Love it or hate it, Call of Duty is one of gaming’s biggest hitters, and it turns out we probably have EA to thank for it.
Infinity Ward’s founder – Vince Zampella – has spoken out about the origins of the franchise. While working on a little title called Medal of Honor Allied Assault at developer 2015 Inc, Zampella claims EA tried to take charge and make them an internal studio after the game made good sales.
He said:
EA wanted to pull it in house so they forced us to try to come be part of EA. We didn’t want to do that. They tried to strong-arm us a little bit. Once they tried to strong-arm us, we decided we don’t want to be part of EA–as a team, we decided that wasn’t what we set out to do.
Zampella decided to pull away from EA to create Infinity Ward who were picked up by Activision shortly before the release of the first Call of Duty. Activision would go on to fire Zampella and co-founder Jason West – who both set up Rebellion Studios – four years before their new game Titanfall was picked up by, you guessed it, EA.
So there we have it, if EA hadn’t tried to absorb everything like the gelatinous develo-blob that it is, we wouldn’t have Call of Duty or Titanfall today. Keep it up I guess?
Mark is the Gaming Editor for UNILAD. Having grown up a gaming addict, he’s been deeply entrenched in culture and spends time away from work playing as much as possible. Mark studied music at University and found a love for journalism through going to local gigs and writing about them for local and national publications.