What We Know About The Infinity Ward Debacle, Part Two

16 Apr 2010 at 00:00:00 by Tim McDonald

Back at the start of March, we ran a column with the rather self-explanatory title “What We Know About The Infinity Ward Debacle” which covered the departures of Jason West and Vince Zampella, the studio heads of the Modern Warfare developer, from the company. We collated the facts and the speculation, weighed up the possibilities, and told you not just What We Know but What We Think. We're good to you like that.

These past few weeks have seen a flurry of activity from the beleaguered developer and now seems as good a time as any to head back and try to make sense of things.

So yes, West and Zampella were fired from Activision, and have since sued the publishing giant with the aim of getting the royalties they feel they're owed as well as the control over the Modern Warfare franchise – and, indeed, any Call of Duty titles set in any era post-Vietnam – that is allegedly theirs due to a Memorandum of Understanding created to give the pair an incentive to work on Modern Warfare 2.

Since then the pair have joined a Hollywood talent agency which, uh, seems more like a comedy aside than anything that's going to have an impact on the way this develops, as well as started up their own studio. We'll get onto that, but more important right now is the Activision countersuit.

You see, in possibly the most unexpected move since Ricky Martin revealed his sexuality, Activision countersued its former employees and used some pretty strong words to do so. The court document is filled with all sorts of wonderful phrases, including calling West and Zampella “insubordinate and self-serving schemers,” and appears to claim that the pair not only planned to open up another studio, but alleges that they were responsible for withholding “additional incentive compensation” from other Infinity Ward employees to “further the (mis)conception that Activision was not 'taking care' of IW employees.”

Handbags at dawn, then. Whoever ends up being legally proven right, it's true that West and Zampella have since started up a new company called Respawn Studios which is partnering up with – wait for it – Electronic Arts. So yeah, if this was a sitcom, the audience would be going “Ooh” at this point, particularly as Activision previously went looking for documents relating to “West and Zampella's communications with Activision's competitors, including but not limited to Electronic Arts.”

There's plenty more intrigue to come, though, as Infinity Ward is haemorrhaging employees. Over the past couple of weeks, ten more staffers have left Infinity Ward. Senior staffers, no less. The list at time of writing, in chronological order of when we heard about the losses, follows:

• Todd Alderman – Lead designer
• Francesco Gigliotti – Lead software engineer
• Jon Shiring – Programmer
• Mackey McCandlish – Lead designer
• Steve Fukuda – Lead designer
• Zied Reike – Lead designer
• Rayme Vinson – Programmer
• Chris Cherubini – Lead artist
• Mark Grigsby – Lead animator
• Paul Messerly – Lead character animator

Not a list that Activision will likely be happy about, judging by the amount of times the word “lead” appears in there. It's a hefty loss for Infinity Ward, but with the studio's staff estimated at around 90 members by the omniscient bearer of facts Wikipedia, this isn't going to kill the studio. That said, we'd be very surprised if Grigsby and Messerly turn out to be the last Infinity Ward staffers to leave.

What's next? Considering the number of employees leaving Infinity Ward, the serendipitous timing of Respawn's formation, and the probability of Electronic Arts firing cash at the studio through a massive hosepipe, I don't think it's too far-fetched to assume that we'll see a number of ex-Infinity Ward staffers reunite with their old colleagues there.

As for Infinity Ward, we already saw Activision set up CTO Steve Pearce and head of production Steve Ackrich over there to act as interim studio heads, and it's likely this sort of thing will continue. Activision will restaff the studio, whether they attempt to pull people in from their other studios or whether they go on a hiring drive. The simple fact is that Infinity Ward is a big name by itself and is even bigger when attached to the Call of Duty franchise, and we'll see another Infinity Ward-driven Call of Duty game before long. Whether or not this entry into the franchise will suffer a drop in quality due to the losses, we'll have to wait and see, but another Call of Duty title will come out of that studio.

But hey, it's not all doom and gloom; even in these dire times there's are moments of levity. Infinity Ward found the time to pop onto Family Guy with an amusing Modern Warfare 2 cameo, and even Electronic Arts took a friendly swipe at Activision when its director of corporate communications, Jeff Brown, made an analogy regarding Activision's announcement that Modern Warfare 2's Stimulus Package was partly responsible for the publisher's improved financial projections: “This is kind of like announcing: The race horse I shot last month has won the Triple Crown!”

At least, I hope it was a friendly swipe.

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