10/20/08
PC Multiplayer BETA Update

We're rapidly approaching the PC BETA, and as such I wanted to lay out a few key features to the PC version of CoD:WW, and what ramifications it will have on the PC BETA.

First, the entire key authentication / master server paradigm is changing for the first time in a Call of Duty PC title. In CoD:WW, you will be authenticating in-game against a more global master server. This server will keep track of and maintain unique Profile names (like a screenname) which will be tied to your CD Key. So while username / passwords will not be required to play our game, you will have globally unique profile names.

Why are we doing this? Because also for the first time ever in a Call of Duty PC title, we're bringing Friends and Invites (which are typically console staples) to the PC. So we have built-in Friends functionality. You can add friends, filter your servers by Friends (see which servers your friends are playing in), join their servers, etc. You can also invite any online friends to come join you in your current game. We didn't want the new Squad mechanics we've developed to get watered down on the PC, which is ultimately why we decided to bring you Friends & Invites, and thus globally unique profile names.

Now we understand that clan tags can change frequently, and it would be obnoxious and not very user friendly to keep changing your profile name. So we've added in clan tag prefixes, which will show up in-game. This should allow you to take full advantage of our Friends & Invites features, and still be able to make yourself more uniquely identifiable in-game.

So what does this have to do with the BETA?

You will be required to enter a CD Key for the BETA, much like you will when you get the full game this November. These PC keys will be available to all registered users of CallOfDuty.com, including any new users who sign up after the PC BETA releases. These keys aren't intended to limit the BETA to a certain number of players; they are here to allow...

Here is story reported in NY Times ...

February 19, 2008
Video Games
A Company Looks to Its Creative Side to Regain What It Had Lost
By SETH SCHIESEL

The great purveyors of modern mass entertainment — Walt Disney, Sumner Redstone, Ahmet Ertegun, Rupert Murdoch — have all known about the push-me, pull-you relationship between art and commerce. Give artists too free a rein, and they will come up with critically acclaimed statements that no one outside the Upper West Side or Laurel Canyon will buy. Hand over creative control to the bean counters and you end up with tepid, overly focus-tested disasters like “Waterworld.”

As the video game industry cricks its neck and stretches through the growing pains of what is now an $18 billion pop culture behemoth, it is now facing many of the same questions that confronted Hollywood, Burbank and Motown in decades past: how to enable and foster creative talent while also building a seriously big business.

In recent years bellwethers like Electronic Arts have come to treat the process of game making as a virtual factory: X dollars invested in graphics technology combined with Y dollars in marketing resources should yield Z return on investment. At Electronic Arts creative talent has recently been reduced to a mere ingredient in an M.B.A.’s financial soup.

It hasn’t worked. Electronic Arts, once known for its bold vision, has stagnated both creatively and financially, reduced to churning out an uninspiring litany of sports sequels and run-and-shoot knockoffs. As the annual Game Developers Conference convenes in San Francisco this week, it beholds a diminished Electronic Arts, which has been surpassed as the industry leader by Activision, a company that has grown by acquiring and empowering decentralized creative teams like those making the hit Guitar Hero and Call of Duty series. Activision is in the process of merging with Blizzard Entertainment, the brilliant force behind the globe-spanning Diablo, StarCraft and Warcraft franchises.

But now Electronic Arts is