Glen Schofield, former General Manager of Sledgehammer Games who developed
Call Of Duty: WWII and
Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War gave an interview to the UK-based gaming magazine Edge about how much work they and he personally put into researching their video games, once stating in the article:
"“There’s just a ton of research. You’re working with experts – I studied World War Two for three years. I worked with historians. I spent eight days in a van in Europe going to all the places that were going to be in the game. I shot different old weapons. All of these things that you have to do when you’re working on a Call of Duty game.”
He also talked about working with military historians, as well as Special Forces veterans and weapons experts and more for researching and developing those titles as well as going to multiple different countries as well during his research.
In esponse few days ago high quality gaming journalism website
Kotaku decided to write up a lazy article hating on
Sledgehammer Games for their work ethic, stating in an article that they were too busy taking a vacation in lieu of actually doing research for the
Call of Duty series of games they were working on in an undoubtedly totally not clickbaiting editorial titled:
Call Of Duty Dev: Visiting Europe, Shooting Old Guns Was Hard Work, Y'know
The article was written by Kotaku Freelance Writer Ian Walker, a self described Beyonce enthusiast and known for stating this about
a recent Final Fantasy title last July:
Ian Walker said:
But I also believe Stranger of Paradise Final Fantasy Origin would have enjoyed a much better reception from fans had Square Enix revealed the game with the lead looking maybe 30 percent less fuckboy. No one wants to play a Final Fantasy game as their sister’s first scumbag boyfriend after she left for college.
Anyways... personal issues aside, almost just as crappy games journalism website IGN Managing Editor Mark Medina took issue with the Kotaku Hate Article stating on Twitter on his own personal account:
“Sorry but, f–k this. I spent 4 days with Glen and Michael Condry leading up to the release of CoD: WWII and to say they don’t work hard because it doesn’t fit your definition? C’mon now. Why are we writing hate articles like this? This is the new direction Kotaku was going for?”
“I realize saying ‘spent days with them’ does nothing to prove they actually work hard. But the conversations we had showed a true passion in what they were making. It don’t agree with this notion that because someone is able to do something cool, they’re not working hard.”
“With this logic, no one at a major publication is allowed to say they work hard at E3. Major publications pay for their workers to go to E3, hotels and food. Sounds like a vacation right?? So how could they possibly be ‘working hard’? See how dumb that sounds?"
Ian Walker started to respond to Mark Medina... but then decided that the better tactic was to claim he was being harassment and anyone who responded to him as contributing to the harassment. This "harassment" grew even more intense when other game developers, including ones involved in games like
God of War and
EA Star Wars Squadrons, started to engage in hurtful sarcasm and metaphor to further harass the hapless
Kotaku Writer...
Some fellow Kotaku Writers tried to defend him against the mean Games Developers, stating that using his name on larger accounts was facilitating harassment and abuse of these poor writers drawing in 50K a year for some reason.
Of course pointing out the exact same thing happened to Game Devs because of hate mobs whipped up by Games Journalists soon came up as well...
Members of the video game industry have pushed back against Kotaku for an insulting article that minimized a developer's research work.
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