Treyarch – one of the many teams at Activision working on the Call of Duty franchise – has announced that studio head Mark Gordon is retiring from his role. In a post on social media, the studio wrote about being glad to have worked with Mark and thanked him for his guidance that led Treyarch through the development of several games, dating back to 2005’s Call of Duty 2: Big Red One.
With Gordon stepping down after having worked at Treyarch for 22 years, the studio has announced that Kevin Hendrickson and Yale Miller will be stepping up as its new co-studio heads.
Gordon’s departure from the company comes at a time of relative stability for Treyarch, since the company isn’t working on this year’s entry in the Call of Duty franchise. However, its last title, Call of Duty: Black Ops 7, was critically-panned, and reports have indicated that Activision has also been quite disappointed in its commercial performance.
As for this year, the next Call of Duty title is going to be the Infinity Ward-developed Modern Warfare 4. The title was unveiled in May, and is being developed for PC, PS5, Xbox Series X/S, and Nintendo Switch 2. It is slated for release on October 23rd, with advanced access to the campaign beginning on October 16th. Eagle-eyed readers might notice that this will be the first entry in the Call of Duty franchise to skip the PS4 and Xbox One as target platforms since the 2013 release of Call of Duty: Ghosts.
The story of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 will revolve around a conflict on the Korean peninsula, with North Korea invading South Korea. The player takes on the role of South Korean soldier Private Park, who will get to meet Captain Price. Interestingly, the captain is noted as being in a “personal war” of his own, having cut ties with Task Force 141. Among the locations players will get to visit throughout the single-player campaign will be Paris, New York, and Mumbai.
Since the Call of Duty franchise is known for its multiplayer gameplay, Infinity Ward has been paying extra attention to how it feels to play during intense matches. The studio recently gave us a look at how the game’s movement will work in multiplayer, giving players the ability to run, sprint, vault over obstacles, slide over the hood of cars, and stay prone. Lead of multiplayer design, Jacky Reynolds, spoke about the new movement options feeling natural and intuitive. Co-studio lead Mark Grigsby noted that the movement options were a way for Infinity Ward to address the criticisms faced by Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2.
“We got kind dinged on Modern Warfare 2 with our movement, where we took some things away,” said Grigsby. “So, for this project, we were like, ‘we need to make some adjustments.’”
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 will also mark the return of the extraction shooter game mode DMZ. For more on that, check out the gameplay trailer released earlier this month. Also take a look at how the studio has been paying attention to the extraction shooter genre.
