On Honor and Hypothetical

The end of the calendar year has a good number of traditions we can celebrate as gamers. Top 5 and 10 lists will populate news feeds to balance the slow news cycle. Game of the Year debates gain momentum until their debut. Publishers will finalize and detail their plans for the beginning of the next year of releases. Along with the immediate, companies are penciling in plans for the future, planning for the next twelve months (assuming they plan on releasing games for the duration of the entire year). Last week Electronic Arts announced their plans on rebooting their Medal of Honor franchise, bringing the game to a modern setting. All copycat jokes aside, this game has Modern Warfare 2 in its metaphorical cross-hairs, and assuming EA’s master plan comes to fruition this game could be a huge success.

I’ll do my best to try to convince both you and myself of that last sentence.

In describing what I think the design philosophy of Medal of Honor, normally I’d go with something catchy like ‘taking a page out of the playbook of Dante’s Inferno’. But if this is handled right, they might as well cross out the title of that playbook with a sharpie and write Medal of Honor in its place. It seems that Dante’s Inferno has no qualms with being God of War with a paint job. While I’m sure the game will be competent, this game is far from original. The Divine Comedy itself is three parts, a journey similar to a certain Ghost of Sparta, right? But if it’s successful, the financial reports will outweigh any guilt of lacking originality. The same thought process can be applied to whatever will become of this new Medal of Honor game. The question then becomes: can EA use all of the tools at its disposal to make this game as successful as possible?

With the announcement of this game, we also found out that development will be part of a divide-and-conquer strategy. EA Los Angeles will handle the single-player campaign and DICE will tackle the multiplayer. A strategy like this is a coin flip. Heads, success. Tails, utter disaster. Communication between the studios is paramount, and I’m not just talking conference calls. Sharing assets, team members, and whatever other resources are available to create the best game possible. The worst possible development cycle for this game would be if these studios acted independently until putting the pieces of the puzzle together, which amounts to forcing a square peg in a round hole. As a quick example, consider something like the controls. Between the campaign and multiplayer there needs to be consistency but not the same precision. Looking at Modern Warfare 2, the auto aim is significantly reduced in the online portion of the game. Sure, there is still plenty of “stick,” but anyone that has played both modes can tell the difference. Both need to be similarly functional but not an exact replica.

Naturally, the online multiplayer portion of the game will be the true test of quality but it presents a bit of a conundrum. Battlefield: Bad Company 2 is coming out in March and is exclusively and entirely developed by DICE. The multiplayer component of MoH is also being developed by DICE. This represents the ultimate iterative development process. Follow me with this: Right now the multiplayer beta is funneling all kinds of data to DICE’s code monkeys, which will help tune the final product of Bad Company 2. While Medal of Honor isn’t part of the Battlefield family of products, I’m sure plenty of aspects can be applied to its multiplayer component. Be it level design, weapon balancing, evaluating different game modes, or even optimizing the graphical aspects of the game, Medal of Honor is well on its way to a finished product. If Medal of Honor can treat Bad Company 2 as a glorified yet polished beta for its own multiplayer component then that will be one less thing for EA to worry about when trying to pitch the game to apprehensive consumers.

And then there’s mystery door number three. World at War had Nazi Zombies, Modern Warfare 2 has Spec Ops mode. If Medal of Honor is going to go page by page through the Dante’s Inferno book of emulation, it will need something else to keep its usage statistics in Major Nelson’s Top 10. This third mode isn’t a hard and fast requirement, but this industry doesn’t let a good thing go to waste. It’s very likely that EA will come up with something to keep us occupied. Honestly, they can call it “Unique Missions” if it’s executed well enough. If a game is fun, it’s fun. End of story. My point is that while there is a huge risk in offering this mystery mode, it is almost essential to completing the package if competing with Modern Warfare 2 is the ultimate goal. Make it happen, and make it work and gamers won’t care who came up with the idea first.

Finally, the timing of this game is crucial to its potential. Activision’s greed could be its undoing if gamers do not fall in line with the next Treyarch Call of Duty game. Despite the financial success of World at War, the stigma still exists. Gamers will still be hesitant to fall in line for yet another Call of Duty game that isn’t from Infinity Ward, even if it is set in the Cold War instead of World War 2. There is still a lot of convincing that needs to occur between now and that game’s launch. Assuming we are ready for yet another shooter, Medal of Honor could be in the perfect position to succeed.

I’ve laid out a lot of ‘ifs’ in this text, but I believe they are both reasonable and attainable. Electronic Arts might need a little bit of luck, but if they succeed then we are all winners. As much as I love Modern Warfare 2, I would really love for Infinity Ward to face some serious competition in the coming years. It’s nice to be king, but an unchallenged throne can lead to complacency.

Talking About Games is also nice – http://talkingaboutgames.com