CODumentary

In the early hours of June 6th 1944

allied paratroopers were dropped behind

enemy lines close to the beaches in

Normandy, France. It would mark the

beginning of D-day and was a major

turning point in world war II. Nearly 60

years later many of the battles and

events which took place that day would

be digitally recreated to form a

historic backdrop of one of the world's

biggest video games.

Tulsa is a very Midwestern city. It's

about half a million people, very

friendly atmosphere. We were the only

game company, you know, in Tulsa.

After we had started Infinity Ward we

had made Medal of Honor Allied Assault

and we put, you know, a little over

two years into that and we had to start

over from scratch.

During my time at Amblin while the guys

were working at Tulsa I'd spent most of

my time focused on supporting the feature

film and animation divisions. Medal of

Honor was one of the flagship titles for

Dreamworks Interactive and it was pivotal

in getting the whole division up and running.

When I heard that 2015 was

becoming Infinity Ward it was really

exciting. I really loved their work on Medal

of Honor. I saw some early screenshots

of Call of Duty and I was, I was a big fan.

I couldn't wait to see what they would come up

next for Activision.

After we had

started Infinity Ward we knew that our

competition was Medal of Honor. In some

ways like I kind of see Medal of Honor

Allied Assault as almost like a

Call of Duty 0 and we didn't really have

any people telling us not to do something.

We found a publisher that for

the most part you know recognized us as

talented group of people and said do

your thing and make a good game.

I got my start in Call of Duty back in 2003 on

the very first Call of Duty, I actually.

This is back when like Game Stops

weren't around. We had Electronics

Boutiques. So I had gone there a couple

days early because they had the game

early and got the game, that's how

big of a fan I was then. I was following

the 2015 guys, the Infinity Ward guys

since Medal of Honor.

So yeah, Call of Duty was like

the best new thing it was the hot new

thing for us. It was amazing. I just

remember like watching all the trailers

and seeing the bullet impact effects

coming off the walls and the shell shock

effects and like the real-time craters

that would form in the ground when

something went off when an explosion

went off. Those for the time in 2003

that was like revolutionary stuff. You

didn't see that in other games. Before

that we were playing like Return to

Castle Wolfenstein or Allied Assault. So

you know just visually the game seemed

so immersive you're aiming down the iron

sights you're bringing up the sights and

that hadn't been done before. Those were

like just for its time so revolutionary

and made myself and all of my

friends think that like this is going to be the future.

We had to start over from scratch

because we were able to redo everything

that we did poorly you know. If there was

any legacy code that would have created kind of

you know that would have created problems

in the future we could redo that and

basically make a much tighter engine.

You know I started with Call of Duty 2 - and

really got into that game more so than

the first one I played on the PC and

just being able to use the same weapons

and you know see some of the situations

you know it was really actually very

interactive and having the dialog in the

single-player campaign and just knowing

like certain situations that some of

these soldiers had to go through I think,

that's just, it just blew my mind,

you know, and I think that's what draws a

lot of people towards videogames.

There were a bunch of names thrown around. I

remember one of the names we're likely

to pick was actually Tour of Duty and I

think that at some point along

the line I think it might have been

Tod Alderman that came up with Call

of Duty and we seemed to like that a

little bit better and so that's kind of

what we stuck with.

The building that we were in was ridiculous.

It looked like a science fiction book or movie or

something. I believe it was like 40 to 50

floors, not sure exactly. It was really

tall. It was in the middle of nowhere. It was

flatland and then these three giant buildings.

We've been making video games

for a long time at Gearbox. One of the

earliest original things that we created

was the series called Brothers in Arms

and at the time you know it was really

interesting because there was another

franchise when we got started there was

another franchise called Medal of Honor

that was also telling stories about

soldiers in world war II and we really

wanted to capture the feeling of what it

would be like. Medal of Honor was a great

game but it was more action-oriented.

We wanted to deliver an authentic

experience. What's interesting is the

Medal of Honor game was so successful

that while we were building our game

other folks started showing up as well.

The Call of Duty

franchise got started that same way

while we were working on our game they

started working on theirs and they

showed up a little bit before us with

the first Call of Duty game which was a

World War II shooter, very much like

Medal of Honor. The Brothers in Arms game

allowed for tactical gameplay in

addition to action skill tests.

The first Call of Duty game was so great I mean I

don't know if anybody thought about

competition I mean we just loved what we

were working on, you know. We just knew

what we built there was just special.

It stood out against other

first-person shooter games. Even you know

in the same genre. So everybody was just

excited about what we're working on and

that's what we concentrated on.

Landing in the fields there was

the cattle there and you know they were

using cattle as cover from

incoming fire and it was like there'd

been shooters before but

they hadn't really tried to draw you

into that universe and the story element

for Call of Duty at the time especially World

War II which I was very interested in

anyway, and that hadn't been done before and I think

that's why it captured my heart.

With the team in place and its first game in

development Infinity Ward decided to

pack their bags and head West.

At the time no one really knew about

Infinity Ward. In fact i didn't know

about Infinity Ward. I was just doing

research and I found that there

was a game developer not too far from

where I lived and they were working on a

World War II game which I'm a huge fan of.

So I just went over and then you know

just wanted to join the team and

that's how I got in there and I had no

idea about their history with previous

titles and stuff like that. But when I

joined the team I remember it was about

20 people, was a fairly small size

and the team was very unique.

I have to say I don't think you can

replicate the original team that

was there anywhere else.

There wre a handful of our developers that were a little

bit into world war II history but I

think I saw as time went on more and

more guys were reading books and watching

all the films and the documentaries, so

even though it was a job it kind of

a little bit of a hobby for a lot of guys.

I'm not a big fan of the weapons

at that time. I was just like a general

artist but since then I have to say, I fell

in love with weapons and I studied

what is the world war II weapon, what is a

modern weapon, how weapons worked,

functionally. It helpeds a lot. I learned a lot at the time.

As Internet bandwidth improved players began to form their own

teams and compete in online gaming leagues.

We were playing in at the time with the competitive scene.

So we were competing in ladders and leagues and I

started to take an interest in mapping