When Unprofessional Blog Posts Attack: Call of Duty Edition

You generally don't make a statement like that in public unless you've got an exit strategy, or you will be given one for free.

"I read that whole article imagining that Marcus Fenix  was shouting it, lol"
"I read that whole article imagining that Marcus Fenix  was shouting it, lol"
"I read that whole article imagining that Marcus Fenix  was shouting it, lol"
"I read that whole article imagining that Marcus Fenix  was shouting it, lol"
"I read that whole article imagining that Marcus Fenix  was shouting it, lol"

HAHAHA.

Wow.  The professionalism is astounding.

Geez, after reading this, I don't know who is the bigger a-hole, Noah or Robert?

Pissed off or not, anyone over 10 years old knows that having having baby rants when you're an adult, in the professional world, can have serious consequences.  I'm not exactly sure what the point of this blog was, other than to whine.  If he actually wanted to do something about it, or incite change, he failed miserably.  Big fail.

Thats going to leave a stain on his resume, whether he realizes it or not.

My read on this is that he resents Treyarch getting to ride Infinity Bored's success. I'm guessing that he's believes the hype, thinking that COD4: Modern Warfare was a good game, or something, so he has this proud machismo type of attitude. I wish someone would take this guy down a peg so he would concentrate on making IW's next COD something better than the last.

COD4 was a sparkle and fade, in my opinion. They got almost there, but they left a few screws loose as it get flung off the production line and shipped off to retailers. The short campain, The Spawnfucking, the imbalanced perks, the 'nade spam, no central authentication gateway, having punkbuster but not doing anything with it, the fact that turning your graphics to minimum gives you a visual advantage -- all of these game breaking flaws give an otherwise great product, a feeling of incompletion. COD4 is a failure, that's been trumped up as a GOTY. @ Robert Bowling /point /laugh /mock

he's mad that a guy promoting a sequel to his game is referencing his game? he is the fuckin douche bag. what an ass hole? i hope this nolan guy goes and beats his ass for talking so much shit. grow the fuck up you whining piece of shit. 

Really... it's not that big of a deal, me thinks. I think it's the price for all working for one gigantic company like Activision. It just comes with the territory, but the upside is you get lots and lots of money to make your games with.

meh, girls ....

Hopefully there is a mass exodus from IW and they start a new independent studio and start work on "Medal of Honor: Modern Warfare" under the EA Partners program. Maybe that would sort out those pricks (Kotick and company) over at Activision who seem to think what the gaming industry needs is 24/7 hardcore milking of any and all available franchises until there is nothing left but a dead, withered corpse where a vibrant franchise once stood.

I can see why this guy would be mad.  If you keep riding off the success of the last game made by a different studio and this one ends up sucking, you have more or less just made IW look bad to a lot of casuals who don't know we have a cyclic change in developers.

But on another note, like others said; and I am not completely sure on the figures of the past CoD's but I am pretty sure that CoD3 tanked, CoD2 did pretty good and I don't think the original CoD ever caught on a ton since it was only on PC and it was IW's first game.  It seemed pretty popular as far as among us kinda hardcore PC players but I am not sure about the general public?  So yeah, like others said; he is kinda being a total jerk, but on the other hand Activision has probably been doing this kind of crap for the last few months and this was the last straw.

Blah, blah, discretion my ass. Discretion is what allows corporate bullshit to persist. People need to move passed discretion into true understanding and honesty. Most developers cite mistakes they have made on previous games that they have addressed and fixed for their latest game, but this deuche is citing a game that he had nothing to do with and how "his game" has corrected the mistake. Personally, I wouldn't have blogged the response. I would have flogged the deuche. You have to keep in mind that most people are not aware of developers, only the games; and for Infinity Ward to have to put up with an inferior developer creating content that is more or less marketed as the same game, would chap my hide too.

suddenly, DRAMA

maybe infinity ward needs to go independent and make a game just like call of duty 4, and call it something else.

IW needs to break away from Activision soon. the CoD well-of-awesomeness is going to run dry soon. even if they do continously produce quality shooters, there's only so much IW or Treyarch can do with CoD without completely shaking things up, and knowing Activision, they won't stand for IW shaking things up.

Why Activision are the new EA:

"[Ghostbusters and Brutal Legend] don't have the potential to be exploited every year on every platform with clear sequel potential and have the potential to become $100 million dollar franchises. ... I think, generally, our strategy has been to focus... on the products that have those attributes and characteristics, the products that we know [that] if we release them today, we'll be working on them 10 years from now." - Activision CEO Bobby Kotick

Kinda makes you want to sharpen some stakes and go visit Activision HQ.

that annual call of duty release is becoming more and more suspicious.
really is.

I would think even if IW got away from activison there not going to be taking COD with them I would asume Activison owns that property but they could make there own games though I don't know why they would go through the effort to seperate if there were still just going to make a game for Activison. .

If the mention of previous games in the series is just the beginning for a pitch for the new game, then that's ok. As long as it doesn't happen ALL THE TIME.
But this is sort of a special case since there are two developers working on a single series. There could be competition going on or who knows what. I see the fourzerotwo's point. From what I remember, the Infinity Ward Call of Duty games were superior to Treyarch. Therefore, the comparisons are not a compliment, they're a detriment. I guess I agree with fourzerotwo's post.

I'm counting the days until the main dudes peace from IW and Activision and start another company to make games for the competition, just like they peaced from EA's Medal of Honor team back in the day.

When your game is being associated with the complete, ultimately shitty tripe that is CoD:WaW, I'd get pissed too.

I completely agree with this man and I think he has every right to be pissed off. CoD is IW's baby, they love it and have every reason to be angry when a shitty developer keeps scaring their lineup. Perhaps thats part of Activisions goal though, make the last game suck so bad that the next one will be considered amazing no matter what.

I expected a manager to be more polite !

I completely agree with what this guy is saying, and to be honest after playing the beta for WaW it just feels like a re-skinned version of COD4. Four, finally, broke away from WWII, and now activision or Treyarch (I'm not actually sure who makes these types of decisions) have just said "What shall be do now?. . . fuck it! Let's go back to the second world war, sure we've been dragging that horses corpse around for ages now, but we'll ride COD4's success and make a shit load of money from a game that's taken 6 months to create" what a joke.

I think it's time that EA stepped aside, looks like we have a new money hungry publisher ready to take the throne.

Sweet Jeff looking forward to this review!
However like pretty much everybody else I will get it regardless.
The Beta was pretty god damn cool.

I think a lot of you guys that are bashing FOURZEROTWO are missing the point. How would you feel if your company made this awesome product that CLEARLY made a dent in the gaming world, especially online, and now you have some other "lesser" company riding off your coat tails. Not to mention dogging it in the process like they made a superior product all by themselves. I dunno about you guys but that would piss me right off.

Also, I'm a bit pissed at how they dealt with the beta and how they updated, or lack thereof, the community. They were supposed to email everyone their beta keys but instead did it through the site... good call morons, there's thousands of people trying to access the site at the same time and wouldn't you know it, it messed up and a buncha oldschool people didn't get their keys. Here's the fun part, they didn't even bother updating the community as to what was going on. Now, the COD4 beta wasn't so smooth either but you know what? FOURZEROTWO was right there updating everyone as to what was going down. When they couldn't resolve it they said fuck it, send it out to everyone as apposed to Treyarch just leaving it as is and if you didn't get one you were fucked.

I am wondering why they don't just change the name of "their game", its not like they even need the clout..

And if they can't then they need to deal with being a part of a company that uses your game name at another company, it already sounds shady just mentioning it.

I find this completely justified and agree this guy at activison is deserving of it.

Wow, what a douchebag.

Video Games! Alright!

That blog post shows an extraordinary lack of discretion.  You expect that kind of tone from the baser elements in forums, not from the person who is meant to moderate and set the tone.   His blog is unlikely to be read widely and so not noticed by the bosses, but this story will soon be linked across other game news site like kotaku.   After that I wouldn't be at all surprised to find him quietly let go. 

this guy is the reason i wont be supporting any future IW products. 402 is a fucking bitch.

W@W will be a big letdown

No, no, no! Mr. Bowling, you're supposed to let off steam by typing it all out and then hitting delete! Not post! That's not how you make friends! That's how you inexplicably "decide" to "resign" a week later! : (

Calling people names in blogs to people other than to who they are aimed at is awful. You have a gripe, go talk to the person in a rational way. Calling people names like that makes me wonder if all the name calling that goes on in MMO's is adults rather than teenagers.

Dang yo. I'm surprised he can get away with something like that.

I like Robert.  He's a pretty cool guy.

I can't blame Bowling for his comments, as anyone would be upset to see their hard work used as some promotional toy for something that they view as unrelated or foreign.  What with the IW3 stuff, I guess we had already kind of figured that this is how they feel.  Still, his choice of words for public display was a little harsh.

Personally, if WaW turns out to be any good, I can say that I like both kinds of Call of Duty games, though I will always feel better about the Infinity Ward titles.

My guess is that we'll see a Rare style mass exodus from Activision (and IW if they can't take their name with em) and we'll end up seeing a shooter "From the makers of the Call of Duty series!!"

haha that was pretty sweet

awright, this guy is a douche. the only bolt action rifle in COD4 was the the M40 and R700, which were SNIPERS. The only plausible thing i can think of is that he thinks manual weapons like the G3 are bolt action, which aren't. and 402 really does like WAW, from what i can take from his blog. He sounds really stoked about it. he's more pissed at activision than treyarch.

@MichaelScott: No, they still have that. It doesn't matter for me, cuz i use stopping power for everything.

This certainly was unexpected, I mean vocal anger coming from Infinity Ward nonetheless. I kinda had a feeling that IW had some frustration with the series now that there's been some "changes" to the series (i.e. annual release & Treyarch as the alternating developer). Unprofessional? Yes. Convincing? Depending if you knew the series was being made by two separate developers, sure.

That was funny. Well, I still think COD4 looks way better than W@W, so I don't care.

I'd be very happy if Infinity Ward could get away from fucking Activision and that ginger fuck Kotick.

Poor IW must be really pissed about their game being made by some losers =P I've played World at War and it was a good game, but nowhere near CoD4 I'm afraid.

more reason not to buy CoD: WaW