During The Game Awards 2023, a joking remark made by God of War voice actor Christopher Judge about the length of his acceptance speech for winning Best Performance for his work as Kratos last year has drawn the ire of Call of Duty developers. Joking about the length of his speech last year, Judge stated that his speech was longer than the campaign for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3.
“I’m not going to stand up here, making long speeches. I’m going to stick to the script. No eight-minute speech like last year,” said Judge when presenting the award for Best Performance this year. “But fun fact, my speech was actually longer than this year’s Call of Duty campaign.”
As caught by IGN, developers that have worked on Call of Duty seem to have taken exception to the remark, however, and a few took to social media platforms to voice their complaints. Former Call of Duty developer Ajinkya Limaye remarked that, while Judge’s remarks were funny, Call of Duty still beat God of War games in other metrics.
Treyarch associate art director Nelson Plumey joined the discussion with his own remark, commenting on God of War games having shorter user engagement than Call of Duty titles. Sledgehammer developer Darcy Sandall weighed in, saying that an event celebrating achievements in gaming shouldn’t have these kinds of remarks.
The most recent Call of Duty release, Modern Warfare 3, has seen quite a bit of criticism for its campaign. The game ended up with having one of the worst-reviewed campaigns for the franchise, which makes use of disparate parts of its multiplayer maps to make up single-player levels. For more details, check out our review of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3. Also feel free to check out our editorial piece about whether it’s time to move on from Call of Duty.
The award presented by Judge this year, best performance, was won by Neil Newbon for his work as Astarion in Larian Studios’ epic RPG Baldur’s Gate 3.
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