In a new interview, development veteran and Sledgehammer Games co-founder Michael Condrey (Dead Space, Call of Duty: WWII) has detailed how a decision on a development partner to handle the PC port of 2002’s 007 Nightfire could have had huge ramifications on the actual existence of the Call of Duty franchise as we know it today. Condrey discussed the matter with writer Cade Onder during the production of a documentary the latter has produced on the making of 2011’s Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3.
Back around the early 2000s, Condrey spent eight years working at EA on a number of James Bond games – as a producer on The World Is Not Enough, Agent Under Fire, and Nightfire, and later in a development director role on Everything or Nothing and From Russia With Love.
“GoldenEye sits on this pedestal, as you know, right?” Condrey began. “Arguably one of the greatest, most transcendent shooters on console. And so we were working on the sequel to that, The World Is Not Enough, and from there we continued to build out experiences.
“Eventually in the series order we were working on a title called Nightfire. We were looking for a PC developer. Now this would’ve been 2001, 2002. We were shopping the game for PC developers who could come in and take our console game – we were focussed on consoles at that time – and deliver a PC version. And there were several interesting PC developers we talked to; one of them happened to be Vince [Zampella] and Jason [West].”
At this time, Zampella and West were part of Oklahoma-based developer 2015, Inc., the studio behind 2002’s highly esteemed Medal of Honor: Allied Assault, published by EA.
“They presented us 2015,” said Condrey. “They were shopping for their next gig; they needed funding. They pitched to do [007 Nightfire] PC. I still have Vince’s card, God rest his soul.”
However, EA ultimately partnered with Gearbox to handle the PC version of 007 Nightfire, which was received very poorly and went on to earn an unenviable reputation as an infamously terrible PC port. Despite the significant critical and commercial success of Medal of Honor: Allied Assault, EA opted to bring the Medal of Honor franchise in-house and ended its relationship with 2015, Inc. Resultingly, a number of key personnel from 2015, Inc. – including Zampella and West – accepted a deal from Activision that led to the founding of Infinity Ward and the establishment of the Call of Duty series. Had 2015, Inc. been hired to take on the 007 Nightfire port at that time, Condrey is uncertain that things would have played out the same way.
“[2015, Inc.] wanted the game,” he said. “They wanted the game, and we went with a different PC developer. And you want to talk about a weird multiverse… we met with them, walked through the process, did the due diligence; had we hired Vince and Jason and 2015 to do James Bond PC, who knows what? That’s a weird moment.”
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Condrey would go on to leave EA in the wake of his work on the original Dead Space, and in November 2009 he founded Sledgehammer Games with his former Visceral Games colleague Glen Schofield. Sledgehammer Games would later partner with Infinity Ward for 2011’s Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3.
“It’s kind of a funny story of just all the creative decisions and business decisions that led to them starting Call of Duty and, of course, us joining with them on MW3,” said Condrey.
