Call of Duty game engine criticism unfair, Treyarch claims

Critics of the Call of Duty game engine are being unfair, developer Treyarch has insisted.

With high-profile FPS rivals like Crysis and Battlefield sporting relatively modern game-engines, many have been quick to point the finger at Call of Duty and its various creators’ willingness to stick with the same engine it launched with in 2005.

But speaking to OXM, Treyarch’s David Vondehaar said that the engine evolves significantly with every release and that none of its rivals have successfully delivered the 60 frames per second so reliably delivered by the Call of Duty series.

"Anybody who comes at the engine needs to remember it’s the 60 frames they love in the first place," Vondehaar explained. "And we can make it beautiful – that’s through years and years of working with the engine, improving upon it and improving the pipeline and improving our approach, our lighting rendering.

"People like to talk about the engine, but the truth of the matter is that this isn’t like something that was invented six years ago. At this point that engine doesn’t resemble anything like any engine – we’ve ripped out the UI system, the rendering and the lighting are all new, the core gameplay systems are all new."

"To me, it’s like I never really understood. It runs at 60 and it’s gorgeous. What exactly is there to be upset about with the engine?"