The Big Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 Interview — Infinity Ward on the Beta, Matchmaking, and Much More

It has been four years since Infinity Ward shipped its last Call of Duty game, Modern Warfare 2. While most consider it to have been a commercial success, some fans were divided on the greater emphasis on realistic, tactical gameplay, which walked the line of being cumbersome. Meanwhile, aggressive skill-based matchmaking enraged some players. With this year's Modern Warfare 4, Infinity Ward is looking back at what it did right in games like 2019's Modern Warfare, and where it missed the mark in games like Modern Warfare 2.

To find out more, I spoke with Joe Cecot, Studio Multiplayer Creative Director at Infinity Ward, and Jacky Reynolds, Multiplayer Design Lead, ahead of this weekend's Modern Warfare 4 beta. We talked about the way Modern Warfare 4 plays, the decision to make a campaign level available in the beta for the first time ever, and how Infinity Ward is trying to improve on implementing player feedback.

Just before our conversation, some major Call of Duty news broke: the Modern Warfare 4 beta will utilize a new matchmaking system that was introduced to Black Ops 7 in July. It’s a divisive system among fans, meaning it was a hot topic at the start of the interview.

This interview was lightly edited for length and clarity.

IGN: Why is this new matchmaking system that was introduced in Black Ops 7 right for MW4?

Joe Cecot: The franchise over the years has been great about trying different things and seeing what works and doesn't work. Something that's really awesome is that they've continued to try things through BO7 with the intention of helping our launch. Treyarch’s been awesome and Demonware, who runs all of our matchmaking stuff, has been awesome. So the exciting thing is that they're actually starting to share data and be really open about things like, "Hey, here's what we tried and here's what's worked and what hasn't worked." And they're being open again about how we're going into Modern Warfare with our different options. So I think for us on the dev side, where we are aware of that data, it's really nice that we're kind of coming at it from that angle. We feel like that's the healthiest way. It's because on one side, you have perception and you have your own field playing and how does it feel?

But on the other side, you have the data of how is it affecting players and how is it affecting quit rates and how is it affecting the health of matchmaking and churn and all of that stuff. So what I'm really excited about is that we're opening up that window, bringing people along with the effort of making sure that Modern Warfare has the best matchmaking options.

Jacky Reynolds: I think it's a conversation that we'll continue to have. I don't think it's ever going to be a solved system. There's always going to be new iterations that can be made. I think at the end of the day, yeah, we want players to be able to play and have fun. I think that we want to also make sure that they have variety in their matches. I think it's a conversation that we should continue to have. It's also worth mentioning that Joe and I aren’t directly in charge of matchmaking. We are focused on building cool stuff, but I think we're looking forward to seeing how it all shakes out.

IGN: I know some people following the news fear that some of the data is skewed because Black Ops 7 is one of the lower performing Call of Duty games player-wise. Especially in Season 5, you're in the middle of the life cycle and the player base is mostly the more hardcore players. Whereas Modern Warfare 4 is a new game, meaning there will be different groups of players. Do you have any thoughts on that at all?

Joe Cecot: I think it's a good point. The great thing is we have the beta and then we have launch and we're going to react quickly. The intention is to keep the comms open. It's to take the data we have. And you could argue that applying it to maybe the group of players that are still playing in Season 5, you don't have as high of a skill disparity. So if it's actually improving that, it's probably a good thing. But in the end, it's going to be a different set or new players are going to be coming in and we just have to stay on top of it and see if the hypothesis matches the results when we launch.

Jacky Reynolds: Yeah, I think running open matchmaking alongside what we have will give us that great A/B test. There’s a big push towards clarity of communication and we're leaving our cards on the table and I'm excited to see how it all shakes out.

IGN: What prompted the decision to put a campaign level in the beta?

Joe Cecot: In the past, Call of Duty's kind of segregated our players a bit too much. So as much as possible with this [Call of Duty] NEXT event and with the beta event, we're trying to bring everyone together. By having the campaign in the beta, by having the NEXT event online so players can play in it as well, by having it right up against the beta, we get all the players coming in. We get core MP players, we get campaign players, then we get Warzone and Ground War Combat Outpost players in week two.

Our beta has more content than we've ever done in terms of modes. The goal is that we're bringing everyone into this beta experience. The only one that isn't there is DMZ because DMZ is such a massive thing. But otherwise we're trying to bring everyone in at the same time and not segregate people. So I think it's also the coolest thing that we are bringing in a campaign mission for those people. And maybe core MP people that come in will try the campaign and maybe campaign people that come in will try core MP.

Jacky Reynolds: I always, as a fan, not even as a dev, I always loved campaigns as a way to set the tone for the game. For me personally, having a campaign mission sets the tone of the world and what you can expect, and then going into multiplayer and being able to tell those stories of your own experience within that overall world, I think is just going to make it feel all interconnected and kind of feel closeness to desegregate a lot of these different pieces together. I'm truly excited about that, honestly.

IGN: Since Modern Warfare (2019) there's been a push to have storytelling across the entire game rather than you come for the story in the single-player and then you go shoot some people in the multiplayer.

Joe Cecot: That was our goal. I think we build the strongest product when we're kind of uniform in the thing that we're making. We're not talking about DMZ right now, but DMZ takes place after the campaign. They tie together really nicely and allow us to lean on each other. Same with core MP, it all takes place in that world. And if Geoff Smith, our other director on MP, were here, he'd tell you each core MP map and why it fits into the world. Where does it take place and what point in the campaign or the experience does it convey? So I think that's what makes our product really, really strong and relatable.

IGN: When the beta is this close to launch, I always wonder how much time is there to really change things based on feedback. What kind of runway do you guys have with Modern Warfare 4 when it comes to implementing feedback?

Joe Cecot: We do update the game right up until launch, and then even after launch. So we're going to learn stuff in the beta that will go into the launch, and we're going to learn stuff in the beta that will go into live support. We're never done patching and adjusting and fixing. The other thing is, and it's not exactly the beta, but we've been really thorough this game starting super early with bringing in players, both in user testing studies and influencers who are really, really technical at playing the game and [Call of Duty League] pros.

We've brought this wide array of players in to just keep making sure that we're feeling good about the thing we're making to validate our hypothesis where we feel like, "Hey, we think this is really fun. How does this feel?" And we've learned a bunch. We've made a ton of changes. So I think we're going into the beta better than we ever have in terms of the product that we have, but we definitely have plenty of time to make changes and tweaks and adjustments based on player feedback and experience.

Jacky Reynolds: We have a lot of room for balance right now. I recently went out to the [Esports World Cup] in Paris and met with a bunch of CDL players. That was two weeks ago and we've already addressed some of their feedback notes, which will be in the beta. And we obviously have a lot more to do. I'm not saying that we've adjusted every single point. It's like when it comes to these kinds of knobs that need to get tweaked, these are definitely things that we can do.

Beta is going to be a really great time for us because we're going to be able to get a lot of feedback wholesale and we can start to really look at, okay, what can we do and what should we do? And yeah, that's part of the excitement for us this weekend and next week.

IGN: Is there a gun, perk, field upgrade, or a streak that you think players should focus on before either it gets nerfed or something you want to see where it’s at balancing-wise?

Jacky Reynolds: Well, you never want to go into [beta] with something completely untuned on purpose. Maybe I could describe some of my favorites.

Some of our favorites internally is stuff like the Bomb Glider, which is a killstreak that lets you kind of fly an RC plane that has explosives mounted on it so that when it collides with geometry or players, it explodes and kills a bunch of people. We have a Field Upgrade that we're excited about called the Smoke Wall, which is going to draw a huge line of smoke across the battlefield, but it uses our volumetric smoke tech. So you can actually shoot holes through it or you can run smoke and kind of hide. It lets you rotate really easily. We try to level up our killstreaks at every threshold. So whether you have a four killstreak or a 10 killstreak, you feel like you have this unique power fantasy.

To that end, as far as balancing all those things out, we've tried to lean into the fun, but also making things fair. It's a conversation I'm sure we're going to continue to have after this first weekend. We'll probably get a lot of great feedback on that.

Joe Cecot: The sideload on the Rezi 12. It's in the default loadout. The apex attachment is pretty damn powerful. It changes it to a kind of explosive slug round that can reach out and touch people. So if you want to give little hints, let them try that. It is pretty awesome and the animation is sick.

As Jacky mentioned, our killstreak philosophy this game was kind of powerful and fun. We've taken a bunch of the killstreaks that we have and they're kind of mini versions of the later ones. So the Missile Salvo is almost like a mini Gunship where you get these three missiles, you fire two, they track whatever target you locked on, and then the last one you ride in. So it's kind of an upgraded Cruise Missile. Jacky mentioned the Bomb Glider, which is super fun. The goal with that is that when I get to that four kill killstreak, I get a new player experience.

The other thing is that I think weapon feel with the changes in hip fire is something we're going to pay attention strongly to. But with us having that huge effort and making you feel more connected to the weapon like never before, the weapon now shoots wherever you're aiming, even at the hip. Now there's some movement of that gun when you're moving around, but it still stays within your hip reticle. And in the end, weapons are way more accurate from the hip.

So you feel more like you're firing your gun, not firing random rounds all over the place. So those are things that I want to watch people use. I also want to see how balanced are they. Are they too powerful? But in the end, they feel really good.

IGN: A lot of fans will tell you their favorite Call of Duty game is the OG Modern Warfare trilogy. And yet, if you tried to bring those games back, people would be like, "Balance this, tweak this." It's a tough balancing act. So it's interesting to hear you say you're trying to find the fun and the balance because sometimes what's fun is what is unbalanced.

Joe Cecot: We have a bunch of philosophies, but one of them is whenever we build these things, the victim should be part of the experience. And you're never like, "Hooray, I got hit by a Bomb Glider." But that Bomb Glider is loud. The guy yells, "Enemy bomb glider incoming." And then you hear [plane noises]. So the idea is that when you hear that thing, you know, oh, something's about to happen to me.

So even though we make really powerful things, we do try and make sure that the people in the play space are a part of that experience and they kind of know what's going on. It always feels bad to just instantly die. Ideally, you're like, "Oh, I heard that unique sound or I heard the announcer tell me this thing and I did not run to cover," so that it feels fair.

Jacky Reynolds: I also think in general, the average player is just so much better than they were 15 years ago. A big thing that we have internally, as well as making that victim experience [satisfying], is making sure that we play everything with each other to make sure that there's not any crazy strategies that can break open a whole sandbox. Kind of like when you had One Man Army and grenade launcher rounds and you could just infinitely shoot them across the map [in the original Modern Warfare 2].

IGN: Jacky, you’ve been here since right after Modern Warfare (2019) launched and Joe, you’ve been here for 15 years. So you guys probably have a mix of perspectives on how to make a Call of Duty game. What is that chemistry or that fusion like?

Joe Cecot: I would say that it kind of reflects a bit the way we designed the game. One of our first meetings we had with the planning for MW4 was a yin and the yang, the tactical player and the mobile player. We kind of presented and we said, "Hey, in MW2, we went a little bit too tactical." In 2019, we felt like we hit this sweet spot coming off the previous game. With this game, the mantra or philosophy is we want to make sure that we make a game where the player who's very tactical feels like they found the game for them. And the player who's more mobile feels like they found the game for them.

So, that's where all that effort went into the removal of weapon bloom. Your weapon banks around corners really nicely, really realistically. You can still mount on all surfaces. And then you combine that with our mantle momentum system, our mantle into slide, and our supine slide. The intention was to open doors for both play styles and let them play together.

I think that actually in many ways reflects Jacky and I, where I'm more mounting up, [engaging in] position play, and tactically moving through a space. Jacky’s more, “I want to push, I want to move quickly. I want to react quickly. I want to solve 10 problems a second.” That's at least how I would boil it down.

Jacky Reynolds: I started my career at Infinity Ward. I had a year at Naughty Dog before that. Joe has helped mold me and help me find my voice as a designer. I think like Joe said, I feel like we compliment each other pretty well. It’s truly a great day every day working on this team.

Everybody, not just Joe and I, but everybody at Infinity Ward feels like we're able to push and get the best out of each other. Our [senior leadership team] is really good at finding what people are good at and giving them the space to do the things that they want to go after and the things that they love. I don't think I would be half as good of a designer if I worked anywhere else.

Joe Cecot: Jacky put it well. We challenge each other. So Jacky would be like, "I want to do this thing." And I'll be like, "That thing's really hard." And he'd be like, "But I really want to do it." And I'll be like, "All right, you can go for it. I support you." And that's where Hijack, our new competitive mode came from. Jacky was like, "I really want to try and do this mode."

We worked through it and it was hard. There were moments where we were like, "I don't think this is going to work." But we got there and we got to something really fun. But it wouldn't have happened if Jacky wasn't pushing to create a different experience in Call of Duty. And maybe it wouldn't have happened if I weren't coaching and helping and saying, "No, you're close. You're getting there."

Jacky Reynolds: Oh man. There was a time where I was working on it where I was like, "This is not working. I'm getting nowhere. I'm a fraud. I'm cooked." And Joe was like, "Nope, you're almost there. Just keep pushing." But that's all of us. All of us on the team are really trying to push in these things that we believe in. We're trying to not rest on our laurels, not take things for granted, and always try to push and make sure that we're doing what Modern Warfare is, but also trying to find what also Modern Warfare can be. And this is really, really exciting for us. This is my favorite project I've ever gotten to work on because it does feel like we're firing on all cylinders. And that's why beta means so much because this is the first time that players are going to get to see that and see this project that we feel like we have ourselves in.

IGN: Modern Warfare 3 (2023) was an interesting game because it was a Sledgehammer-led title. It was different to Modern Warfare 2 for some of the reasons you said, Joe. It was a bit faster, it was more arcade-y. I'm curious what that experience taught you guys, since you were likely a bit more hands-off, especially since I imagine Modern Warfare 4 was maybe being worked on simultaneously.

Joe Cecot: Well, when they were working on MW3 in earnest, we were still doing live support for MW2. So we did help them because the game was built off of our game and very much used all of the content that we had made. But when we looked at [Modern Warfare 4], it was more of a reflection on, “What did we do with MW2 and where did we go from 2019?”

I think that was more of the guiding light for us, like, "Hey, MW2, we went a little too complex with Gunsmith and attachment tuning and things like that. We went a little bit too heavy-handed with how we adjusted movement and what the player could be. That created realism at the expense of fun. So this game, we shifted it around to say, “Hey, we want to be realistic. We want to be grounded. We want the player to feel powerful, but it can't come at the expense of fun.”

That became our guiding light for this game. So it was less of a reflection on MW3. It was a reflection on ourselves and where MW2 had landed and where we had come from from MW 2019.

Jacky Reynolds: Yeah, I mean, Modern Warfare 3 was a pretty fun game. We play a lot of the COD games and we think about them pretty deeply. And it's always cool to see what our brother and sister studios are doing. But yeah, I think that the development of Modern Warfare 4 was mostly inspired by the lessons learned from MW19 and MW2. We weren't on the ground line for MW3, so we don't really know what that was like. We did help out a bit, but that's mostly where we're coming from.

IGN: You said there was a reflection of Modern Warfare 2. I know one of the things people were kind of upset about with that game is it felt like sometimes their feedback wasn't heard. What would you say going into Modern Warfare 4 about looking back at that, how you want to communicate with fans, how you want to implement feedback?

Joe Cecot: I think there's a shift at the studio perspective and at the marketing level and everything. We're kind of in unison like we've never been before. You can see it in all of our notes. Every time we run an event or anything, instantly the comms [team] are responding. We are helping respond to those things. We have a team that's bringing that to us like, "Hey, this was called out. Do you want to respond? What do you want to do?"

Like I said before, I think we've opened up communications by bringing a bunch of different players in and we brought people back multiple times. It wasn't like, "Hey, come in, give us our feedback." It was, "Hey, come in, give us your feedback. Okay, come back in a week or two weeks or three weeks." We would gauge that based on how long it took us because some of the changes are really hard. We made big tweaks and we saw big shifts in how the people we brought in rated our game and how they felt about our game. That's all we're after, we want that feedback and we want to make the game better.

I think in MW2, we definitely didn't communicate as well as we should have. I think we've remedied that in crazy ways with this project. Even with the amount of stuff that I get sent to my desk to review like, "Hey, we want to respond to this." And then I review copy or I'm writing something, it's a huge shift. That's going to continue into live support and I think you see it at our studio head level. [Infinity Ward co-studio head] Mark Grigsby is posting, the Infinity Word account is posting, the Call of Duty account is posting, and they're all in unison posting. They're not separate from each other. I think it's really powerful and it feels really good to us.

Jacky Reynolds: Getting creators' feedback early, going out to meet pros, all of this stuff. I think it's about reducing the barrier of communication as much as possible to understand what people like about Call of Duty and what we like about Call of Duty. I think I've learned a lot of really interesting lessons just from having conversations with people.

Even at the creator level, there are so many different types of players. There are players that are there entirely for a camo grind and content around that. There are people that are entirely focused around CDL and competitive. And even in that, there's a competitive core player and there's a competitive Warzone player. So I think what's really, really great about this sort of new communication is that we're not a black box, and we're also able to meet people where they're at and find out the things that makes Call of Duty special to them and what helps make this franchise something that they love so much.

It is a balancing act, but we are trying to make a game that feels like, regardless of the Call of Duty player you are, you will have found a home in Modern Warfare 4, and you'll want to come in and you will like the things that we have to offer here. I do think that clearer communication in both directions has really helped us try to close the gap.

Joe Cecot: I think that Jacky hit the nail on the head. Most important with the beta, we just want to bring everyone together and have them experience the game. It never feels good as a player to be like, “Oh, those streamers or those celebrities or those people are getting to play. I want to try the game.” I'm just really excited to finally bring all those people in and have them play and feel the game.

The reason I'm excited is because we play it so much and have so much [fun] playing. We do our Friday night fights. We do competitions with wrestling belts and we have teams that are crowned the top players in [the new map] Killblock. Then the next week they're being challenged. We want players to experience that.

IGN: If there’s someone who didn’t like Modern Warfare 2 but likes Call of Duty as a whole, what would you want to tell them to try and convince them to try Modern Warfare 4?

Joe Cecot: I think the things that I would say to them is there's a combination of connectivity to your weapon and fluidity of movement at levels that have never been reached in an FPS before. It's something that we've put so much work into, but it's something that is so hard to see when you watch a video and you can't feel it. The only way to feel it is to get in and play the game. We just want people to come in and try the game and have a blast like we're having a blast.

Jacky Reynolds: Yeah, I think there's a lot of stuff that we feel like we've addressed from MW19 and MW2, and I would ask for them to check out the beta and if they still have qualms, I would love to know what those are. To me, this beta feels like the start of the conversation with the public, you know what I mean? We're excited to basically put that out there and we'll see what happens next. We want to just keep talking and keep learning and trying to find out what we can do better.

Cade Onder is a freelancer for IGN's news team. He covers all things entertainment, including gaming, film, and more. You can find him on Twitter @Cade_Onder.