14 DAY TRIAL // Activision and Infinity Ward's Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 has proven that its was, and still is, the most popular entertainment title ever released, with its sheer amount of sales and the people that know what the game is. But some of the publicity it got, while still publicity, was a bad one. Closer to the title's roots, PC gamers found themselves betrayed by the franchise, as the lure of profits and the cold, hard cash made the developer focus on the console market. As far as PC gaming goes, some of its aspects were far beyond being sub-standard. Dedicated servers were completely removed from the game, multiplayer matches were cut down to 9 vs. 9 and the game was released without an editor or any mod tools.
A little further from the gaming-core aspect of the title, another big controversy it generated was related to its in-game content and its storyline. Everyone that has heard about the great Modern Warfare 2 knows about the "airport scene" and the civilian massacre that ensued. As far as game development goes, this decision was praised by some and attacked by others, but respected by all. Matt Turner, one of the producers of EA Montreal's Army of Two: The 40th Day, was one of those that saw it as a bold and creative move, but he admitted that, "We wouldn't have done it."
"You're playing a CIA agent, it's designed to show the atrocities," Turner said in an interview with CVG. "It's pretty awful and if you fail to see that side of it then you're not getting the whole picture. That being said, I thought it took it a little far; it was pretty out there. But I like seeing that they have guts like that."
He also believes that most the criticism the game got for this scene could be blamed on the fact that it was leaked before it was ready, and people formed an out-of-context opinion about it. "When the footage got leaked thousands upon thousands of people saw it on a clip not knowing what it was," Turner said. "I'm not saying they were overreacting but people were generating these pretty outlandish opinions even though they didn't know what the scene meant in the grand scheme of the game."