Activision’s botched release of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 isn’t just a bad game, but a rushed one. The latest CoD title was developed in just 16 months, a frantic period that saw rampant crunch at developer Sledgehammer Games.
Revealed in an exposé by Bloomberg, the latest Call of Duty game suffers from a rough campaign missions, poor multiplayer spawns and a lack of classic game modes. However, what infuriates fans the most is that the game feels like full-priced DLC, exacerbated by its incorporation into the awful Call of Duty HQ app.
The Bloomberg report details that Sledgehammer Games was forced to work on Modern Warfare 3 over the course of 16 months, less than half of the three year development cycle the series usually has. According to sources at the studio, developers were told the game would be a paid expansion before plans were shifted to keep the series’ annual tradition.
Sledgehammer Games workers expressed disappointment at Activision for shoving them with another tight development timeline after the same issues affected the release of the studio’s last game — Call of Duty: Vanguard. Nevertheless, the studio was made to ship a complete CoD package, albeit reusing some assets from last year’s Modern Warfare 2, in just over a year.
Alongside releasing a full campaign, Sledgehammer had to deliver new multiplayer maps, an array of new Modern Warfare 3 guns, and even a full Zombies mode to entice players. While the game has now shipped with all three planned sections, many fans are unsatisfied with their quality.
Alongside the tightened development timeline, Sledgehammer developers had to ensure that every piece of new content was greenlit by Infinity Ward, the main developers of the Modern Warfare subseries. This meant that development was even more inefficient as Sledgehammer writers, artists and developers weren’t allowed to make their own decisions on new content.
Despite the lower-than-usual quality of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, Sledgehammer has delivered on what it was asked to do. MW3 is now out in the wild, for better or worse, and hopefully Sledgehammer will get to make a game it actually wants next time around.