For the first time in a linear update for Battlefield (i.e. not Bad Company) we will have a single player campaign, which Activision and Infinity Ward say demonstrates EA and DICE’s fear of Modern Warfare – and a direct hit at how they run their games.

Eurogamer sat down with DICE to ask their opinion. “We’re not straying away from the formula,” Patrick Bach, executive producer says. He continued, “It is a very different feeling we’re going after. We’re not straying away from our own ideas. We are looking at our own stuff, maybe a bit too much at times because sometimes you forget to look at what everyone else is doing. But of course it adds a lot of pressure when people’s expectations are that maybe we should do something else, rather than doing what we’re doing.”

Spoilers were revealed in the interview (titled “The Making of Battlefield”) that show a shocking scene, much in the same vein as the Modern Warfare series. Famously the first MW iteration showed a nuke going off where, in first-person mode, you died. In the second game there was a scene where you play a terrorist shooting civilians.

A war of words is going to be the defining thing for both of these games, but something gives me the feeling that regardless, most FPS fans are going to end up with both games anyway!

However every second year, COD gets rather good compared to the previous year. This is because the original studio releases their iteration of the franchise. They’re also quite big and can be a bit ballsy – even pissing off their bosses, Activision, occasionally.

In this instance, Modern Warfare gets more moderner.

So what’s the point of this post? A nice video detailing something we all most likely expected, a Call of Duty set in modern times featuring multiple online people shooting each other!

On the COD creators he said “We didn’t have any choice!. It shook my belief in two specific people, who were my friends.” The COD creators left in a hail of flame wars and money woes, moving to a new development studio they set up to begin work with Activision’s arch enemy – EA.

“The frustrating thing about that is, the stuff that these guys did, I never would have expected them to do. We’re a public company, we’ve got ethics obligations, and the things they did were… I would go to jail if I did them. You can’t use the company and the company’s assets for your own personal benefit, and you can’t use the leverage that you might have for personal benefit – you’re not allowed to do that! And so we didn’t have any choice.”

Going on to Infinity Ward’s current status, he said:

“There’s 70 really talented people at Infinity Ward who are focused and engaged – and in the last six months, we’ve had something like 5000 resumes, so it’s not like there’s a shortage of interest in working there. It’s one of those things where you get personally disappointed in people you trust and call friends. When you’re betrayed by your friends, what do you do?”

He said he can’t talk about IW’s next release, but it is likely to be Modern Warfare 3, under the COD monicker (the former IW execs are seeking an injunction to take the “Modern Warfare” name).

Speaking about his mortal enemies at EA, he didn’t hold back. “EA will buy a developer and then it will become ‘EA Florida’, ‘EA Vancouver’, EA New Jersey’, whatever. We always looked and said, ‘You know what? What we like about a developer is that they have a culture, they have an independent vision and that’s what makes them so successful. We don’t have an Activision anything – it’s Treyarch, Infinity Ward, Sledgehammer. That, to me, is one of the unassailable rules of building a publishing company. And in every case except for two, the original founders of the studio are still running the studios today. The only thing that we try to do is to provide a support structure to make them more successful. If you do a really god job – and a lot of our studios do – you get to pick what is, in my view, the most difficult thing to pick in the industry: to make original intellectual property.”

Speaking about Tim Schaffer, who is an oppressed Activision developer (Kotick said he was an oppressed EA developer) who was ditched by the publisher when he tried to release games through their channels, he said, “The guy comes out and says I’m a prick,” reference to an interview with Schaffer by Eurogamer, “I’ve never met him in my life – I’ve never had anything to do with him. I never had any involvement in the Vivendi project that they were doing, Brütal Legend, other than I was in one meeting where the guys looked at it and said, ‘He’s late, he’s missed every milestone, he’s overspent the budget and it doesn’t seem like a good game. We’re going to cancel it.’ And do you know what? That seemed like a sensible thing to do. And it turns out, he was late, he missed every milestone, the game was not a particularly good game…”

Kotick wrapped up by talking about the fact that he’s most hated for once saying he wants to “take the fun out of game development” by saying “That was a joke! The fact that there are people – and it’s a small vocal minority – that actually think that I meant it… How do you combat that? This is my dream job. I’ve been playing games since I was 18 years old. I could have bought any company, but I bought a bankrupt game company, and I’ve been doing it for 21 years. This idea that I’m not passionate about videogames is ludicrous. But you say something and it gets taken out of context.”

Speculation of such a thing came about originally around 2006/7 when Starcraft II was teased. But since then, all the talk has been about WoW expansions and of course, the newly released StarCraft II.

“Remember, we have two enormous investments,” said Kotick. “One in Bungie and the other in another project at Blizzard that we haven’t given a lot of visibility to. Those are going to be entirely new intellectual properties. But with the recognition that the way to build them is take long amounts of time, lots of capable talent, an enormous amount of capital and you have to have a real roadmap for innovation and creativity. And I think that those are going to be two very good examples from the ground up original ideas.”

Basically, a huge amount of money is being spent on two new IP’s which could save Activision from having to re-think its strategy about the waning Call of Duty franchise (now without the original team behind it and with increasing competition from EA’s Medal of Honour).

Santa Monica, CA – August 4, 2010 – Cliffhanger, the breathtaking and epic mission from Call of Duty®: Modern Warfare® 2, is now available worldwide for download as a single player demo on the Xbox LIVE® Marketplace and on PlayStation®Network*.

One of the most recognized levels in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, Cliffhanger thrusts players into an epic fight of a lifetime amid near-blinding snowstorm conditions high in the frigid mountains of Kazakhstan. One wrong move and it’s certain death as players scale a frozen mountainside, battle their way through a raging firefight, and race for survival aboard a snowmobile under heavy enemy fire.

Developed by Infinity Ward and published by Activision Publishing, Inc. (Nasdaq: ATVI), Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 is rated “M” (Mature) by the ESRB for Blood, Drug Reference, Intense Violence and Language.

Why is this funny? Well, mainly because we’re months into the release of MW2. Remember the rush at Christmas? Remember the anticipation being at fever pitch? Remember the controversy? Well, now, in the run up to the Treyarch developed Call of Duty: Black Ops, we get last years’ game demo. Good game, Activision.

Employees allegedly met with CEO Bobby Kotick who promised them their money on exiting the company – a promise which has not been met. Not only that, the suit also claims that if West and Zampella were never fired, if the bonus money had been paid out in full and if Activision had not created a “police state-like atmosphere,” the group of employees would have never resigned from Infinity Ward. Ouch.

Activision have yet to make a comment about this, but if they do we’ll be sure to post it here.

Originally Activision sacked the studio heads for insubordination, which prompted class-action lawsuits, counter-suits and the establishment of a new studio called “Respawn Entertainment” by the ex-Activision men, West & Zampella.

Now, stories have been coming of more employees leaving Infinity Ward. Two more people have announced their departure from Infinity Ward today. Messerly is an employee who had been with IW since day 1. The other employee, Grisby, was the inspiration and voice actor for the CoD 4 character, Staff Sergeant Griggs. This brings the total body count to 13 as of today.

This doesn’t look good for the Call of Duty developers, as there is nothing worse for a software company then to hemorrhage staff! Neither Respawn, Infinity Ward or Activision have made public statements as of yet.

Lead designers Zied Reike and Steve Fukuda, as well as programmer Rayme Vinson have left for the new studio, called Respawn Entertainment (the irony is delicious there), where the plan is currently to develop a new game and try to get the “Modern Warfare” monicker from the clutches of Activisions’ legal staff.

Take a look at the below.

What they don’t play up is the crazy price the maps are going to cost when released.

Video below.