10 Video Game Studios Probably Founded Out Of Spite
2. Infinity Ward
A wonderful culmination of events brought Medal of Honor: Allied Assault to life. Steven Spielberg, off the back of Saving Private Ryan, was interested in writing for a video game and the Medal of Honour series had had two very successful World War themed FPS titles already.
EA sought out a developer and, with their first choice of id Software being hard at work on Doom 3, they were recommended 2015 Games.
Allied Assault won all kinds of awards upon release and was regarded by most as the best MOH entry to that point. You’d think that publisher EA would be excited to continue that collaboration but 2015 Games felt differently.
Unhappy with EA’s contracts for Allied Assault, several of 2015 Game’s employees began to look elsewhere. Thankfully developers Vince Zampella, Grant Collier, and Jason West had the review scores of their latest masterpiece to point to to sell themselves.
Luckily they knocked on the right door as Activision CEO Bobby Kotick was no stranger to investing in potential success. The group became Infinity Ward and got right to work on becoming a competitor for the series they had just worked on.
Activision’s hands-off approach was an inviting offer to even more of 2015’s ranks and several more made the jump to join the development team for the original Call of Duty.