Infinity Ward kept pretty darn tight-lipped about their progress with Modern Warfare 2. In fact, they didn’t even tell Activision, the franchise’s publisher, until development for the long-awaited sequel was well underway. But that’s just because they didn’t care what Activision had to say about the game.
Says IW community manager Robert Bowling, “We know the game we want to make, and especially with Modern Warfare 2, we didn’t even show Activision the game until very much later in the development process. Because we want to stay focused, really the only opinion we care about is what our fans think.”
Rather than use the publisher as a conduit to the fans, Infinity Ward engaged with their audience directly, using technology like Facebook and Twitter to collect feedback and ideas for the new game. At the end of the day, Bowling said this was the best way to engage with the sizeable Modern Warfare fanbase, “That’s really what’s important, our relationship with us and our fans, and not so much us and Activision, or us and retailers or anything like that.”
