On October 28, 2023, the Call of Duty series will celebrate its 20th anniversary. Now with three core studios (and supporting studios) dedicated to keeping the annual release cycle rolling, it has become one of the most impressive and well-funded development projects on the planet, but the foundation of its success was laid by Infinity Ward, which, after developing the first two games in the franchise, decided that it wanted to create something truly special Infinity Ward was given time to create something special, and with 2007's Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, they created what is still one of the most iconic entries in the series.

It surpassed the series before it, especially in multiplayer, and one might say that the game has labored in its shadow ever since. The tone was radical, combined with a revision of the multiplayer that is still the model today.

"I have really fond memories of playing Call of Duty 1 multiplayer on PC," former Infinity Ward employee Mackey McCandlish said in a new interview with IGN. "Back then, we had 64+ players on a server playing Search and Destroy, our version of Counter-Strike. And once you die, you're done.

Infinity Ward felt that the first two games had created a multiplayer experience that competed with the genre's big guns; an interesting choice in the transition from "Call of Duty 2" to "4" that ultimately made a superior version of Counter-Strike We've given up on the idea that we're making a better version of Counter-Strike," McCandlish said. Players just want to play team deathmatch. Is there anything we can do to make team deathmatch something we would want to play, too?

The answer to this question became another fundamental element in Call of Duty: kill streaks. The solution was to find a way to garlic-soak players, to reward them for playing a little more, just as they would in a single-life mode like Counter-Strike. The way to do that is with killstreaks, where you can say, 'Hey, I got a couple of kills. There's a bit of a wager there.'"

I had never thought deeply about killstreaks, but McCandlish's reasoning immediately struck a chord: I had never thought deeply about killstreaks, but McCandlish's reasoning immediately struck a chord. Killstreaks are also overpowered in a way that makes sense, and many of them guarantee multiple kills, but only if the player has patience and a long-term game plan.

McCandlish recalls that before killstreaks, "there were no unlocks or anything," which has become an almost intolerable area of COD. But I remain a Counter-Strike aficionado, idly stroking the barrel of my golden AK-47.