Modern Warfare 3: what does it take to work on the world's biggest game?

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 is almost certain to be one of the biggest entertainment releases of the year.

But with two studios and almost 200 development staff working on the title, what does the job involve for individual team members?

In October, I visited Infinity Ward and Sledgehammer Games to get an inside look on the development process.

As well as speaking to the studio heads (read more here and here), I also talked to lead creatives in the animation, design and audio departments about their roles in the Modern Warfare machine.

What goes into the creation of a major title like Modern Warfare? What software packages are involved, and what skills do you need to work in game design at this level? I asked the MW3 team those very questions...

Character animation

Zach Volker, lead animator, Infinity Ward
The naturalistic movement of both characters and vehicles in Modern Warfare 3 are the responsibility of Volker and his team. They work predominantly in Autodesk Maya, using a graph editor to tweak motion capture footage and create animation sequences. The skeleton of each character is built and set by the studio's team of specialist riggers. Animators are then able to manipulate every joint on the character model across three axes. There are more than 100 joints in each skeleton, and the character's skin is then bound to the bones so it deforms correctly when moving. It's a complex and intricate process.

"We're always looking to mix things up and keep the series fresh," explains Volker. "One of things we did in MW3 was replace all the sprints and runs from multiplayer. In the previous game, you'd sort of hunch over and bob and weave; we saved that for the SMG class, but now all the other classes have their own runs. If you sprint with the assault class, you do it with the gun pointing down – it's a very different silhouette. The sniper, though, has his gun across his body. We do watch how real soldiers move, but we also take cues from Hollywood, and the exaggerated expectations that action movies have brought about. For example, if you fire a shotgun at someone in real life, they'll slump to the floor, but movies have taught us that they fly 10 feet backwards. So that's what we have in the game!"

One of the most complex animation sequences in MW3 is the spectacular tube train crash near the end of the London-based level, Mind the Gap. "Me and the visual effects artist David Johnson did that scene together," says Volker. "There were a lot of iterations, it was a good two month's work – which is a long time to devote to one sequence. Realistically, there's no way the train would behave like that, but it's naturalistic enough to be believable. We watched YouTube footage of train crashes from security cameras, but there wasn't much out there. There's where the creativity comes in."

Tips for prospective games animators
Zach studied traditional animation at CalArts (on a course set up by Walt Disney, no less), but says that those old school 2D animation skills are not as important these days – it's all about 3D animation packages.

He also says that qualifications are not strictly necessary. "A lot of the animators here don't have a degree. It's all about your showreel. The things we're looking for are technically ability – do you understand how humans move? It's difficult, because the slightest inaccuracy immediately looks and feels wrong. But also, how can you move a human in a way that's more entertaining and creative than anyone else?

"We'll often have these situations where we have to animate a character who's, say, crashed a helicopter and now has to take out a number of enemies on the ground. The possible implementations of that are unlimited – I might have an animator who is technically proficient but lacking in creativity, so the helicopter crashes authentically, but might in a really boring way. We need to find someone who makes us say, 'Oh wow, I didn't think of that! The tail rotor clipping the building, and then the chopper flipping over and taking out that tree!' What we're looking for is, 'how can you do this differently from anyone else applying for the job?' "

Volker suggests getting hold of Maya; students are able to experiment with a free cut-down version of the package. He also recommends a book called The Animator's Survival Kit by Richard E Williams ("It'll get you through the basics, like a bouncing ball or a ticking clock – these are the sorts of things you start with.") and Animation Mentor, an online school started by a several Pixar animators ("It's fantastic and really affordable").

Applicants to Infinity Ward's animation department are usually given a test as part of the process. They may, for example, get a couple of weeks to animate a character through a series of actions. "It might be run, jump, then take cover, fire your weapon, then get hit," says Volker. "And it's easy to tell if they've tried to pull one over on us by inserting motion caption data!"

Environmental animation

Christopher Stone, animation director, Sledgehammer Games
How much work goes into the environmental destruction in Modern Warfare 3? Just ask Christopher Stone. In one section of the Berlin-based Scorched Earth mission, the Russians blow up a building so that it halts a tank convoy. It's a few moments of screen time, but it represented several weeks of work for the Sledgehammer and Infinity Ward animation teams.

"Our hope was to run an actual simulation of the building collapsing to get all the elements to look really dynamic," says Stone. "But the problem was, with a simulation you have no control over where everything is going to go. So what we ended up creating was one huge animated sequence with well over 250 hand-animated parts, all flying exactly where we need them to go – every part is tailored so it zips past your head. The great thing with an FPS is, you are the camera, you determine the framing, so it is very cinematic."

As with the character animation, the sequence was modelled in Maya, with flight paths planned for every chunk of masonry and flipped car. "With a shot like this we start with the baseline, which is the building itself collapsing," explains Stone. "Then we layer things upon that. Originally, we were going to have the collapse taking place further away from the player, but it just didn't look cool – it's got to feel like its' about to topple on top of you."

Stone reckons the instantaneous pipeline between Maya model and game engine has been a huge boon to MW3. The artists don't have to wait hours for a scene to render into the game engine; it iterates almost immediately, so they can try stuff out and then continually tweak it. "So the building starts collapsing and things start tumbling toward you, a car goes over your head, debris is spinning out," says Stone. "And I can pause the shot, right in the middle, look at where the character is and meticulously plan the whole thing. That's pretty crazy. As an animation director for ten years at EA, none of the tech we had there could come close to doing something like this; I couldn't have done this shot, because the iteration time to do something like that would have been crazy."

Iteration, says Stone, is king in this industry; the more you can iterate, the more you can polish each element. "You don't know if anything is going to work until you see it in the game," he says, "and again, we're back to the awesome tools and the engine we have here. To be able to go in here, move something in Maya, hit one button and immediately see a change in the game, it let us get every frame, every second, just right."

"We have big meetings every week, where the creative directors sit in a room and we'll watch a single shot – maybe a large explosion – 40 or 50 times over half an hour. And then we throw out ideas: what if there's a guy in the car and he tumbles out. And because we can iterate quickly, we can try these ideas."

Stone also talks about the sense of naturalism in the game, and how the game distorts reality for its own ends. The team worked with Hollywood mo-cap talent, but all their moves have to be heightened, because the running speed is much faster in the game than it is in real-life, and because animations such as changing a mag have to be exaggerated to give them a cinematic impact.

"We're always on the edge between reality and non-reality," he says. "I mean, would an army really collapse a building to keep enemy tanks from advancing? I don't know, maybe. We want things to seem spectacular, but they've also got to be feasible. There's a very fine line between awesome and camp."

I think that might be my favourite quote about game design.

Level design

Bret Robbins, Creative Director, Sledgehammer
Bret Robbins was the creative director on EA's sci-fi horror adventure Dead Space before following colleagues Michael Condrey and Glen Schofield to Sledgehammer. He's been working with Infinity Ward's creative staff to oversee the design of the levels in MW3.

"It's about creating a real mood and atmosphere," he explains. "In Dead Space we had to sell this futuristic world and the only way to do that was to ensure everything around the character supported the fiction and made the player feel part of it. It's the same with this, we have to sell the authenticity of the military experience, we have to make it seem as real as possible even though the situation that you're in is totally fantastical.

"If the details around you are real, the more you'll buy the crazier stuff. So we came into this thinking about ways we could extend the storytelling and emotion, to increase the visceral experience for the player. But it was a collaborative effort, as far as setting the tone of each level, I worked a lot with Infinity Ward on that."

The design teams use a level editor based on the content management system, Radiant. It allows them to swiftly build and test rough missions. "You can block things out quickly," he says. "The tools are very robust and the engine is fast so you can get a rough sense of a level. So once we have a rough layout in our heads – how it should feel or look – we create a version in the level editor, populate it quickly, and right away you can sit down with a controller and run through it, imagining how this big yellow block could be turned into a building, or where the enemies could come out of. I always believe in getting the level playable as fast as possible."

And the secret of a good FPS map? "You could write a book on best practices for making a shooter," laughs Robbins. "All the things you need to consider – proper lines of sight, good verticality, the careful spacing of combat encounters – there's an encyclopedia of knowledge.

"Dialogue is a fairly cheap tool in terms of Campaign mission design. Voice actors are quite expensive, but you can iterate on a script quite cheaply using temp actors. This can completely change the mood of a level. I didn't realise how important it was. It's huge."

Tips for young game designers

"I started as a game tester, and that was a good introduction," says Robbins. "You learn all the pieces of how a game works, and you need to be articulate enough to explain problems."

He also highlights the benefits of getting involved in the indie scene, and building your own games, however simple. "There's now this whole new market for these games," he says. "It might be hard to get yourself noticed, but you can pick up Unity pretty cheap, you can become part of the mod community – there are ways to get your designs out there.

"If you make an indie game it's a nice pure example of a vision executed. To me as a game maker, Braid was very inspirational – I can't say if any of that has translated directly into Call of Duty, but it was great storytelling in a very simple way. It was a great example of what game design can do."

Art and environments

Joe Salud, art director, Sledgehammer
Salud works with his opposite number at Infinity Ward to ensure a consistent look and feel for the Modern Warfare 3 universe. "We try to keep a natural look," he says. "We don't do a lot of colour grading or post-process colour tweaking."

I ask him what he thinks of Battlefield's more grainy, documentary feel. "I haven't played much of that game, but from the screenshots and trailers, it looks like they do a lot of post-processing effects, lots of lens flares, and saturated oranges – it looks like they're going for a very technical look. But yes, it looks good."

As for the move from mostly rural locations to a range of recognisable urban centres, Salud sees a tricky compromise in maintaining believability. "Peoples' impressions of cities are very stereotypical and exaggerated," he says. "So when they try to recreate them, it can look a bit like a theme park. But then, if you're too authentic, you may not be giving people what they want. You can't give them Paris and not the Eiffel tower – they need to at least see it. It's a balancing game. "

Hence, the London level has Canary Wharf looming in the background, and when the tube train shoot-out ends, we come out at Westminster. Meanwhile, Berlin features the Sony building at the Potsdamer Platz, as well as the Reichstag. We even get to see the Bahn tower collapse.

For gameplay purposes, the areas are often combined or altered. In Paris, for example, some of the streets were widened, and the main intersection featured in the Iron Lady mission is a mix of two real avenues.

But it's not just the big tourist attractions; the designers have to capture the contrasting cultures, the minutiae that defines London or Paris. "We did a lot of research into the little strokes of the cities," says Salud. "It's often about the stuff the player doesn't notice, the subconscious detail. You have to do a lot of storytelling with objects; if we're in an area that people have had to evacuate quickly, we'll have chairs and cans knocked over, picture frames will be off kilter, beds unmade … there are little micro-stories in every scene."

As for tools, the art team at Sledgehammer work mostly with Photoshop, Maya and a program named Zbrush by Pixologic, which effectively paints in 3D. "Its awesome," says Salud, whose team uses it to create rubble and other explosion damage. "Everything comes out as real geometry, then you can bake that into a normal map – the results are extremely convincing and the way it reacts to light is better."

Tips for young game artists
"It depends on where you want to specialise," says Salud. "There are so many different aspects these days. There are people who paint textures, there are modellers, and that can branch off, so some people specialise in characters, others in architecture. We have lighters and that goes really deep, there's a lot of stuff like sub-surface scattering – a lot of those catchphrases that are popular on the internet. Environment artists tend to be able to get more involved in the game development process because they work closely with the designers and tackle a lot of problems. For that role, learning Maya and studying architecture are useful."

Game audio

Don Veca, audio director and lead sound designer, David Swenson, at Sledgehammer Games
Sound is big in Modern Warfare 3. From the crackling fire of a machine pistol to the resonating hum of a surfacing submarine, each set-piece is a symphony of noisy military hardware.

Intriguingly, there's no equivalent of Maya in the audio department, no single over-riding application. "It's really personal," says Veca, who favours the Steinberg package, Nuendo. "There are so many different plug-ins." Swenson agrees: "I have Pro Tools set up on my Mac, but on my PC, which is my main development machine, I have Reaper, I have Sound Forge, I have Steinberg's WaveLab… They all have their strengths, I use them when I need them. Every audio designer, based on their experiences, uses different tools. Some guys here have worked their whole careers with Pro Tools.

Apparently, there were efforts to switch the whole team to Nuendo, but some found it too hard to move away from tools they'd used their whole creative lives. "When you're creating it needs to be very zen," says Veca. "You should only be thinking about the art – as soon as you're worrying about tools and menus, it breaks your train of thought. You need to be able to fly as fast as you can during the sound design process. You need to be in that zone."

Tips for young audio designers
"If you have a guy who can work very quickly, that's very important," says Swenson. "We have a lot to do in a very short space of time. Another thing that really helps is adaptability, all the sound designers here have a general idea of how other software packages work – I can figure out Nuendo well enough so I can work with Don, even though I'm not as quick!"

Both Don and David agree that understanding other elements of the game development process is valuable. "I do talks at local colleges running game designer courses and I'm constantly saying, it's not just about learning Pro Tools, it's not just about recording – you should take a programming class!

"I'm not kidding, take a course in C++, or anything that's algorithmic, or logic orientated. You have to know how a computer really works – that's at least half of the job. I think the new, modern day sound designers are the young kids who have high-tech skills. But then, you can't forget about the art. It's a combination of both. And that's hard to find…"