14 DAY TRIAL // Sledgehammer Games, the developer of Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare, organized a game jam in order to get even more features into the new first-person shooter, according to its founder.
Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare is set to debut next month, so developer Sledgehammer Games and publisher Activision are working hard on putting the finishing touches on the experience while marketing its great first-person shooter action around the world.
Sledgehammer had a successful game jam
While Sledgehammer showcased plenty of intriguing features, from the sci-fi gadgets to the fast-paced gameplay, it seems that quite a few special mechanics owe themselves to a game jam organized by the team during the development phase.
For those unaware, a game jam is a short period in which members of the development team can work on different projects with whoever they want and try to demonstrate the concept as fast as possible.
The Sledgehammer jam worked wonders, despite being a risk for the studio and for Activision, as the actual development on Advanced Warfare stopped for a few days.
According to studio founder Glen Schofield, who has talked with DigitalSpy, many great ideas were generated during the process.
"We knew that we had a very creative team, and we knew they were very dedicated... what we did is we shut everything down for two days and said, 'You're not working on the game.'"
"We just want you guys to prototype stuff that you would add to the game, and pick guys you want to work together with, and they had a blast. We had 200 hundred something ideas, in engine and everything," Schofield says.
Quite a few ideas made it into the game
One specific example of things that made it into the game is the ability to rip off a car’s doors and use them as a means of mobile cover during the single-player campaign, while a cluster bomb system is available in the multiplayer mode. Plenty of other ideas had an influence on existing ones and served to polish or overhaul them in the actual title.
"It was a wonderful thing, the team loved it, and they loved the fact they let them do it in the middle of crunch time, and we got great mechanics out of it," Schofield adds.
The studio founder concludes that the game jam was so successful that, moving forward, one such event is going to be held once a year, in order to help all future projects coming from the developer.
Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare debuts on PC, PS3, PS4, Xbox 360, and Xbox One on November 4 worldwide.
