Robert Bowling’s name has come up more times in the last few weeks than I can count. Recently Bowling sat down with OXM and spoke about how Infinity Ward knew “the game we want to make” and left Activision out of it until later in development. Bowling also said that “the only opinion we care about is what our fans think.”
Bowling talked about how they used social tools like Facebook and Twitter among others to stay in touch the with the fans and ask what they wanted to see in the game. This brings up an interesting point in a way, could this be a part of what Neil Thompson meant when he said social tools are the “heart” of xbox’s future? Will developers use these tools to connect with Xbox users right from their 360s and will PS3 maybe follow?
Back on track though, Bowling spoke of how they took the feedback and wanted to get it on track with, “what they wanted to see,” “what they had planned,” and “what they already had done.” Bowling then said something that should make MW2 fans happy,
That’s really what’s important, our relationship with us and our fans, and not so much us and Activision, or us and retailers or anything like that.
With everything we’ve seen on MW2 only being bigger and better, it seems Bowling isn’t kidding around when he said all of that stuff. Already having a huge fan following and over a million pre-orders I think they did something right. Modern Warfare 2 is set to release November 10th.
Infinity Ward kept Modern Warfare 2 secret from Activision [OXM]
Infinity ward don’t care about hardcore pc gamers only pc noobs
Well every game developer studio should care what the fans think, and only few do, such as Infinity Ward and Valve as far as I know.
daaaamn, robert bowling must be loving that interview
i came for the article which i think its a interesting concept can’t wait to see wat goes on adding those social networking to how they play the game. Now to stay here and drool over the pic wishing i was Robert Bowling =P
FourZeroTwo and infinity ward are awesome.
is there females working there?
the only thing i like is the 2 girls in their birthday suits in the pic
This is a great concept, I just don’t know how many developers actually listen to their fans. You would think they all would, but I’m sure there are plenty of them out there who think they know what is best for us in a game. /shrug
Maybe this is a sign to other developers that use social sites to see what the consumers want and what they want to see in the upcoming games.
Well it is nice to know one developer cares about their fans. I just hope other game devs take note from IW and do the same thing.