Mackey McCandlish - Infinity Ward (part1)

Infinity Ward were represented by Mackey McCandlish, lead designer on the Call of Duty games.

Mackey Scripted many of the levels of Modern Warfare 2 which he descried as taking a god like responsibility over the final gaming experience.  Unlike with films and other linear story telling gaming can defy normal story telling conventions and throw highly contrasting levels together in very little order to disgruntle the player and maintain a range of playing experiences, keeping the player enticed.

A point Mackey made was that the publisher and developer in game production should be kept separate so as to keep creative control. Infinity ward is a subsidiary of Activision and this works for them incredibly well.  The company function's by hiring a "Super Awesome" Team. It was quite clear Mackey was scouting for talent when he listed his "Qualities in Super Awesome People". A super awesome person.....

• Instinctively knows they are personally responsible for how good the final product is.
• Will not follow orders that make the product worse and will fight their cause.
• The person doing it is the one responsible not the one who ordered it.
• Know the project is behind and will instinctively feel awful.
• will bitch to the right people if someone is negatively affecting the project.

This list was quite an intriguing window into how personally responsible the developers feel for the game.  Scheduling was the next focus of  the talk.  An interesting phrase here was "baby killing" basically the will to kill a project close to your heart however personally attached if its for the best quality or time-management wise. other points were that...

• 4o days were allocated to a task.
• each task was given a finite deadline.
• a "daily build" system was in place to keep order. 

Mackey had a great deal of info so I shall post the remaining notes in my next post.