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Modern Warfare 2: Interview with Todd Alderman
We sit down with Modern Warfare 2's Lead Multiplayer Designer Todd Alderman to discuss the upcoming 'game of the year'.
Written by David Scammell, 22 September 2009
In part one of our three part interview with Modern Warfare 2's Lead Multiplayer Designer Todd Alderman we discuss how Infinity Ward has made sure to improve on the Call of Duty formula and whether the team now consider the series as more of a multiplayer game than a single-player one. Please note that this interview was part of a group session with other publications.
GamerZines: So how do you go about improving something like Call of Duty, while making sure you don't mess it up?
Todd Alderman: It's very hard to do, but we learned and it is doable. I mean, this is a question we obviously had to work our way through, but in the beginning we decided to get rid of everything. We said 'okay, there's no perks, there's no frag grenades, there's no flashbangs, there's some guns and some locations, and let's figure out where we want to try and go'. So basically what we did was, instead of saying 'we can't get rid of this or this', we just got rid of it all and then when we feel that it has a place, that's when we bring it back.
I think what people will find in Modern Warfare 2 is a lot of stuff from Call of Duty 4, but it's in some other form. Like, there's no Extreme Conditioning. You have Marathon, which is a sprint that lets you always sprint, and you can choose what your frag grenade button does now, and you don't have the extra frag perk, you have Scavenger, which lets you replenish your ammo for everything. And weapons that were once primaries or perks, like shotguns and rocket launchers, are now secondary weapons. Things have just moved and evolved into a whole new thing.
GZ: Where do you see the Call of Duty series now? Because CoD1 & 2 were very much single-player story-based games with multiplayer essentially an afterthought, whereas Call of Duty 4 became more famous for its multiplayer. So when going into Modern Warfare 2, do you focus on it more as a multiplayer title?
TA: No, not at all. I'm in charge of the multiplayer, that's my main focus, but I get to be involved in some single player things, like what happens with the story and stuff like that. People swap back and forth, but we definitely have people where their jobs are to focus on either single-player or multiplayer, and all of our energies are going into all of it. So it's not a 'hey, this thing comes first', it's very much a 'we want to make the best story that is possible to make in a single player game, like a big budget action movie, and we want our multiplayer to be bigger and better than ever before.' And then there's Spec-Ops which is a new focus, so there's a lot of different places to watch but they're all there because there's something we want to do in those 'genres'.
360Zine Issue 37
For our latest Modern Warfare 2 coverage, click here to download 360Zine Issue 37 for free.GZ: Playing Call of Duty 4 as a player rather than its developer, what did you hate about it?
TA: Laughs What did I hate about Call of Duty 4? It depends on the day! If I get killed by the Martyrdom guy a few too many times, I might not be happy about it. But there's nothing specifically that I thought was bad. Coming from Modern Warfare 2 back to Call of Duty 4 though, it's just a different game, simple as that. It's really hard to describe, actually. There are things in the game that we didn't have before that we have now. Like in Call of Duty 2 there was no bullet penetration and no sprint, and when you go back and play it after playing CoD 4 for a while and you bring up your binoculars by accident?laughs
GZ: Do you think that Call of Duty 4 was actually a bigger step up to Call of Duty 2 than Modern Warfare 2 is to CoD4?
TA: Bigger step up?
GZ: Well, you know, Call of Duty 4 revolutionised online multiplayer and so going into MW2 some might think that it's just more of an extension on that formula?
TA: No I don't, because I think this game is really different. The core is the same, but the game is way different, surprisingly different, I think. There's so much stuff in Modern Warfare 2 that it's really hard to talk about. Like when I was doing my speech, I was thinking 'what do I talk about?'. There are a million things, literally, that I want to tell you about and explain but I don't have time. The idea is that we want to be playing this game two years down the road and still be unlocking and seeing new things. It's definitely a new, different experience and not just the next step. That's the exact thing we wanted to avoid. I would not want to start the event saying, 'Welcome to Modern Warfare 2, we added a longer sprint, enjoy!' Instead it's like, 'I don't know where to start' because there's so much different stuff.
Check back tomorrow for the second part of our interview with Alderman.
Modern Warfare 2 coverage available in 360Zine Issue 37 - click here to download it for free!
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