Sledgehammer: Modern Warfare 3 not aiming to shock

Despite claims to the contrary, the developers of Call of Duty say that they do not see the use of shocking content as a marketing tool for their games.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 is released worldwide tomorrow, and while the mainstream media has yet to go big” on a COD related controversy, leaked content suggests it may only be a matter of time.

And it wouldn’t be the first time a Call of Duty title has won national newspaper headlines for the wrong reasons. The infamous No Russian scene in Modern Warfare 2 become a global scandal, and the British press has already had a stab at one of MW3’s early trailers.

What you don’t do is say, we’re just doing this to top ourselves,” Seldgehammer Games’ creative director Bret Robbins told VentureBeat in reply to a question about escalating violence in the series.

It needs to be something that’s authentic, that actually moves the plot forward. We have some moments in the game that I think are pretty shocking, that push the envelope a little bit.

But like I said before, it’s not a matter of trying to be gratuitous about it, doing shocks for shock value. You always want to push yourself and see if you can push the limits of the medium, and storytelling. We’ve got such a big audience for this game that we want to deliver something that’s memorable.

Experiences that people are going to be talking about the next day after they played it, talking about with their friends. It’s really a matter of creating something unique.”