HipHopGamer met up with Josh Olin in New York, resulting in the most fun to watch interview we've seen for Black Ops.

Okay listen to me y'all, couple weeks back HipHopGamer was chilling it with his boy JD_2020. The man is really down with the game, for real yo... I would love to keep it up, but I'm not that ghetto and I don't want to disrespect the most fun to watch Black Ops interview to date. HipHopGamer is so excited about everything he talks about with Josh, and he's talking to him as a gamer and a journalist. This way they cover some real interesting subjects that many Besides talking about the game and Call of Duty franchise in general, sparring off ideas, they hit some sweet info we couldn't confirm before. But now we do.


Besides everything that you could have read before, let's jump straight to the interesting news. One of them being actual swimming gameplay. Sadly, it will not be featured in multiplayer. But in the singleplayer campaign you will swimming after your helicopter has crashed in the rivers of Vietnam. You'll even be planting C4 under water. This is a whole new experience in gameplay, should be fun to play!

One other thing that strikes us as interesting is that we think that the singleplayer campaign has more gore (limbs blowing off) than that we have seen in the multiplayer trailer. In the demo HipHopGamer witnessed, they were shooting of hands and arms in so much detail that you could almost make out if it was bone, flesh or meat that was flying through the air. Well, that's not something we've seen in the multiplayer trailer... We'll keep our eyes open for news on this subject and will report in when we know more.

The storyline will feel much deeper as the main (playable) character has a voice now. This lets Treyarch really make it feel like a movie where you're in the middle of it, which is a first for a Call of Duty game. You will know what you look like, what your face looks like, what your voice sounds like, it will all help crafting the 1:1 narrative.


The singleplayer and multiplayer mode are completely separate, as we've heard time and time again, but what's new is they have thought of a way the for the singleplayer gamer to jump on multiplayer and be less intimidated, there are "ways" of doing that. Vague, but interesting. Do you have any ideas on what Josh was talking about?

Oh before we go out, we need to tell you this important message by HipHopGamer.

Alraight, look, Call of Duty: Black Ops, man. November 9th, and if you reverse that it's 9-1-1, aight. It's definitely an emergency. Why? Because the competition ..., yo, listen... all I'm saying is this; you're going to be in the emergency room 'cause when you play this game you gonna have a heart attack. You gonna luv it, it's gonna blow you away.


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In this 20 minute long interview (video included) from GamesCom 2010 Josh reveals some tiny bits of new information.

As you could (should) have seen in our previous article , Activision has pretty big plans for Black Ops when it comes to the GamesCom 2010, which will open to the public tomorrow. Today though, Josh had some press over to talk about Black Ops. In the 2-part interview below, he also revealed some information we thought was pretty interesting.

But if you think spending 20 minutes of your life listening to information you might already have heard, we advise you to scroll down (TL;DR?) to our summary of the interview.


Summary

At first Josh quickly touched base and tells the people in the room what Black Ops is all about, as if they didn't knew already. What he basically emphasizes on is the fact that it's not a Cold War game. It takes place during the Cold War, but it's really all about the deniable Black Operations fought behind enemy lines.

The first question is all about the variation in Black Ops, as they have seen a demo in which there (apparently) was some swimming, throat cutting and helicopter action going on. This is something Treyarch has put a lot of time and effort in, to make sure every level has at least one cinematic or intense moment, something that sticks out and you can talk about with your friends.

Of course Josh can't really talk about what the big changes are in multiplayer just yet, as the full multiplayer reveal is set for September 1st. So we'll skip the info about the Socialization and Customization, if you don't know what we're talking about we advise you to read up on it in an earlier article we did on that subject.

Treyarch has been using Full Performance Motion Capture, a brand new technique that was used by James Cameron to make the movie Avatar. It basically means that they record the face, body and voice all at the same time. Where before they had to manually mimic and lipsync all movement made by the actors, it's now done in one smooth work flow. A video of this technique in action can be seen in our Black Ops Insight article. This translates great into a mission like Victor Charlie, which was one the demo levels they were shown. In this mission there are a couple of dialog sequences with a lot of gestures and movement. The Full Performance Capture allowed Treyarch for a much smoother and more realistic feel of the game.

The length of the singleplayer campaign has not been written in stone yet. Treyarch still has about 80 days (and nights) of hard work left, so they're still working hard on many of the missions. One thing they will make sure off is that the story needs to be intelligent by easy to follow. They don't want to make a compelling but confusing game. In this singleplayer campaign, we will be playing from a few different perspectives, which eventually comes back to one big story plot.

Treyarch currently has 250ish developers working on Call of Duty: Black ops, which is basically the whole studio. Opposed to earlier, where they worked on three different games simultaneously. That time is passed now and they have dedicated teams not for each of the different game types (singleplayer campaign, co-op mode and of course multiplayer). This is actually roughly double the size of Infinity Ward, which had about 110 developers working for them when we talked to Robert Bowling, community manager of Infinity Ward. But does this mean the game will be 3 times as good as World at War? We sure hope so!

In one of the demos there was a lot of stealthy and tactical warfare involved, but Josh ensures everyone that this is part of the variety of the game and the gameplay will be exactly of what you can expect of any Call of Duty game.

Neither PlayStation Move or Xbox Kinect will both stay untouched in Black Ops. Treyarch did not want to put it in the game "because they could", and if they did, it would've have to make sense with compelling gameplay around it. Olin's not saying it won't be in any future Call of Duty, but we're not holding our breath.

The alleged co-op mode (2-4 players) will be really separate from the Singleplayer Campaign. With World at War they did a co-op campaign, but that was more to show they could. This time around, Treyarch is really crafting something new which looks like Spec Ops in Modern Warfare 2, but really isn't. Interesting quote:

"Nazi Zombies was two years ago, com'on! Whatever we do, we have to raise that bar up." -- Josh Olin

Good news for multiplayer guys! Treyarch is really putting in some sweet time to make Black Ops hackers free. They've been following the hackers closely and know all the tricks that were used in Modern Warfare 2. So they've been able to very easily close those gaps now that they're still in development. And even after launch, Josh is sure their new live patching system will allow them to keep the hackers out.

BETA time, and you guys are not going to like this. There have been so many rumors about a beta that many people actually expect there to be a beta. But up until now, it's neither on or off the table for Treyarch. It all depends on their time table (public beta's cost loads and loads of development time) and if there is something specifically they want to have tested. They understand how popular a beta would be for the community, but it needs to be fitted in, leaving less time for actual development.


Part 2

Talking about the community, Josh ensures how important the community is and how they've implemented community ideas in World at War, and will continue to do so in Black Ops. If you remember the 7th kill streak in W@W, the dogs, that was actually an idea by someone from the community which they implemented to try out. When they thought it was a lot of fun, they left it in. A more recent example is the objective markers in multiplayer, which often blocked your vision while sniping, will now fade out when you aim near it. The little things like that actually make the game less frustrating and a lot of more fun to play.

After Black Ops is released, Treyarch is very aggressively going to support it, with extra DLC (Downloadable Content). But that's all in the future, for now Treyarch is completely dedicated to getting the game ready on time.

So when nearing the end of the interview, Josh is asked what is favorite new feature is in the game. Too bad for us he can't really talk about it, because it's something from multiplayer that has not been announced yet. BUT, he also says it has something to do with a new multiplayer mode! We're very excited to see what this is. When continuing on the multiplayer subject, Josh tells the vehicle mechanic in multiplayer is different from what we've previously have seen an any Call of Duty multiplayer. So different than driving a tank or flying a helicopter, huh? Interesting...

Switching back to the singleplayer campaign, in the demo there were a couple of great cinematic set pieces where there was a lot of destruction going on. Unlike other games, these are actually predefined objects that can be shot to bits, not complete worlds. The only complete destructible environment is when you fly the Hind helicopter. You can destroy everything, from boats to huts and trees, but also bridges and pipelines, you name it.

The way the helicopter gameplay works is that you're in complete control of it, up to a point. Treyarch "cheated" by having the game controlling the elevation of the helicopter while you fly. Due to this secret ingredient, you will be able to pick it up as a complete novice and fly away with the helicopter, shooting at everything that moves on ground, water and even in the air. However, it is possible to crash the Hind into the mountains, but apparently we don't want to do that...


TL;DR

So basically what is new in this interview;

It looks like the swimming will be actual gameplay.
The length of the storyline campaign is not known yet, not even by Treyarch themselves as the game is still in development
The co-op mode will be a complete stand alone type of game, much like Special Ops but really not... As Josh states they had to raise the bar since Nazi Zombies, this makes us think it might be a mix between the two.
Both Kinect and Move will not be featured in Black Ops, it just wouldn't make compelling gameplay.
The helicopter gameplay is very easy to pick up, even for novice players. Mostly because the game actually controls the elevation of the helicopter so you can concentrate on other things.


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The line one of the makers of the next Call of Duty uses about the series is that these games are movies we can play. This one will be a war thriller that hides a mystery.

A few weeks ago in New York, John Olin, community manager fort team creating November's Call of Duty Black Ops showed me the game's Victor Charlie level and did his best to be cagey about the game's campaign. With Gamescom started in Germany, I'm now permitted by the game's creators to tell you what I saw, though I'd like to focus on the mysteriousness of the whole thing.

There was some stuff that Olin showed me, that I could see and believe because it was in front of me. And then there was the stuff about which he was coy.

In the confirmed category: The Victor Charlie occurs after your helicopter is shot down in or near Vietnam in the late 1960s. In Black Ops you are playing as elite cold war soldier (or soliders; it's unclear if you play as different protagonists.) Gunfire zips into your chopper. You get out and are in a jungle gunfight.

Olin's got some skills, so he aimed for a killshot... cue a new effect, the game's camera hitching a ride on the bullet from his in-game rifle and, in slow-mo, into the enemy. That's the moment that prompted Olin to use that "movie you can play" line.

Black Ops runs on the visually impressive tech that has powered recent Modern Warfare and Call of Duty games, so the jungle battle Olin showed me looked terrific. Combat moved to some thatched-roof buildings, where many explosions were caused.

I noticed that the game didn't include the signature yellow-star compass display that traditionally has pointed the player to their next goal in the series' more-or-less linear campaigns. Olin said that system didn't suit Black Ops, which is, more than other CoDs, a game about being part of a team. Instead of the star, I saw text on the screen doling out simple mission orders such as "clear area" or "follow" (the latter of which was pinned to an ally soldier).

Olin transitioned into a tunnel sequence that had been shown briefly at E3 in June. His character crept through the darkened underground, making shadows flicker with a flashlight, sneaking up on some enemies for the kill.

In the cagey category: The tunnel sequence, for some reason, made me think of how emotionally dark Treyarch's previous Call of Duty, 2008's World at War was. That game's campaign began with your American character facing torture at the hands of Japanese fighters in World War II and, in rare memorable instances, tested the player's moral compass. In one late level in Germany, for example, the player had the choice whether to slaughter German soldiers who had surrendered or to leave them captured.

Olin would not confirm that Treyarch is doing more of that dark player-testing stuff. At my mention of moral choices, he became cagey, promising that the single-player campaign will reward players who go through it, that pieces that may feel disconnected will click at its conclusion. He expects gamers to have an "oh wow" epiphany by the time they finish the game. Naturally, he wasn't going to say what it is. He said we shouldn't expect Treyarch to divulge much more and that it is is important to Treyarch that single-player gamers have a "gripping" experience. That's also part of the reason, he explained, that the new game's campaign is single-player only. (Co-op is a separate mode, supporting two players on the same system or four players online.) This is not the standard way a solo campaign in a Call of Duty is described, but it seems fitting in a game about Black Ops.


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GamesCom has officially opened the doors to the media, this means that it's time for some Black Ops GamesCom news!

NowGamer were quick to be one of the first to quiz Treyarch Community Manager, Josh Olin. Despite being in a bright red interrogation room, they certainly didn't feel intimidated or hostile and still manage to squeeze out some good answers from Olin.

It's no surprise that one of their questions to ask was based on Zombies and co-op. Although Zombies isn't officially confirmed, the recent news that four World at War Zombie maps will be returning to the Call of Duty: Black Ops co-op mode (for those who pre-order collector editions ) is a welcoming hint that Zombies or a similar mode will be turning.

As expected, Josh Olin remained coy when asked by NowGamer as to whether the co-op mode would be similar to Modern Warfare 2's Spec Ops. But when asked if it would be similar to World at War's Zombie mode, Josh replied "a little closer to that". He also mentioned that the campaign could feature locations relevant to the story and "anything that happened during the cold war is fair game".

Modern Warfare 2 was the biggest entertainment launch of all time. Therefore, it will be pretty difficult for Black Ops to beat that, even though pre-order sales so far seem to show that the game has a chance. Josh Olin thinks that they are "in a great position to outdo Modern Warfare 2's entertainment launch". He then went on to describe how feedback from the community told them that "people want longer games and bigger explosions".

It's a known fact that Treyarch are upping their game with Black Ops, in every way possible. Whether that be with more employees and the whole studio working on this one game, more additions, plenty of improvements as well as using groundbreaking motion capturing technology. Josh mentions how they are using technology that was developed by James Cameron for his hugely successful movie, Avatar.

They decided to use Cameron's Performance Capture in order to create cut scenes that offer a much more 'cinematic feel'. But it doesn't stop there, Treyarch event used Cameron's purpose built studios for the work. This is the first game to use Cameron's technology, which captures face, body and motion all at the same time, this gives a more accurate recreation of the actors' performance.

With the release of Move and Kinect this fall along with the rise of 3D, many hardcore gamers will be wondering if games such as Call of Duty will one day be using these technologies. Sadly, don't get your hopes up as Olin replied "Does it make sense in a game like Call of Duty?". We find this to be a appropriate response, Call of Duty isn't designed for these and should be kept as it is.

And last but certainly not least! We've all experienced that one game which is full of people from across the globe, this means one thing, lag lag lag...But thankfully, Josh has confirmed that local matchmaking will be returning to Black Ops. This feature was a success in Call of Duty: World at War as it allowed for players to search for games within their area, meaning a lot of four bar games rather than two or even the dreadful one.

Thanks to NowGamer for the information. Stay tuned to any more articles as new previews and information arrive. If you're headed to GamesCom this week then you won't be able to miss the Black Ops area (image above)!

JD_2020 has also let us know that coverage from when he was in New York a few weeks ago will start to hit today. It's not certain if there will be anything new, but considering there was an embargo, then there's a good chance we may get something new.


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GamesCom has kicked off, meaning that the embargo has lifted! Plenty of previews have arrived as well as some new screenshots.

It was a few weeks ago that a few members of the press previewed Black Ops in New York, but there was one catch, they couldn't talk about it...until now!

Now that GamesCom has started, the 'Victor Charlie' level is being shown to the press at the show. This is the same level that was recently shown to the press in New York, therefore meaning that today we get previews from both those who attend GamesCom and those who were quests at the New York event weeks ago.

Kotaku, IGN and Joystiq are a few of many to have previews of the level up on the Internet for our viewing pleasure.

Treyarch were eager to stress to the viewers that it's these types of games which are just movies that we can play and that Black Ops is a war thriller which hides a mystery. After all, this is covert operations we are talking about.

Kotaku talks about how mysterious the whole thing is. They could see and believe what was in front of them but there was also the mysterious stuff that Josh Olin was coy to talk about.

The Victor Charlie level starts after your helicopter is shot down in or near Vietnam in the late 1960s. Your downed chopper then starts taking take gunfire damage from incoming enemies which leads to you being at the center of a jungle gunfight. The first interesting new feature is when Olin aims for a killshot and the camera follows the bullet in slow-motion as it approaches and reaches the enemy - bullet-time baby!

It's also mentioned how visually impressive the technology is, which is the same tech that has been used in recent Modern Warfare and Call of Duty games, this makes for a terrific looking jungle battle in Black Ops. The battle also took to some thatched-roof buildings which involved many explosions.

Another interesting change to Call of Duty single player is that Black Ops doesn't include the yellow-star compass display which points the player to their next goal within the mission. Black Ops is more about being part of a team and Olin states that the compass didn't suit the game. Instead, the player will have to read on-screen text for their objectives, "clear area" and "follow" is used as an example here.

It's the tunnel sequence (as seen in the E3 demo ) where Kotaku's emotions begin to turn. From a fairly comfortable few action-packed moments to a dark underground rat-infested area, the viewers were giving a "cagey" feeling.

It's at this point that World at War is mentioned, in regards to how emotionally dark Treyarch made it. With WaW you're immediately thrown into the battlefield opposed to the usual training missions. You're held captive by the imperial army who torture your comrades in sickening ways (cigarette stabbed in wounds) and then later on in the story you're given the option to either spare the lives of surrendering Germany soldiers or to slaughter them on the spot.

Although Olin didn't confirm whether Treyarch will be adding anymore of these dark twists, we certainly hope they will be in the game. It may seem twisted and brutal, but it makes the player react and shows the dark side of what is truly a dark and gruesome era.

Kotaku asked Olin about the possibility of moral choices and he promised that the single player campaign will reward players who go through it, that pieces that may feel disconnected will click at its conclusion. He also went on to describe that he feels players will have an "oh wow" epiphany by the time they complete the campaign. Although he didn't touch on what he meant in more detail, he did say that it's important that the players have a "gripping" experience. This is a reason as to why there won't be a co-op campaign based on single player, the story and characters are designed for one player rather than multiple players at a time.

The demo that IGN witnessed seems to be the "WMD" level that was also shown to the public at E3. This level starts off as you're in a SR-71_Blackbird watching down on ground soldiers and giving them orders from above, such as telling them which positions to move to. Occasionally the camera shifts down to the perspective of the ground squad, where you will have to break into facilities and plan explosives or rip out electrical wires to make the enemy structures useless.

This level still carries on the traditional Call of Duty nonstop action but also seems to feature a good amount of little cinematic movements such as storming through a window in slow motion or when a squadmate forces a knife through a enemy's head.

A few weapons feature in this level includes scoped rifles as well as the now infamous military crossbow. Whether you prefer to stay silent or if you want to cause some explosions with a explosive tip, the crossbow is a perfect weapon for anyone.

Many missions in Black Ops allow you to play the game the way you want, whether you want to stay silent or whether you want a big shootout. IGN noticed that in the WMD level once an alarm is tripped then swards of enemies storm to your position with their only aim being to put a bullet in your head. Blood was disabled in this demo but you can expect that the retail version will have plenty blood and gore come November.

The lack of blood didn't affect IGN though, they felt that the demo was still very exciting and frantic and that the game will succeed the expectation's of fans. Whether it involves running for your life and jumping from the edge of a cliff into the snow-blind unknown as frost collects at the edges of your goggles and the ground rushes up deadly fast from below, this is exactly what you want.

The Joystiq writer began describing how Modern Warfare 2 killed the series off for him, as some other gamers would also say. He went into Black Ops expecting to hate it but ended up being proved wrong. It appears that he also previewed the 'Victor Charlie' level and mentions that this is everything you'd expect a Call of Duty game to be. He also says that the gameplay doesn't seem to have changed and is still the same "duck, take cover, fire down the sights and throw back grenades". He even compared the game to the latest action film "The Expendables", mentioning how even that would be jealous of how much helicopters and missiles are featured in Black Ops.

The tunnel sequence was yet again a highlight that they picked up on. The player crawls through the dark cave with the only light coming from his flashlight. Unsuspecting of what was ahead of him, he and his squad ended up becoming ambush victims. His squadmate takes a knife to the throat while the player then opens fire only to glance at the gash left in his squadmate's neck a few seconds later.

It's the uneasy horror like this that separates Black Ops from previous Call of Duty games and features a ever-changing tempo from high-octane action sequences to terrifying moments of silence. The writer also notes how Treyarch did a terrific job of playing with the unknown and instead of forcing the player to face the sight of an unstoppable wave of enemies, the player is left to face the mere threat of confrontation.

Although IGN's demo lacked blood and gore, Joystiq states that the updated technology is used to render better gore. Describing the fact that death is bloody and gruesome and that you will see severed body parts and other grisly wounds, as was the case with World at War. He then mentions that the new melee kills feel appropriately violent and that there are a number of realistic animations for close combat kills such as when you're snuffing out an enemy in his sleep or talking hold of one as you burst from your submerged hiding spot underwater.

For someone who began to despise the series after Modern Warfare 2, he was left excited despite only experiencing a small unfinished piece of what Black Ops has to offer. He can see that the game will feature plenty of heart-pounding action moments but he's looking to see if the game can rejuvenate that other quality of "heart" which has been missing from Call of Duty lately.

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Working alternatively with Infinity Ward on Call Of Duty during the past few years, Black Ops will be Treyarch's first non-World War II entry for the franchise. Community manager Josh Olin teases what to expect from the multiplayer, the new patching measures that will be in place and the new development cycle for the studio.

It's the first time Treyarch has worked outside of World War II for a Call Of Duty game. How has that been for the designers?
"Kinda liberating. It's not that they don't like working on World War II games, it's just there's so many more opportunities they could work with for the Cold War era in this Black Ops game. You know, we've been making WWII games for a long time and we're pretty good at it and we have a lot of fun with it, but any time we start a new project we want to start telling new stories and create gameplay that people haven't seen before in the Call Of Duty franchise. Back in World At War, our solution to that was to create the Pacific Theatre, but now Call Of Duty has done WWII, Call Of Duty has done modern, let's make a brand new genre, so that was important."


Did the designers take any cues from Modern Warfare in terms of locations and missions?
"No, we've created our own story from scratch, it's a unique fictional story, completely one hundred percent original. We're not there to tell history and we're not there to make any political stances, it's strictly there to be an entertaining game. So when you play through the story you're going to get, it's pretty awesome, it's a rollercoaster ride for sure. It's a complex story but not so complex to the point where it's confusing, we don't want to cross that line, we don't want to be confusing with the story or plot world."

Can you tell us anything about the multiplayer right now?
"You've seen the teaser for sure and you're probably picking it apart for clues and hints, and the point of the teaser was to create more questions than answers, we wanted you guys to wonder and theorise. I can tell you that a lot of your theories are pretty accurate, but I can also say that everything in that teaser is just the tip of the iceberg and there is so much more to multiplayer. I think people are honestly going to be really, really surprised when we unveil all of our multiplayer. I think they're going to go, 'Holy s**t, we didn't see that coming'."


What's the extent of the customisation in multiplayer?
"Pretty thorough. A lot of that lives in Create a Class, it's very much renovated and overhauled, but that's not it. There's other elements to it as well that I can't reveal quite yet. But it's a big part, and I don't know that to the first-person shooter gamer, they want to create their own online identity, they want to make the game their own, play it the way they want to play it. So we're going to be giving them the platform to do that."

Both World At War and Modern Warfare 2 have been prone to glitches and exploits online. Have you taken any measures to prevent these?
"Absolutely. That's one of the advantages of [Black Ops]. They all started coming out after World At War's development, they also started coming out pretty much at the end of Modern Warfare's development cycle, which didn't leave that much time to put in preventative measures, they left them chasing their tails in terms of patching it. Black Ops we've had plenty of time. We know how all those hacks are done, and we have preventative measures built into Black Ops built around those. Of course, hackers are very smart, they'll find new ways to break the game I'm sure, and when they do we'll have security measures in place to enforce our policies, enforce our leaderboards, enforce our matchmaking and lobbies to keep those clean, so that shouldn't be an issue for Black Ops."


Will you be able to patch faster, or is that still restricted by Xbox Live and PlayStation Network?
"A lot of it is still restricted from the first parties, they have to certify the patch and it takes time, that's the unfortunate side-effect. But we do have this hotfixing technology where we can push out network updates, updates that live on the network side, which live on our servers that you guys can pull down. So a lot of things can be fixed and prevented there."

What kind of things can you hotfix?
"This is a really technical discussion that is actually pretty boring, but basically how these hacks work is that they change system level variables, that we didn't expect to be exposed because we expected the consoles to be these closed systems, and [on] our PC we have anti-cheat technology. On the consoles, that kind of came out left-field when they broke the signing authorities for Xbox. So we had to improvise. With those variables that they are exploiting, well those network variables are the things that we can hotfix. So whenever they would mess with one of those, we could just release a hotfix where we would replace the bad variables with the good ones, and everything's back to normal, so we can do stuff like that. But if you're going to do a big patch, like patching actual code and script, then that has to be done through a title update, and that takes longer."


How are Treyarch, Sledgehammer Games and Infinity Ward juggling their involvement on the Call Of Duty franchise?
"Pretty autonomous, I don't know what they're doing to be honest. They don't have any implications on us, we're still making our game, and we'll still be making our games too. We've always operated very independent of each other, Infinity Ward and Treyarch, and so Sledgehammer Games coming into the mix doesn't change a thing."

Are you still working on a two-yearly cycle for Call Of Duty games?
"That's what the last couple of games were, yeah. Two years is a pretty good development cycle, it's a long one. It's plenty of time to make a great game. Any longer than that it's pretty touch. A one-year cycle is way too short, it's not enough time to make a game, so two years is fine."

In the past, Treyarch has been doing ports of different games and all sorts. Are you still doing that, or are you now focused on Call Of Duty?
"Yeah, we're focused on Call Of Duty now."


So you're just a Call Of Duty studio?
"Right now, yeah. Actually at the end of World At War's development, that year we shipped Quantum Of Solace and Spiderman: Web Of Shadows for that holiday season, and boy that was tough. We have 250 developers for a studio but they're split across three blockbuster titles. After that shipped, we refocused all our development efforts exclusively on a Call Of Duty unit. Right now, everyone's working exclusively on Black Ops. We have 250 developers, rather than working on three games, they're working on three components in one game, that's going to be in one box - campaign, multiplayer and co-op. We've had dedicated teams on those modes for day one, working in parallel, and it's the first time we've been able to do that at Treyarch."

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