Call of Duty: Modern Warfare developer asks angry fans to dial back their toxicity

If there’s one thing that my grandmother taught me, it’s that you should always think before you speak. Which probably means that she thought a lot about how much she hated me based on all the awful things she shouted at me. Well who’s alive and who’s six feet under? Check and mate you horrible old crone. Anyway, that’s a school of thought that could easily be applied to Internet comments.

With global anonymity, emotions running hot and an urge to leave the Caps Lock on as you hammer away at a keyboard while basking in the glow of zero ramifications for your grammatical actions, it’s kind of easy to be a jerk online. Here’s the thing though: Words do matter. Words can shape perceptions, language can break a person down like candy floss in energade (When you need ALL the energy).

It’s easy to just send a comment and walk away, nary a care in the world. But for the people on the receiving end of those comments? It’s a destructive reminder that working in the gaming industry can be an awful experience when a small mob of hate-filled trolls rock up to ruin the party. Over at Call of Duty: Modern Warfare developer Infinity Ward, a plea for human decency has gone out.

While the series may have some legitimate criticism, telling a team that you’d like to literally murder them just because one of the game modes (Special Ops Survival mode which packs in a few extra weapons over on ye olde PS4), is a ludicrous step too far. “We are a mixed bag of nerds, jocks, and everything in between. It’s amazing but we all get along and come together every day to build something that we believe in. We’ve dedicated our careers to being the best at what we do and to making the best possible game we can make,”Infinity Ward art director Joel Emslie wrote in a reddit post.

That’s corny but at the same time this is a job and if you work at a job and aren’t successful then eventually there is no job. Almost all of us have worked in the industry for long enough to know that if we don’t make a good game then no one will play it. Its pretty much all we think about and for most of us we treat every game like its our last so we put everything we have into it. We never hold back.

Public forums like this sub are part of our process. Its where we come to gather exterior thoughts and feedback on what we are crafting. We are about 4 weeks away from launch but the game will continue to live beyond that date. This sub will be a way for us to keep getting an outside hands on perspective from everyone that plays the game. Everyone benefits from this. Player experiences get better and better and we get to keep making games;)

So yes…the current drama, you’re all being heard, all of it. I don’t know why but on my daily scans of the sub, where I’m looking for useful feedback;), I even read the ultra dark toxic comments that tell me how incompetent and stupid I must be and how I should go away somewhere where I cant harm people with my bad ideas and artwork. We all have a pretty thick skin here but yeah it can kind of get to you. Believe me we keep it professional but of course people that pass by my office from time to time can hear me through the walls:) Its disappointing but we move on with our day.

I understand that there are people here that have things going on in their lives or they are upset about something to do with the game and they need to get the poison out and feel like they are being listened to. You are and yeah go for it, but keep it clean and maybe even a little creative. Get it out of your system but remember there’s a team of human beings here at IW and we have crappy days just like you. Our interest is entirely in the game itself. There are some announcements that have come up this week that are official and some that are rumors.

My ask of all of you is to focus on information that is actually fact and not get thrown off by ill informed people that want to make a name for themselves by spreading half baked inflammatory rumors. Lets work real problems together and not fairy tales of boogeymen.

Criticism is one thing, and I like to think that for the most part the toxic side of gamer culture is from a small corner of rancid trolls who delight in the suffering of others. There’s also another corner out there of awful people who use the outrage for monetisation clicks, whipping their followers into a frenzy while they sit on a high horse and bask in the online traffic that fuels their petulant act.

Anyway, that’s a story for another day, and the point is: Be critical, but don’t be an ass. If you’re going to point the finger of blame at someone, have the facts and the right direction to direct your index digit of frustration at. Especially when the PS4 exclusivity deal that got the Call of Duty community so angry was apparently made by they who sit above Infinity Ward.

Last Updated: September 30, 2019