Infinity Ward wants to accommodate all play styles in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, including campers; not all maps are 3-lanes

A big goal for Infinity Ward in developing Call of Duty: Modern Warfare was ensuring that all play styles are accommodated and can be useful, rather than designing the game in a way that forces everyone to play a certain way. 

Infinity Ward’s MP Design Director Joe Cecot discussed how they felt as if the last few Call of Duty titles has swayed away from what the original Modern Warfare series did by offering players a choice of how they want to play the game. The new titles have almost forced players into a ‘run and gun’ style of gameplay, and restricted some other types of gameplay in the franchise. 

With Modern Warfare, they’re going back to allowing and building maps in a way that lets all players play how they want too. Run and gunners still are rewarded, but now there’s verticality in maps such that snipers can set up a nest, campers can camp if they want, and the game is not restricting any play style. 

Are campers annoying? Sure, but this game feels much more tactical in general, so there’s another element to how you play Modern Warfare versus past Call of Duty games. 

One thing you will notice in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare is that the studio has steered away from making every single map in the game a 3 lane style map. 

Infinity Ward’s Design Director, Geoff Smith, was one of the people responsible for developing the maps in Call of Duty 4 and Modern Warfare 2. He mentioned that 3 lane maps are not very realistic in how they wanted to make this game, and as such, have taken on the more traditional Call of Duty style maps.