Chance Glasco, one of the co-founders of Infinity Ward and creators of the Call of Duty franchise, has claimed that Activision once pressured the studio to include an invasion of Israel by Iran.
This came after Call of Duty gameplay footage was used in a video released by the White House X account, showing a character calling in a Kill Streak before a montage of real-world military bombing footage. Explosions shown in the video are presented alongside ‘+100’ point indicators, echoing kills using killstreaks in Call of Duty games.
In response to this video, Glasco wrote on his personal social media account: “This doesn’t surprise me. I remember after Activision took over post-Respawn formation there was a very awkward pressure from Activision for us to make the next CoD about Iran attacking Israel. Luckily the vast majority of our devs were disgusted by the idea and it got shot down.”
He would further elaborate on this, in a response to social media reactions to the same White House video. In one tweet, Glasco claims: “A lot of us devs were appalled because it felt like political propaganda being pushed by Activision.”
When asked why depictions of an Iranian invasion of Israel felt like political propaganda, while fictional military depictions in other countries like the UK and Mexico were okay, Glasco elaborated on his stance. He said: “My point is that the government would happily use entertainment, including video games, as a way to sway public opinion on major issues. There have been decades of pressure for a war with Iran across multiple administrations. The scenarios you mentioned, not so much.”
Glasco claims that during his tenure at Infinity Ward, no locations were chosen for political reasons. “My entire time at Infinity Ward (CoD1 through CoD:Ghosts) none of our story choices were motivated by the desire to create any type of propaganda to promote any conflicts,” he said. When asked about the infamous Modern Warfare 2 No Russian mission, in which civilians are shot in an airport and the player encouraged to join in, Glasco wrote: “With Early CoDs we wanted to often remind people that war is hell and not just a video game. If you play the earlier IW CoDs you’ll definitely see that throughout the series. We wanted players to feel disgust and we purposefully sought to make them actually feel bad for war.”
This is not the first time the US government has used video games as part of their social media strategy. Halo was used as part of promotion of ICE, the domestic immigration enforcement agency, to the outrage of some original developers. It also used the original Pokémon show theme to promote the Department of Homeland Security. In a statement to journalist Alyssa Mercante, a White House spokesperson stated it was “hugely popular” with gamers.
Eurogamer has contacted Activision for comment.
