14 DAY TRIAL // The arrival of the Call of Duty Elite online service has led to a much better collaboration between the various Activision studios that are working on the series, including the creator of the franchise, Infinity Ward, as well as Treyarch, Sledgehammer Gamers, Raven Software or Beachhead.
Infinity Ward may have originally developed the Call of Duty series but, under the guidance of Activision, more and more studios have started lending their expertise.
Among them there is Treyarch, which delivered its own takes on the series, but also Sledgehammer Games, which worked with Infinity Ward on last year’s Modern Warfare 3, or Raven Software, which is helping out with content for the recent game.
While these studios have worked together in the past, the arrival of Call of Duty Elite, made by the new Beachhead studio, has really gotten the various teams closer together.
"It's fun, in terms of Elite kind of as a golden thread running through a lot of the ways we look at multiplayer,” said Noah Heller, product director at Beachhead to CVG. “We ran the Elite beta with Black Ops, so the IW guys had to look at that implementation and say what they wanted emphasized or de-emphasized, and so every year now, rather than starting from scratch, it's now a relay race and there's a hand-off that means a lot for collaboration.”
The array of new takes on the series, including Treyarch’s Black Ops spinoff, has also showed that these teams can leave their own mark on the franchise.
"I think the other thing that's happened is the birth of new takes on the franchise like Black Ops, new really creative partners like Sledgehammer, and I don't want to give Raven Software a short shrift either. Aside from the content they've been working on, Raven has been helping developing the [Elite] console application.”
All this collaboration is going to lead to a bigger and better Call of Duty experience, according to Mark Cox, the European marketing director for Call of Duty digital products.
“I think as well it's testament to our commitment to the franchise and the fans that we've now got four triple-A studios and Beachhead putting all that effort into the content and the service and giving the customer a Call of Duty experience this year like they've never seen before."
Activision’s been deploying new content drops for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 in the last few months, while Treyarch is presumably preparing this year’s new game, in the form of Call of Duty: Black Ops 2.