Inside Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4

Jackie Reynolds: Hey, I'm Jackie or Jack Reynolds. I'm a lead game designer at Infinity Ward. I mostly do killstreaks, equipment, field upgrades, perks, and 6v6 game modes.

Jake Lucky: And when people hear lead game designer, people like me, I'm just like, "Yep, that sounds cool." But the intricacies of it, what does it actually entail?

Jackie: Game designers are like ideas people, but they also know how to do one of two skills generally. There's level designers who come up with kinda like maps, and a lot of those guys come from like architecture backgrounds or like art backgrounds.

And think of it as like you're laying out this intricate set of Legos, and you're like, "If when the player goes through here, they'll do this and that." And then there's something that I do, which is more like gameplay design stuff, which is "Okay, if this is the world, what can you do in it?"

And I lean more towards that side of the field.

Jake: And so when it comes to a game like MW4, what would you say was your focal point? What were you really working on?

Jackie: Yeah, for a good half of the project, I was working on a lot of field upgrades and killstreaks. We call it like the toys team, 'cause we do field upgrades, equipment, killstreaks, perks.

And I worked with them a lot for two years, and then in the last year or so I kinda moved on to the 6v6 game mode team. And we've been working on some of our new modes that we have this time.

Jake: And so what's a day-to-day for you look like? I know we were talking about the lead-up to launch, but what's the buildup look like, and what's a real stressful high-intensity day look like for you?

Jackie: Honestly, the stress comes down to, okay, on an average day, if you're not launching the game, it comes down to, did you break the build and everybody's game is now not able to run?

So that's stressful for you. If you do that enough times, you're just ruining everyone's lives. But otherwise, it's more just, I think sometimes when you're in the middle of trying to get something made, and you're working on this idea and it's not quite working right, there's this stress of "Oh, man, I spent like two months on this and this is not fun. What are we gonna do?" That's like the highest stress thing.

But when it comes to launch, you get a bug and it's like, "Hey, in search and destroy, you can't plant the bomb." And you're like, "Oh, no." And are we launching in 24 hours? That's where it gets pretty stressful. So it's been pretty much a whirlwind for the last couple months.

But I think, fingers crossed, I think we're on the other side.

Jake: And I feel when it comes to a game like Call of Duty, every year there are some obvious big changes with multiplayer that people can recognize right away. But there's also minute and niche changes that we maybe overlook. For someone like you, how has this game maybe changed that kind of, you're like, "Oh, that's really cool," and people let go unnoticed?

Jackie: I think with a franchise like Call of Duty, so many people have played one at this point. You kinda need a real detail-oriented mind to say, "What is the next place we can go to?"

And I think our weapons team and our movement and weapons team has really just, they exude that better than everyone else. And so when we came back to MW4 from MW II, we had felt like our push on more tactical gameplay had added friction that was making it not as fun.

And so we were trying to come up with the idea of what would a fluid tactical Modern Warfare game feel like. And we looked at parts of our game, and a great example of this is our mantle system. So if you mantle in MW II, you're like, oh, you're really trying to get up on there.

But we added all of these things you can do with our mantle where you can ADS while mantling, you can mantle into a slide, you can actually steer and turn your character while mantling, and it kind of exudes this sort of fluid gameplay we're going for, where mantling used to be a thing that you could get shot if someone's peeking you right as you mantle, right?

But now it feels completely indistinguishable from gameplay. I see people on clips online doing parkour across the map as they're trying to traverse and get to the fight, and I'm like, "That's fluid. That's sick."

Jake: And so as we are obviously here at launch, you see the campaign get great reviews. DMZ, I would say similar. It looks very promising. As a part of the multiplayer side, is that stressful? Is that an added pressure, or is that an excitement of okay, we have a lot to prove?

Jackie: It's definitely exciting because it makes me just feel honored to work as a part of these teams.

I hadn't played the campaign at all, so when I got to play it on early access, I was like, "What? This shit looks awesome." I was so geeked. And it gives me a new appreciation, because a lot of those feelings from the campaign and that tone, I think you can feel it across all different parts of Modern Warfare 4.

You can feel that in DMZ, where the story actually continues from campaign, and you can feel it in our MP maps that feel literally ripped out from campaign missions, where in my head canon, I'm like, okay, while Captain Price is in Mumbai doing this shit, I'm in the Mumbai map, fighting other operators.

So I think the tone, and feeling like a part of that bigger piece of the picture, is really just super exciting.

Jake: From your perspective, what do you think stands out most on the multiplayer side for MW4? Is there a niche change or something you found and was like, "Oh, that's sick"?

Jackie: Dude, I think Kill Block is really cool. So if you're not familiar with Kill Block, Kill Block is this idea of a living map. And one of our studio directors, Geoff Smith, he's made all of these maps, he's made Vacant, he's made Crash, a bunch of really iconic Modern Warfare maps.

And he was like, "Okay, what does the idea of a living map look like?" And so there's 500 different combinations of this map that's around the size of Shoot House, and you can get in, and every time you play a round of gunfight, for example, the map changes when your guns change. So you can never really rest on your laurels because just as you're getting used to something, boom, the map is changing, and you get right back in.

And it's cool because the map is essentially split into thirds. You kind of recognize some pieces that you'll see, and you're like, "Oh, okay, I know this piece. This is the Crash piece, so there's a helicopter here. I can take this route because I know this piece," and beat the other person to the angle that you're trying to shoot.

And what's cool is that we've actually built it with a lot of our core modes. So you'll be able to play this with TDM, and Search and Destroy, which goes super hard, Collateral, which we were talking about.

So yeah, I think Kill Block is probably the coolest. It was like a really big innovation that we've done.

Jake: And I also love some of the other modes too, 'cause I think we're also in an era of, economy-based shooters are definitely kinda being adapted to and played on. But you guys also have a mode that Collateral is maybe being brought back as a rendition of some old modes. Can you describe Collateral and why you think it's also unique?

Jackie: Yeah. So it's very much similar to Search and Destroy, but it has an economy. And what's cool about having this economy is we've had to rebalance some of our game to kinda fit this economy mindset.

You have health and you have armor, which is unique to our core MP modes. We don't generally give you armor. And some of the headshot multipliers have actually been changed a little bit to give more of that lethal feel. We were feeling that a lot when we were play testing with pistols, that the pistols weren't doing enough against some of these better guns that you can get.

And so when you're trying to do these eco rounds, you would be like, "Okay, I wanna feel like I can do something with the pistol."

And the feel of our game is pretty awesome, I would say. And so when you have this economy and this slow-paced mode with the Call of Duty sandbox, I think it rips.

Jake: Does Collateral differ from Heist at all?

Jackie: We're inspired by a lot of things with Collateral, for sure.

Jake: Got you. But...

Jackie: Yeah. Shout out to the boys at Treyarch.

Jake: And I really wanna talk about, of course, the new CDL mode, 'cause all those side modes are always intriguing to me. Whenever you introduce a new mode to the CDL community, it's gotta be competitive but it has to have a casual appeal. So when it comes to Hijack, can you give people more details of what actually is behind that?

Jackie: Yeah. One of my creative directors, Joe Cecot, he's always, "If you're trying to come up with a new thing, it should always fit a need. You shouldn't just make something just to make something."

And I was noticing that with our Modern Warfare 4, we didn't really have a tug of war mode, one that was where each side is kinda pushing and attacking and defending at the same time. And on top of this, I was really fond of Uplink from the advanced movement days.

And it kinda came to this idea of, like, how do we get that kind of passing and trying to do line ups and throw a thing onto a site or a location? But you could have it where it's a more boots on the ground game. And then the other thing I was inspired by a lot was Search and Destroy.

I think great game modes kinda come in two parts. Like with Search, you're attacking the bomb site, and then when the bomb gets planted, now you're defending the bomb site, and then the roles flip, where one side is defending and now they have to retake, and now they're attacking, right? And so I kinda wanted to grab that sort of retaking the site aspect from Search with the kind of passing the spike to each other, throwing it on the site with Uplink.

And when we were play testing it, people came up with all these cool ideas like, what if you could shoot the spike out of the air? So now, when people are doing these line-ups, you can aim your gun and shoot at the spike, and it'll actually deflect midair. And they were like, "What if you could use it as a throwing knife?"

So you can actually use the spike as a throwing knife and kill someone. We have a shot clock built into the mode where you have basically, like in basketball or something, you have 45 seconds to score, but if you can kill someone with the spike by using it as a throwing knife, the shot clock resets to give your team more time to score.

Jake: Not trying to appease, but when it comes to preparing for the Call of Duty multiplayer audience every year, what is that like? Because you have an audience that wants so many different things. Of course, you gotta nail it down to a certain way, a certain vision. So what is that like each and every year?

Jackie: I think one thing we always try to set out to do with every project is we wanna remind you all the reasons why you fell in love with this franchise in the first place, but also take you to places that you've never been before. And I think the reasons why everyone's fallen in love is different.

It could be like me. My first COD was COD 2, Big Red One. Some people's first COD was MW 19 or BO2 or whatever. But I think what we try to do is we really try to double down on the stuff that works with COD, and then we try to expand that in a way that feels healthy but still feels exciting.

And that's with how we've changed our traversal system, that stuff like Kill Block. That stuff with our new weapon fidelity where you can lean your gun around dynamically throughout the world. Everything about COD which to me is the most fun is when you're getting into that rhythm, you're killing, you're flowing throughout the map, you're holding good positions, and you're playing an objective that feels fun to play.

And I think when you think of it in terms of that, there's always new things that you can come up with to do, and what I would hope for is that players found something in this game.

This interview has been edited for clarity and length.