Activision: Call of Duty busies 500+ devs

By Robert Purchese Published 7 September, 2011

"It takes a village in this case."

There are more than 500 developers working on mega-brand Call of Duty, Activision has revealed.

That number represents the combined work of multiple studios - "It takes a village in this case," Activision Publishing executive vice president Dave Stohl told GamesBeat.

Upcoming Call of Duty game Modern Warfare 3 is a collaboration between Infinity Ward and Sledgehammer Games. Sledgehammer Games had been making a third-person Call of Duty action adventure before being roped in to work on MW3.

Singularity developer Raven Software is also helping out with downloadable content, as it did with DLC for Call of Duty: Black Ops.

Black Ops studio Treyarch will make the Wii version of Modern Warfare 3, and n-Space will make MW3 for DS.

Meanwhile, new Activision studio Beachhead is making Call of Duty: Elite, and Treyarch expands Black Ops with more money-spinning map packs.

Demonware, the Activision-acquired multiplayer middle-ware company, makes the network code for the Call of Duty series.

That's seven studios all involved in Call of Duty.

The marketing team must be pretty big.

Picture of Robert.

About Robert Purchese

Bertie is Eurogamer's Senior Staff Writer. When he's not hunting down news stories he's often found playing with his kids or gabbling about fantasy games and strange online worlds. @Clert on Twitter.

Read more articles from Robert by visiting the Robert Purchese archive page.

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Comments (40) Latest comment 9 months ago

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  • Ultrasoundwave #1 9 months ago

    Ive personally got nothing against COD - their well made games with solid gameplay. My only concern is the lack of innovation and the developers being scared to try new things. Id quite like to see Sledgehammers' 3rd-person COD in the future....

  • MiniAmin #2 9 months ago

    500 developers?! And yet Activision couldn't maintain Bizarre Creations? Excuse me while I dish out the inevitable "fuck Activision" comment.

    Fuck Activision!

  • Dave #3 9 months ago

    And this is something to be proud of? There are better games out there made by only a handful of people.

  • Syrette #4 9 months ago

    Imagine what some of these studios could come up with if Activision decided to invest in some new IP?

  • riceNpea #5 9 months ago

    1 to copy and paste MW2's code and change the 2 to 3, and 499 to think of different ways to charge for it.

  • bratmandu #6 9 months ago

    The ratio of chefs to the amount of food being prepared is proving detremental to the broth. You could say...

  • Architect_z #7 9 months ago

    How many does Battlefield have?

  • cianchristopher #8 9 months ago

    I love Call of Duty, it's a brilliant series. I wish it every success, as the nerd-rage it brings out on gaming sites is a joy to behold.

    Oh, and I hope motion controls and casual/Facebook games continue to take over - and that in 5 years there'll be no more geeky JRPGs and fantasy games and whatever-the-fuck-else those weirdos play.

    Seriously! Long may Call of Duty continue to utterly, utterly dominate this entire industry!

  • Cjail #9 9 months ago

    I am no COD hater but with 500 developers the best they can do is to do the same game over and over?!

  • Bravestinsane #10 9 months ago

    im sorry, but that seems overly excessive a number, like other people have said other developers make great games with a lot fewer people.

    I wouldn't mind knowing how many people made the recent Deus Ex.

    31/60

  • God_Octo #11 9 months ago

    Oh my god, if CoD goes under, that's a hell of a lot of people Activision would make redundant. And according to Wikipedia, Activision only have 13 existing studios, so over half of their development companies are working on CoD.

    Well, at least a few people are working on something not CoD related.

  • Nova1977 #12 9 months ago

    My guess is that they're making a brand new engine and want to do it in 1year that's why they're going for the big team of devs. 500 people that could've been making something new and different stuck in limbo. The definition of insanity.

  • arcam #13 9 months ago

    I think this just shows there's a lot more work that goes into a making a Call of Duty game than many people here think.

  • NkillerROH #14 9 months ago

    That's it, Acti, put all your eggs into one basket. Remember Tony Hawk? Guitar Hero?

  • Freakachuu #15 9 months ago

    Three decent developers that could be working on three decent games rather than one overhyped rail shooter.

  • stephenb #16 9 months ago

    Can I suggest for the next Infinity Ward CoD that you put those 500 devs to good use and get them to write a new engine for the game?

  • Tryhard #17 9 months ago

    So many + likes to dish out in here.

  • ChesterPTR #18 9 months ago

    That many just to copy and paste? Jesus...

  • feistycheese #19 9 months ago

    "It takes a village in this case,"

    Thats a lot of idiots for one village.

  • wizbob #20 9 months ago

    500 artists and animators maybe, but I doubt they need many devs. This reminds me of the Rohrer interview published here today; "his best ideas can't be done because the game engine simply can't support them. And most mainstream devs are using some off-the-shelf game engine, which means that their designs must fit into what their engines were meant to support.". So basically, if it can't be done in LUA, it won't be included.

  • Utilero #21 9 months ago

    Wow 500... I guess Kotick's cocaine supplier and busty secretary are also included in this large "development" group.

  • joelstinton #22 9 months ago

    How would one improve the COD engine? Its a TDM shooter, and no matter how many bells and whisltes you add to it, FPS have reached there end game. COD, and halo, and Killzone won't really ever change no matter how many Numbers are on the end of the title. Games used to have genre cycles, the introduction of online, and involving graphics have changed this, so that FPS is now the equvilant of Hollywood. Its here to stay. Whereever you like it or not.

    And for those who bemoan COD yearly output, i suggest they also take into consideration, EA/DICE output of the battlefied series since 2005- BF2, 2142, Bad Company, Heroes, 1943, Bad Company 2, Battlefield 3 - 7 Titles, in 6 years. Thats not also including the expansion packs.

  • MiniAmin #23 9 months ago

    500!? I still can't get over that. There's a good chance the credits will actually be longer than the campaign.

  • GooseUK #24 9 months ago

    @Bratmandu

    that you've bollocksed it up

  • metalangel #25 9 months ago

    And just like small Vietnamese villages, the village is going to be destroyed in order to save it.

  • Totza #26 9 months ago

    And still with all those resources they havent changed the game since mw2 hehehehhehehehehe gtfo

  • BSMR #27 9 months ago

    Battlefield has 8 less devs, but they're at the very top and very bottom of the building so you won't notice them.

  • Samirnasirov #28 9 months ago

    I like Call of Duty. i like Battlefield. I dont like people constantly bickering about which is better.

  • neems #29 9 months ago

    500 devs? Is it not more likely to be 500 people? 500 developers seems like an awful lot.

  • HugePS3Fan #30 9 months ago

    At a certain point "it takes a village" has to give way to "too many cooks in the kitchen"

  • mukki #31 9 months ago

    woppie du da!

    does that make for a better game...?

  • White_Westie #32 9 months ago

    I used to love cod way more than the BF series. But I have found myself the other way around now...

    The cod engine, is glitchy. They need to stop and rewrite the code from scratch - a massive job. They are using tech originally made by IW which only IW will have a full understanding of. Every programmer has there own techniques and reasons why they do things when they are coding..

    Until they rewrite the engine, I'm there for BF now.... I hate all the BS of lobbys and waiting too - another reason i dont like cod or in fact halo!... I just like to Multiplayer up and get straight into it without the 5 min wait.

    Its incredible to think of 500 people working on the program..... maybe thats why it is so buggy.... the question is, how many of these will be laid off before xmas.... what a genuine shame for those guys....

  • Nephirion #33 9 months ago

    BF3 has 501 .....

  • TudeScud #34 9 months ago

    @White_Westie BS of lobbies? Odd, I generally find CoD to be the best in terms of minimal wait time between matches. Have you played CoD since MW2 when Infinity Ward did all that work on their matchmaking service? Playing the Halo series online for he first time in Reach, I too was shocked by the general delay in getting a match going. I do appreciate dedicated servers, but really matchmaking needs to be there as well as it can really define the jump-in-and-play aspect. Hopefully MW3 will have both, but I'm not sure I have time for another multiplayer blockbuster this year.

    OT: It's interesting that Raven is helping them with DLC. Does that mean they're designing the maps in the map packs? From what I know about BlOps, the map packs were actually a big step up from the maps included in the game. Coincidence?
    Edited by TudeScud at 07/09/11 @ 23:05

  • FarbrorBaku #35 9 months ago

    Steve Ballmer would approve of this : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KMU0tzLwhbE

  • NHDavid #36 9 months ago

    COD....500 people and the same engine since 2001

  • CamberGreber #37 9 months ago

    500 developers on 1 Franchise JEEZZ.

    Activision better hope that COD or even the modern warfare fad doesn't run out or else they wont have anything.

    Let's face it WOW is already on its way out.

  • jablonski #38 9 months ago

    "The marketing team must be pretty big."

    Wave hello EG, because you're part of the team

  • Djimm #39 9 months ago

    Interesting view on this sort of thing in the DE:HR "making of" documentary from the boss of Eidos Montreal. He says something along the lines of them having a lot of staff members who joined them because they got sick of working on what should have been 3 year long projects that were squeezed into 18 months by piling on the staff numbers.

    With Activision's "yearly schedule" policy, quality suffers. You simply can't manage 500 odd people over 18 months as well as you can manage 150 odd over 3 years.

    Imagine of IW had the chance to take 3 years for the next CoD - revamp the engine, really study game balance and map flow, then QA the result to perfection...

  • LittleRiver #40 9 months ago

    The most obscene number that will be associated with MW3 will be my clan's win ratio...