’ll know next week for sure why my body hates me. I just want to give it what it loves, is that so bad?
Alright… I’m done. Off to enjoy a delicious h2o beverage and flavorful snack from mother nature. (shoot me)
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.
