Infinity Ward

Infinity Ward, Inc. is an American video game developer. They developed the video game Call of Duty, along with seven other installments in the Call of Duty series. Vince Zampella, Grant Collier, and Jason West established Infinity Ward in 2002 after working at 2015, Inc. previously.[2][3] All of the 22 original team members of Infinity Ward came from the team that had worked on Medal of Honor: Allied Assault while at 2015, Inc. Activision helped fund Infinity Ward in its early days, buying up 30 percent of the company, before eventually fully acquiring them. The studio's first game, World War II shooter Call of Duty, was released on the PC in 2003. The day after the game was released, Activision bought the rest of Infinity Ward, signing employees to long-term contracts. Infinity Ward went on to make Call of Duty 2, Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, Call of Duty: Ghosts, Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare, the Modern Warfare reboot, and its sequel.

Co-founder Collier left the company in early 2009 to join parent company Activision

History

Infinity Ward was founded as an independent game studio by Grant Collier, Jason West, and Vince Zampella in 2002, with a publishing agreement with Activision.[7][8] The studio was formed by several members of 2015 Games, LLC., the studio that developed the successful Medal of Honor: Allied Assault for Electronic Arts (EA) in 2002. Dissatisfied with the current contract they had under EA, Collier, West, and Zampella engaged with Activision to help establish Infinity Ward, which became one of the primary studios within Activision for the competing Call of Duty series.[9] Initially, Activision provided Infinity Ward US$1.5 million for 30% stake in the company to start development on the first game Call of Duty, acquiring full ownership in October 2003 after the title was successfully launched.[10][11] During this period, the studio was about 25 employees including many who followed Collier, West, and Zampella from 2015. Activision allowed Infinity Ward a great deal of freedom in how it developed its titles.[10]

Shortly after this release, Microsoft contacted Activision to seek a Call of Duty title as a launch title for the upcoming Xbox 360 console.[10] Infinity Ward agreed to prepare Call of Duty 2 for release in the last quarter of 2005. Collier said the request would help them lose the stigma of being only a personal computer developer, and so to make sure the console version was on parity, they tripled their staff to about 75 employees.[10] Much of the focus of Infinity Ward's development was improving its game engine to include realistic special effects, such as smoke grenades to hinder sight, or bullets piercing through weak materials.[10] Call of Duty 2 was a major success, having an 85% attach rate to new Xbox 360 console sales, and selling 1.4 million units its first year.[10] At this point, Activision brought in Treyarch, one of their internal studios, to help develop additional Call of Duty games, with Infinity Ward spending the time and effort to improve the game's engine for one game, and Treyarch using the updated engine to create a new title.[10]

2010 employee firings and departures

Following the critical and financially successful release of Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare in 2007, Jason West (president, co-CCO, and CTO) and Vince Zampella (CEO) began contract negotiations with Activision. They promised to deliver Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 in 2009, but in exchange asked for extremely large bonuses and creative control of the Call of Duty series. Activision agreed, but added a clause to the contract that should they be fired, the rights to Call of Duty would fall back to Activision.[12]

Following the execution of the contract in 2008, Activision began seeking ways to find reason to fire West and Zampella to trigger the new clause. This in turn led to West and Zampella look to means to make Infinity Ward a studio outside of Activision's control.[12] Events came to a head in February 2010 when Activision hired a lawfirm to investigate Infinity Ward. On March 1, 2010, West and Zampella were released by Activision for "insubordination", forfeiting the bonuses they had negotiated.[12] The pair went on to form Respawn Entertainment in April 2010 as an independent studio, through working closely with EA on a yet-announced project (revealed in 2013 as Titanfall

Game engines

Infinity Ward used an enhanced version of the id Tech 3 engine from Quake III Arena for the first Call of Duty in 2003. For Call of Duty 2, Infinity Ward heavily modified the engine, featuring more powerful visuals and DirectX 9 support, and was known internally as the "IW" game engine. The version that was used for Call of Duty 2 was designated as IW 2.0.[53] Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare runs on a highly upgraded version of the engine from Call of Duty 2 called IW 3.0, with features that include true world-dynamic lighting, HDR lighting effects, dynamic shadows and depth of field.[54] The Call of Duty: Black Ops sub-series and the James Bond video game Quantum of Solace were developed by Treyarch using modified versions of Infinity Ward's engine.[55]

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, uses an upgraded engine named IW 4.0, which is a generation more advanced than the engine used in Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare.[53] Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 uses IW 5.0 (MW3 Engine), an improved version of the IW 4.0 engine. Improvements on the engine allow better streaming technology which allows larger regions for the game while running at a minimum of 60 frames per second, improvements to the audio of the engine have also been made.[56]

Call of Duty: Ghosts features an upgraded next-generation version of the IW 5.0 seen in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 called IW 6.0.[57][58] IW 6.0 is compatible with next-gen systems such as Xbox One and PlayStation 4 so polygon counts, texture detail and overall graphical fidelity has been increased. IW 6.0 is also compatible with Microsoft Windows, Wii U, PS3 and Xbox 360. The IW 6.0 engine features technology from Pixar, SubD, which increases the level of detail of models as one gets closer to them. Mark Rubin has said about the HDR lighting "We used to paint it in and cover up the cracks, but now it's all real-time".[59][60][61] Call of Duty: Ghosts uses Iris Adjust tech which allows the player to experience from a person's point of view how their eyes would react to changes in lighting conditions realistically. Other features include new animation systems, fluid dynamics, interactive smoke, displacement mapping and dynamic multiplayer maps.[62][63]

Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare's IW 7.0 features weightlessness system, game physics improvement, improved AI and improved non-player characters behaviors.[65][66] Infinity Ward collaborated with Raven Software for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare Remastered using the then latest version of the engine in 2016.[67]

Modern Warfare (2019 reboot) and Call of Duty: Warzone uses a heavily rebuilt IW engine for the series (IW 8.0),[68][69] allowing for the use of more detailed environments, advanced photogrammetry and rendering, better volumetric lighting, and the use of ray tracing.[70][71][72] The new engine had been in development five years prior to the release of the game, and was a collaborative effort between the main Infinity Ward studio in California and the new studio in Poland.[40][73][74]

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II uses a highly upgraded version of the engine first used in 2019's Modern Warfare.[75][76] This engine dubbed IW 9.0,[77][78] is co-developed by Infinity Ward, Treyarch, and Sledgehammer Games, and will be used in future installments of the series in a unified effort to ensure that every studio is working with the same tools.[79][80][81]

type	Subsidiary
location city	Woodland Hills, Los Angeles, California
location country	US
num locations	5
founders	Grant Collier Jason West Vince Zampella
num locations year	2024
key people	Mark Grigsby (co-studio head) Jack O'Hara (co-studio head) Daniel Nelson (CTO) Joel Emslie (art director)
industry	Video games
products	Call of Duty series
num employees	250+ (2015)‡R1R‡
parent	Activision (2003–present)
divisions	Infinity Ward Poland Infinity Ward Mexico Infinity Ward Austin Infinity Ward Barcelona
website	infinityward.com

History

2010 employee firings and departures

Reception

Game engines

Games

External links

References

2012 departure of Robert Bowling

Neversoft merger and further expansion