5. Respawn Entertainment = What Made Infinity Ward Great
In case you were living under a rock for most of 2009, the heads of Infinity Ward and their publisher Activision weren't the best of friends leading up to the release of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. Before the release and after, studio heads Jason West and Vince Zampella had numerous disagreements with their publisher over issues which include the setting of the game, the name of the game and branding. It all culminated in West and Zampella both being fired from Infinity Ward. However, West and Zampella certainly weren't people who were going to go down without a fight. About a month following the events at Infinity Ward, West and Zampella announced that they were founding Respawn Entertainment, an Independent Games Studio which sought funding from EA through the EA Partners Program. After this, 38 of the former Infinity Ward employees who had resigned following the firings revealed that they too had joined up with Respawn Entertainment to begin working on a new project. Now, I don't know about everyone else but Call of Duty 4, Call of Duty: World at War and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 are the highlights of the Call of Duty series for me. As soon as I heard about Respawn Entertainment I was chomping at the bit for more news. More news never came, not for a long time, but I'm sure myself and many others were pleasantly surprised come E3, to see who walked out onto that stage.