Infinity Ward putting ‘a lot of effort’ to crack down on online abuse in Call of Duty

Infinity Ward’s Mark Rubin stated in an interview with Edge that they’re working hard to eliminate the online abuse within Call of Duty with their upcoming game, Ghosts.

Online abuse has been a big issue in any games, but it has taken a turn for the worst with Call of Duty. Just this year, David Vonderhaar – Design Director at Treyarch – received several death threats after he changed the sniper by 0.02 seconds. Rubin says developer have to stand their ground and stand by their decisions once its made.

“We have to stand our ground,” says Rubin. “We have to be designers. An interesting analogy would be as a parent – if the kids got their way on what they ate for dinner every night, it would be ice cream and cookies every night. We have to use our talents and abilities as designers to collect and interpret what the various community members are saying.”

“A lot of the time you’ll get one guy saying ‘I want blue weapons’ and another will say ‘I want red weapons.’ We can’t do both,” he continues. “We have to say neither of you are wrong or right. We‘re going to make that call – some guys will be upset if we do this, and someone else will be upset if we do that. We don’t let it drive us nuts.”

Rubin also talked about the fact that the online abuse that happens within game is something that needs to stop, but he acknowledges that its impossible to stop everyone.

“If you have 10 million plus people a day playing, we’re not going to get it 100 per cent and we’re not going to get every single person,” he says. “But it’s still something we put a lot of effort into, and that’s very important. Gaming is entertainment, y’know? This is not politics, I’m not curing cancer, I’m not doing anything important from that perspective. It’s supposed to be fun, and I severely dislike when people bring hate and anger into what is supposed to be a fun environment. I enjoy playing whether it’s losing or winning – I try to win, but I’m not a jerk about it, and I wish more players were like that. I don’t know what the answer is.”

Mark said that the most effective way to stop this abuse will be Sony/MSFT working together with IW to ban/remove as many players who do such things as possible.

SOURCE: Edge via COD_Online