Killing Machines
Most games don’t reward players for getting into the zone and stringing together a number of kills. Call of Duty embraces these demonstrations of skill and gives the players that pull them off the chance to rack up even more kills. When you reach three kills in a row, all enemies appear on your radar. Five kills in a row calls in a player-activated airstrike. And a seven-kill string brings out a trigger-happy helicopter. But this wasn’t the original plan for the game. “We tried all sorts of different things for the air support,” says Alderman with a sigh. “Originally, they were areas on the map people fought over. There was a little icon that said helicopter. You ran over and hit the button, and the helicopter would come and fight for your team. This system broke team deathmatch because people were just doing the rounds. They were like ‘I’m going to the helicopter, then I am going to the radar, then the airstrike.’ They would just circle around the map and do that the whole time. So we thought, why don’t we reward the players for doing well?” This kill-based reward system conversely acts as a penalty for death – something the Call of Duty team felt they needed. In games like Halo, the penalty for death is losing a powerful weapon that you picked up along the way. This player will likely do the dreaded rounds to get his or her gear back. Call of Duty 4’s kill streak system pushes player to perform better, keeps their attention solely on the battle, and rips out your heart when you come up one kill short of calling in a helicopter.

Skills & Kills
Even if you’re wielding the bullet-spitting P90 and have earned the ability to throw three grenades, if you hesitate or are generally a poor shot, you won’t fare well. “My theory is: If you get a drop on a guy, you should feel like you are going to win that fight,” says Alderman. “One mistake that a lot of game developers don’t see is that they think weapons that take a ton of bullets to kill a guy make the game accessible. To me, that makes the game hardcore. So, if you play a game where it takes a million bullets to achieve a kill, you stay alive for a really long time, but that essentially means the new guy is never going to get any points. He’s going to feel like a new guy. He got to stay alive for a long time, but he never got to kill anyone. In our game, bullets are really deadly. You can get kills if you are a new guy or hardcore. We still have that element of if you are really good and if you have skill, you are going to do really well. But if you are the new guy, you are going to be able to get kills too.”

Ironing out the Battlefield
Even if the gameplay feels great, a poorly designed map can destroy the entire experience. Before a map is created, the designers first figure out the fight distances. “They created a model of a little guy with rings around him representing fight zones,” says Alderman. “One is a 500-meter circle, and there is also a 1,000-meter circle. They display the weapon effectiveness.” Some of the maps in Call of Duty were designed with clear ideas in mind, such as the downed helicopter on Crash drawing inspiration from Black Hawk Down. Others are designed with certain weapons in mind. But despite offering a handful of different match types, all of Call of Duty 4’s maps are designed for team deathmatch. Alderman explains, “We tried to design maps that were specific for game types, but eventually, it just didn’t work out. They weren’t as fun. So the priority was to design for team deathmatch because that’s the core of the game. In the back of your mind you can say ‘I want this to be cool for Domination,’ but a lot of times, if you design a map for team deathmatch, it’s going to work in a lot of game types.”