PAX East Call of Duty Ghosts – Power, Paranoia and Orbital Tungsten Rods

Seeing Dan Olsen, Producer of the analysis show, Folding Ideas, take to the PAX East stage like a rock star to talk about Call of Duty Ghosts, almost lures you into a false sense of security. After all, this is Call of Duty, and as Dan himself says, the franchise became culturally significant due to ‘meteoric’ success.

But of course, the way that Dan then proceeds to pull the game apart is an exciting subversion of expectations that teaches a lot about the gaming industry, about Call of Duty as a franchise, and about what overcoming the various developmental trials and tribulations for a dev team might look like.

Ghosts Did Everything Wrong

At the end of the panel, one brave soul stands at the mic to ask Dan: ‘Was Call of Duty Ghosts the franchise’s World of Warcraft cataclysm?’ and Dan responds with a simple: ‘Yes’. As Dan has looked into the fiddly context of Call of Duty Ghosts, including how it was made, he enlightens us by explaining that Activision gave its developers just 2 years to finish the game. He says: ‘Usually for an AAA game, you get 3 years, but Activision wanted to release one game a year.’

The pressure of such a time constraint can be seen as cracks across a porcelain surface for Call of Duty Ghosts. Dan lists out specific issues with the story, citing that in development, levels are built first to make things look cool, and then the why of it all is the writer’s problem.  This is true particularly for the cinematic shooters, and in the case of Call of Duty, Dan comments that it was like they were ‘trying to make James Bond but were constrained by the realism of a militaristic shooter.’

Bad Mechanics and Crashes Galore