One thing not mentioned in the video that people may find interesting is just where Infinity Ward sourced the base engine that they would use for Call of Duty. In late 1996, following several...
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One thing not mentioned in the video that people may find interesting is just where Infinity Ward sourced the base engine that they would use for Call of Duty.
In late 1996, following several frustrations with their publisher GT Interactive, id Software decided to jump ship for Activision, who would remain their publisher up until mid-development on Rage. After the release of Quake II in 1997, id outsourced the title's first expansion pack to the developers of the Redneck Rampage series, Xatrix Entertainment (sidenote: which was back then the home of Viktor Antonov, who would go on to be the art director on Half-Life 2 and Dishonored). After getting a taste of both the Quake engine (later called idTech) and life under Activision, Xatrix developed one more title for publisher Interplay Interactive (Kingpin, 1999, idTech 2) and then followed in id's footsteps to Activision, reforming as Gray Matter Studios.
In the wake of Medal of Honor's success, id Software decided it was high time they tore a different page out of Spielberg's WWII repertoire to revive their own supernatural Nazi-killing thriller, Wolfenstein. Under Activision's recommendation, the rather busy Quake 3 developers handed the reigns over to Grey Matter who used idTech 3 to create Return to Castle Wolfenstein, released in 2001.
The following year, when Zampella, Collier, and West had left 2015, Inc. to form Infinity Ward, they already had plenty of experience working with idTech 3 on Allied Assault, but that engine fork was wholly owned by 2015 and tied up with publisher EA. So, the new studio went shopping in-house at Activision and settled on—you guessed it—Grey Matter's Wolfenstein fork of the idTech 3 engine, which they would flesh out into Call of Duty.
If you're not familiar with Grey Matter Studios, you may be familiar with who they were eventually consolidated into, Treyarch.
Thanks for posting this. I was a little surprised the video didn't go deeper into the circumstances of WW2 in other popular media at the time (especially from Spielberg) and that there wasn't a...
Thanks for posting this. I was a little surprised the video didn't go deeper into the circumstances of WW2 in other popular media at the time (especially from Spielberg) and that there wasn't a whole bunch more about Treyarch. But maybe there is/will be a separate video about that.
I was going to comment the WW2 theme was throughout media at the time that these games were coming out. I think the broader context is that the WW2 time period has always been one of the most popular in America and in American media that is exported. Americans have always turned out for big war films, but in the 90s and early 2000s they were deluged by the theme across all media, not just video games. I think that the video game industry was following that cash-grab and deviating from the plurality of futuristic shooters (Doom ('93), Quake ('96), Unreal ('98), Half-Life ('98)) that were carving out their brands and off-shoots. But these games were book-ended to some extent by Wolfenstein 3D ('92) and Return to Castle Wolfenstein ('01).
In the mainstream, 1998 saw the release of Saving Private Ryan, featuring one of the most accurate depictions of D-Day (and war) since the star-studded The Longest Day (1962). Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg put a lot of emphasis on this and, coincidentally or not, there was a lot of news during this time period about WW2 veterans, parades, and military honors (many WW2 veterans were in their 70s or early 80s at that time, the same age as Tom Hanks' character at the beginning and end of the film).
In early September 2001, Band of Brothers released on HBO to critical acclaim and, like Saving Private Ryan, had Spielberg and Tom Hanks involved. 2001 would also be the 60th anniversary of the US entering the war and along with that, discoveries of unexploded WW2-era ordinance in French fields was still mainstream news-worthy. Right up until September 11th, when the attention of the media shifted in a big way and while Call of Duty was getting its famous WW2-themed iterations after that, by the mid-2000s the industry was primed to work on games set in a different time period.
Can't wait to watch this, thanks for sharing. I was in a pretty large CoD clan from COD UO forward, and we actually won the very first tournament from the CAL organization (I believe that was the...
Can't wait to watch this, thanks for sharing.
I was in a pretty large CoD clan from COD UO forward, and we actually won the very first tournament from the CAL organization (I believe that was the name) for COD4. I played in the 1st and 2nd rounds of the tournament to help us move forward. I think we got some cash prize but it wasn't anything significant. Those were some really fun days.
This was a great video. As much as CoD is rightfully clowned on for what it is now, it’s almost baffling to a think a large number of gamers these days don’t really even know how big of a deal CoD...
This was a great video. As much as CoD is rightfully clowned on for what it is now, it’s almost baffling to a think a large number of gamers these days don’t really even know how big of a deal CoD 4 was when it came out and just how mind blowing it was at the time. I sometimes talk fondly to my younger friends about games from the 00’s and I get a lot of essentially “okay grandma, let’s get you to bed”.
I remember playing it at my friends house in high school and the gameplay was just so much smoother than anything else I had played to that point besides maybe Halo. Create a class and the entire multiplayer setup was just baffling in how robust and large it was for the time. I spent a looooot of hours on that game and CoD is still an annual guilty pleasure of mine even if the series has long since gone downhill.
One thing not mentioned in the video that people may find interesting is just where Infinity Ward sourced the base engine that they would use for Call of Duty.
In late 1996, following several frustrations with their publisher GT Interactive, id Software decided to jump ship for Activision, who would remain their publisher up until mid-development on Rage. After the release of Quake II in 1997, id outsourced the title's first expansion pack to the developers of the Redneck Rampage series, Xatrix Entertainment (sidenote: which was back then the home of Viktor Antonov, who would go on to be the art director on Half-Life 2 and Dishonored). After getting a taste of both the Quake engine (later called idTech) and life under Activision, Xatrix developed one more title for publisher Interplay Interactive (Kingpin, 1999, idTech 2) and then followed in id's footsteps to Activision, reforming as Gray Matter Studios.
In the wake of Medal of Honor's success, id Software decided it was high time they tore a different page out of Spielberg's WWII repertoire to revive their own supernatural Nazi-killing thriller, Wolfenstein. Under Activision's recommendation, the rather busy Quake 3 developers handed the reigns over to Grey Matter who used idTech 3 to create Return to Castle Wolfenstein, released in 2001.
The following year, when Zampella, Collier, and West had left 2015, Inc. to form Infinity Ward, they already had plenty of experience working with idTech 3 on Allied Assault, but that engine fork was wholly owned by 2015 and tied up with publisher EA. So, the new studio went shopping in-house at Activision and settled on—you guessed it—Grey Matter's Wolfenstein fork of the idTech 3 engine, which they would flesh out into Call of Duty.
If you're not familiar with Grey Matter Studios, you may be familiar with who they were eventually consolidated into, Treyarch.
Thanks for posting this. I was a little surprised the video didn't go deeper into the circumstances of WW2 in other popular media at the time (especially from Spielberg) and that there wasn't a whole bunch more about Treyarch. But maybe there is/will be a separate video about that.
I was going to comment the WW2 theme was throughout media at the time that these games were coming out. I think the broader context is that the WW2 time period has always been one of the most popular in America and in American media that is exported. Americans have always turned out for big war films, but in the 90s and early 2000s they were deluged by the theme across all media, not just video games. I think that the video game industry was following that cash-grab and deviating from the plurality of futuristic shooters (Doom ('93), Quake ('96), Unreal ('98), Half-Life ('98)) that were carving out their brands and off-shoots. But these games were book-ended to some extent by Wolfenstein 3D ('92) and Return to Castle Wolfenstein ('01).
In the mainstream, 1998 saw the release of Saving Private Ryan, featuring one of the most accurate depictions of D-Day (and war) since the star-studded The Longest Day (1962). Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg put a lot of emphasis on this and, coincidentally or not, there was a lot of news during this time period about WW2 veterans, parades, and military honors (many WW2 veterans were in their 70s or early 80s at that time, the same age as Tom Hanks' character at the beginning and end of the film).
In early September 2001, Band of Brothers released on HBO to critical acclaim and, like Saving Private Ryan, had Spielberg and Tom Hanks involved. 2001 would also be the 60th anniversary of the US entering the war and along with that, discoveries of unexploded WW2-era ordinance in French fields was still mainstream news-worthy. Right up until September 11th, when the attention of the media shifted in a big way and while Call of Duty was getting its famous WW2-themed iterations after that, by the mid-2000s the industry was primed to work on games set in a different time period.
Can't wait to watch this, thanks for sharing.
I was in a pretty large CoD clan from COD UO forward, and we actually won the very first tournament from the CAL organization (I believe that was the name) for COD4. I played in the 1st and 2nd rounds of the tournament to help us move forward. I think we got some cash prize but it wasn't anything significant. Those were some really fun days.
This was a great video. As much as CoD is rightfully clowned on for what it is now, it’s almost baffling to a think a large number of gamers these days don’t really even know how big of a deal CoD 4 was when it came out and just how mind blowing it was at the time. I sometimes talk fondly to my younger friends about games from the 00’s and I get a lot of essentially “okay grandma, let’s get you to bed”.
I remember playing it at my friends house in high school and the gameplay was just so much smoother than anything else I had played to that point besides maybe Halo. Create a class and the entire multiplayer setup was just baffling in how robust and large it was for the time. I spent a looooot of hours on that game and CoD is still an annual guilty pleasure of mine even if the series has long since gone downhill.