"Why do PS3 owners have to wait? And what's in store for PC owners?
Call of Duty 4 is the most popular console multiplayer game in the world right now. And it's about to get even better when developer Infinity Ward unleashes four new multiplayer maps in April (Xbox LIVE first, PSN to follow). Priced at 800 MS Points, the four new maps, Broadcast, Creek, Chinatown and Killhouse, promise to give CoD4 fans even more to shout about. To celebrate we grilled Infinity Ward's Jon Shiring on the new content, why PS3 owners have to wait longer than Xbox 360 owners and what the future holds for CoD. You'll be interested in the results.
VideoGamer.com: Let's begin by you telling us who you are and what you do at Infinity Ward.
Jon Shiring: My name is Jon Shiring, and I'm one of the programmers at Infinity Ward.
VideoGamer.com: What was your role on the new maps?
JS: I worked mostly on the back-end, making sure matchmaking works fine with the new maps and making sure we detect the content, load it and the game changes.
VideoGamer.com: It looks like each of the four new maps is in direct response to community requests. How important is CoD4's community to Infinity Ward?
JS: First of all we love our community. If they tell us we really want to have a multiplayer level that's inside the TV station because that was such a moment in single player, we love that kind of feedback, then alright we can do that. Let's do this! For some of it we wanted to throw something different their way. So that's where we have the Creek map, which is this totally new environment, it's not from single player. We went with more of an open out-door area, because there's a lot of people who really like the outdoor maps. And there's a lot of people who like the indoor maps, too. Broadcast has a lot of good indoor spots. Carentan was a classic map from CoD1 and CoD2, and so we decided to re-do that in a new style (Chinatown). The layout is the same but it looks completely different, and so that one has a lot of good indoor fighting from the earlier games that people really loved. And then Killhouse is the last map. That one, we wanted to have a good map for split-screen or cage match, or team tactical, the smaller game types where the map isn't so big that you're trying to find people. It's this really intense close-quarters battle.
VideoGamer.com: We tend to see new FPS DLC concentrate on new multiplayer maps, but not new single player content. Why is that?
JS: In terms of CoD4, The multiplayer on Xbox LIVE and PSN has been just huge, and so the response there has just been amazing. A lot of people have told me that it's the first multiplayer game that they've played, so we've drawn a lot of new people into our multiplayer. And that community just keeps asking "give us more maps, more maps, we love to play we just want more variety in the areas we're fighting in!". So in this case the community has just been asking for more multiplayer maps so that's what we've given them here.
VideoGamer.com: So could we ever see new single-player DLC for CoD4?
JS: I wouldn't rule it out but we don't have any plans for that right now.
VideoGamer.com: Why do PS3 owners have to wait longer for the Variety Map pack than Xbox 360 owners?
JS: It's part of the development process. We were scheduling it and trying to work it out... it's just something that's taking a little bit longer to do for us. We're excited to get that out on PSN as well.
VideoGamer.com: Will PC owners ever get the DLC?
JS: Right now we don't have any firm plans for PC. PC has the map contest that we've been running for a while now. So when that's finished we'll have a bunch of new maps from the community that we're going to be able to show everyone and we'll get great maps for PC there. We're working on the logistics of maybe releasing these maps for the PC but we don't have any plans for that yet.
VideoGamer.com: Are there any problems bringing the DLC to PC?
JS: That is not my area so I can't really comment.
VideoGamer.com: What about future DLC? What plans have you got?
JS: We don't have anything to announce there, so no plans yet.
VideoGamer.com: Would you imagine it would take a similar form to this map pack, concentrating on multiplayer?
JS: Again I don't really know so I can't really comment on that.
VideoGamer.com: Call of Duty is Infinity Ward's only game. Is there a feeling that the team would like to try something else?
JS: Again I can't comment on what we're going to do in the future, but we really enjoyed working on CoD4, we're really happy with the way the move to a modern day setting turned out, because there are so many new opportunities for us. We did this great single-player storyline which has these dramatic moments and twists and turns which we obviously couldn't do with the previous games, and I think that's something we're very happy with. We don't have any announcements or anything for what we're doing next. There's a lot of people on the team who want to work on lots of different things and we'll just figure out where we're going from here.
VideoGamer.com: That's great, thanks for your time.
JS: Thanks a lot."
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