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The making and unmaking of Infinity Ward

2010-03-07 13:00
The implosion of Infinity Ward, one of the best videogame studios ever founded, is the latest chapter in a long saga intertwined with the history of intense combat video games. A lawsuit filed by the studio 8217;s co-founders last week against parent company Activision Blizzard was a sad milestone at a studio that has come to be cherished by millions of hardcore game fans. In the beginning, there was Saving Private Ryan. Steven Spielberg 8217;s horrific World War II movie opened in 1998 and shocked audiences with its realistic, horrifying portrayal of the D-Day landings at Omaha Beach and the subsequent fighting in the liberation of France. Spielberg, whose move studio Dreamworks had spun off a Microsoft-backed games subsidiary, Dreamworks Interactive, in 1995, wanted to re-introduce young people to the horrors of war and the sacrifices made by those that Tom Brokaw called The Greatest Generation. He thought a video game based on the movie would reach younger audiences with the same kind of message. But after the dismal failure that year of the heavily-hyped dinosaur-fighting game Jurassic Park: Trespasser, Spielberg lost his appetite for games. He sold DreamWorks Interactive to Electronic Arts in 2000. The Private Ryan project survived the transition. EA asked id Software, which had made the World War II-themed Wolfenstein games, if it wanted to make a another game dubbed Medal of Honor. Id 8217;s veteran developers, their hands full, pointed to a promising new game company in Oklahoma called 2015 Studios, founded in 1997 by Tom Kudirka. EA commissioned 2015 to make the game. Another team, eventually known as Spark Unlimited, was also involved in the creation of Medal of Honor. That team included Craig Allen, Adrian Jones, and Scott Langteau. Dale Dye, a decorated combat veteran who was an advisor on Saving Private Ryan, gave the young 2015 developers a lot of advice about how to create a realistic combat scene. He knew, for instance, exactly how big the explosions were when a WWII grenade went off, and what it sounded like when a bullet whizzed by your head. The team was inspired by Spielberg 8217;s movie and Dye 8217;s experiences to make a memorable game. In 2002, EA launched Medal of Honor: Allied Assault. It was an outstanding game that made players feel as if they were inside the beach landing scene in Saving Private Ryan. As a player, you quickly realized that you were not invincible as the Germans sprayed nonstop machine gun and mortar fire from the bluffs above. Instead of charging into the fray, you had to find cover to survive. But just like the movie, you were still a dead man unless you kept moving forward. The game set a new bar for realism in war combat. 2015 Studios eventually went on to work on a Vietnam war game, Men of Valor. But there was a faction that didn 8217;t like working in Tulsa and didn 8217;t like the way 2015 was run. After the Medal of Honor game shipped in 2002, Grant Collier and Vince Zampella left 2015 to se...
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