Call of Duty Devs Angered by God of War Voice Actor’s Comment

Call of Duty devs bite back after a God of War voice actor performs a drive-by comment of the latest sequel to the popular FPS franchise.

A recent comment made by God of War voice actor Christopher Judge, has stirred the hornet’s nest for Call of Duty developers - both past and present. In his recent live appearance and speech, delivered at the annual The Game Awards, Christopher Judge included a dig at the most recent Call of Duty game’s campaign.

Judge’s appearance and speech at The Game Awards served as a prelude to his role; presenting Neil Newbon with the ‘Best Performance Award’ for the latter’s stellar performance as Astarion in the 2023 global hit Baldur’s Gate 3.

“I’m not going to stand up here, making long speeches. I’m going to stick to the script. No eight-minute speech like last year. But fun fact, my speech was actually longer than this year’s Call of Duty campaign.”

The first part of this segment references Judge’s previous appearance at The Game Awards, in 2022. There, he received the ‘Best Performance Award’ himself for his performance as Kratos in God of War: Ragnarok. However, the second portion of the transcript is where the Call of Duty developers took issue.

Moreover, the joke landed relatively well, with some shocked gasps, but overall barely concealed grins at the dig towards Activision. Judge, meanwhile, was not fazed by the reaction to his comment. ‘Another company I’ll never work for,’ he shrugs.

However, surprisingly, the ones to take the most offense were the developers of Call of Duty, both past and present. Not Activision themselves, who earlier on during the development of Modern Warfare 3, had even taken jokes at their own expense for the numerous leaks that had emerged during development.

Call of Duty Developers Rise Up in Arms

Former Call of Duty developer (now senior systems designer at Bungie) Ajinkya Limaye, went on record to reply. “Funny” he shot back, in quotation marks. ‘But yeah, the metrics that Call of Duty absolutely destroys all of the God of War games (probably combined tbh) in is also equally laughable (if not more).’

Then, associate art director of fellow Call of Duty studio Treyarch, Nelson Plumey, blasted as well in the same direction. ‘Imagine having short user engagement once your game is consumed. Can’t relate,’ they said.

Lastly, Darcy Sandall, an expert engineer for Call of Duty developer, Sledgehammer Games, spoke out in a much more reasonable response to Judge’s comment.

‘Honestly, as Call of Duty developers, we’ve heard way worse. But we don’t expect it from a peer, at an event that was supposed to be celebrating this year’s achievements in gaming. Especially with all the information that was leaked about its development,’ he said.

Since the news broke, the developers have all deleted their incendiary tweets, with some apologizing for their in-the-heat-of-the-moment response, while others shrugged it off as an attempt at a reply joke that had landed badly.

Call of Duty Development Hell

Sandall’s response references recent issues that the Activision crew underwent as they worked on developing the latest sequel to their franchise. With the game originally conceived as a mere expansion to 2022’s Modern Warfare 2, developer Activision made the decision to instead develop it into a full standalone entry to the franchise, entitled Modern Warfare 3.

As expected, the game received extremely negative reviews and the reception was even tainted prior to its release, thanks to numerous leaks during the development process. Adding to this, reports also indicated that on top of pushing for the content to serve as a full standalone entry, Activision also served their developers with a rushed schedule that saw the game produced in 18 months instead of their usual 3 year process.

This understandably embittered the developers, who were forced to deliver an underworked product that was promptly spat back at them in the form of warranted criticism (however misdirected).

Conclusion

For now, the majority of onlookers appear to share Judge’s sentiments. While the response from the developers (to a degree) is warranted, it is unfortunately directed in the wrong direction. Not only is Call of Duty a very different franchise to God of War, it was also not Christopher Judge who pushed for an unfinished product to hit the global market shelves.

Credit: Christopher Judge, Game Awards AND Modern Warfare 3

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