The creative strategist behind the Modern Warfare series may have quit over a disagreement with Activision over their DLC model. Bowling wanted to give old maps away for free.
The Call of Duty games represent the best selling entertainment product franchise in history, selling more units and making more money than many developing nation’s GDPs and that is no exaggeration.
Activision posted net revenues in excess of $1-billion, for the previous financial year as they saw Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 break the fastest-selling entertainment record on its release.
Apart from the sale of the games themselves, Activision has multiple revenue streams such as their regularly released Downloadable Content Packs and their Call of Duty: Elite subscription service.
However, it seems that this very issue may have been the reason behind Robert Bowling, the creative strategist at Infinity Ward, the studio behind the Modern Warfare series, to resign.
In a recent interview, before his resignation, Bowling was of the opinion that throw-back maps should be released for free and only new content, which gamers had never experienced before, should be ‘sold’ to gamers.
“Here is my philosophy on throwback maps,” Mr. Bowling began, “Old school maps, I love maps like that, I want to see Creek, I want to see overgrown, I want to see Crossfire, I want to see Highrise. So my mentality on it is if you’re going to do throw back
maps, if you are going to do classic maps, keep it outside of the DLC model.”
What he meant was that only remakes of old content, which gamers have already experienced, should be made free, while new content can kept within the paid DLC model, which if you ask anyone makes a lot of sense.
Mr. Bowling’s tone changed later on in his interview with Machinima, “I feel like we are in a ****ing era where everyone is so focused on subscriber numbers.”
Robert Bowling announced his resignation earlier in the week via Twitter, though he did not give any reasons for what prompted the move. Yet, it would be difficult to rule out that what he shared in the interview played a major part in his decision.
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