Stephen Gaghan, the screenwriter behind highbrow movie hits such as Traffic and Syriana, is also penning the next Call of Duty game, Ghosts. But how does that work? Does he sit at home and bang out a script, or work in the Infinity Ward office as a member of the team? VG247 caught up with Chance Glasco, one of the Call of Duty animation crew, to find out.
"A lot of it is working with designers, and so it isn't just like he stays in a room and comes up with the entire story," Glasco explained. "He works with pretty much all the designers as kind of like the creative side of the story. Because we know games, and he knows stories, and [we use] his knowledge in the creative aspects of stories and our knowledge of gameplay."
"When you're developing a game, you've got designers on it who are just thinking of good mechanics, good gameplay ideas, good ideas for levels while you're simultaneously coming up with the story. The difference between movies and games is you have to make those work together," Glasco says. "The bottom line here, is the most important thing about making a game is making it fun. And if you can have an amazing story along the way as well, that's great. But you don't want your story to keep you from making something fun."
Call of Duty: Ghosts is out on November 5th for PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, PC and Wii U. PlayStation 4 and Xbox One versions will follow shortly after.