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Hit List Q&A: Treyarch head Mark Lamia
In the "Hit List" from the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences, the video game industry's top talents describe their current gaming addictions, their most anticipated releases and more. This week: Mark Lamia, head of Treyarch. At Treyarch, Mark Lamia leads a studio with more than 250 world-class developers who have created some of the biggest hits in gaming, including Call of Duty: Black Ops and Call of Duty: Black Ops 2, which continue to rank as two of the best-selling and most-played console games in history. Lamia is a 20-year veteran in the industry who worked his way up from the ground floor in both the development and studio-side publishing organizations within Activision. Prior to Treyarch, he worked with numerous development teams to create and oversee some of Activision's most successful games and franchises, including Call of Duty since its inception. At the 2015 D.I.C.E. Summit Lamia will be speaking on "Treyarch's Zombies: Following the Fun to Win Hearts ... and Brains." Treyarch broke the mold with their inclusion of Zombies in Call of Duty: World at War, creating a wholly new co-op experience for the Call of Duty franchise. Join Lamia as he explores the highly unorthodox development process behind Zombies, as well as the incredibly unique creative dialogue that the studio has with its global audience of Zombies fans.
Black Ops 2 artisans discuss ... Black Ops 2
Trent Reznor, David S. Goyer, and a duo of Treyarch dudes want you to know what they put into Black Ops 2. They also want you to hear an extremely short clip of the Reznor-composed theme song to the game, apparently, as this trailer only allows a teensy bit before cutting off. Blast!
Lamia says Black Ops 2 visuals a priority, downplays age of engine
At this point, a portion of the current conversation surrounding Black Ops 2 is in regards to the engine powering it, version 3.0 of the Infinity Ward (IW) engine – IW 3.0 powered Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, Call of Duty: World at War and the original Black Ops. If you're worried the visuals in Black Ops 2 won't be up to snuff, Treyarch head Mark Lamia assures us all the engine has seen numerous tweaks, downplaying its age in a recent audio interview summed up over on One of Swords.Lamia said "a pretty significant amount of work" in Black Ops 2 is going into the graphics and the lighting. "I think what people are asking for is for us to push. They want us to make a better-looking game; they want things. I don't think those are things people can't ask for. We asked ourselves that very same question - we wanted to advance the graphics. I think the questions are valid. The answer may not need to be an entirely new engine, but you might need to do an entire overhaul of your entire lighting system. The trick is, we're not willing to do that if we can't keep it running at 60 frames per second - but we did that this time."Lamia gave an analogy akin to remodeling a home – not with a rocket launcher, but rather he talked about sectioning off parts of the metaphorical house for more local improvements. "There's a lot of good still in that foundation that you wouldn't get rid of, and we don't. We look to advance in the areas that support our game design. Engines, each time they get touched, they change. The creators alter them; they don't modify what they don't need to, and then they alter what they need to. You can't make a competitive product if you're not upgrading that engine along the way."
From the VGAs Red Carpet: Treyarch's Mark Lamia
With Infinity Ward's studio heads on the outs with Activision, it was up to Treyarch to take over the Call of Duty series, and according to fan reception, it did exactly that. "The response that I've gotten," Treyarch head Mark Lamia tells us, "is that people are happy with the game." But he says during VGA's red carpet event that it was never about competition among Activision's studios. "We've just got to stay focused on what we want, what we're making and our own creative, and that's really the best way to do your best work." Now that it's become the Call of Duty heir apparent, what's next for Treyarch? "First thing we're doing," says Lamia, " is we're still working on Black Ops." Lamia promises Treyarch is listening to the community and will be responsive in tuning the game and providing new content. "So everyone who bought and is investing their time in Black Ops, they can expect that that's just how we work." Lamia says Treyarch is in fact "a Call of Duty studio as far as anyone is concerned." World at War's Zombies mode had a successful life on the iPhone, and we asked if Treyarch was considering trying to replicate that success with Black Ops. Lamia says he trusts developers Ideaworks to do a good job on a sequel if that's what they choose to do, but "it's not a question of can we do it or is it good to do it, it's really about focus. Right now we are just focused on the PC and console skus that were just launched. There's millions of people playing every day, and we're focused on supporting that."
Call of Duty: Black Ops getting 'brand new zombie experiences'
Treyarch has finally decided to unveil "one of the most anticipated features and worst kept secrets" in Call of Duty: Black Ops -- Zombies. "Zombies have been such a hit with our community that we were committed to bringing brand new zombie experiences to Call of Duty: Black Ops," studio head Mark Lamia said. The mode will once again pit four co-op partners against wave after wave of encroaching undead, joining the new "Combat Training" mode which features up to six person co-op against enemy AI. Four of the zombie-based maps from Call of Duty: World at War are being remade for Black Ops and will be packed in with the Prestige and Hardened editions of the game. The release doesn't detail how many maps the mode will be getting in total, or how much the aforementioned remakes will cost folks who don't purchase the Prestige or Hardened editions, but we've reached out to Activision for clarification.
Treyarch combating trade-ins by supporting Black Ops multiplayer
Developers and publishers have gone to some pretty drastic measures to prevent having their new products put through the Gamestop wash, such as EA's Project Ten Dollar, or Ubisoft's highly controversial "Pre-Owned Smart Bomb," which, upon sensing a player's intent to trade a game in, destroys his or her entire city. However, according to Treyarch's Mark Lamia, the developer hopes to combat resales of Call of Duty: Black Ops by making its multiplayer component positively unquittable. "We're going to support the hell out of Black Ops," Lamia recently explained to MCV. "That will be our focus post-release: making sure we keep our fans engaged, and hopefully as a result, they'll want to keep playing our game and won't want to trade it in." A noble goal, but people really love trading in their games, guys. We're afraid of how things might escalate if Treyarch fights to keep their wavering attention. "No, wait, don't go," they might say, "now the game has dinosaurs!"
Call of Duty: Black Ops to feature the voices of Gary Oldman and Ed Harris
Activision has revealed actors Gary Oldman and Ed Harris as two of the main voices for characters in Call of Duty: Black Ops. Oldman will be reprising his role from Call of Duty: World at War, where he played Russian Red Army squad leader Viktor Reznov, and Harris is lending his voice to CIA operative Jason Hudson (said to be "one of the game's main characters"). Additionally, Batman film writer David S. Goyer is offering "script consultation and story development support" on Black Ops, presumably offering suggestions like "make the main character's voice darker, more gravelly." Treyarch studio head Mark Lamia said of the announcement, "Their contributions have helped us to push the boundaries of our story telling and character development far beyond anything we have ever attempted before in the franchise." Does that mean this time we'll understand what's going on? We can only hope.
Call of Duty: Black Ops to feature dedicated PC servers
In a recent interview with UK gaming mag PC Zone, Treyarch head Mark Lamia announced that Call of Duty: Black Ops -- unlike the last Call of Duty game on PC -- will feature dedicated servers for PC players. "I think dedicated servers are excellent. I don't see any reason not to see them unless ... well, I just don't see any reason not to," Lamia responded when asked about Black Ops' PC iteration, reports CVG. Covering his bases (and likely not trying to insult Infinity Ward's reasoning behind not supporting dedicated servers), Lamia added, "We do work very hard to reconcile the desire to manipulate and modify those dedicated servers with offering them the persistent experience and benefits that the console system provides ... so people can run dedicated servers and also participate in the communal experience the console players get to have, given they're all on first-party servers." And with that, it would seem that Treyarch will give us a chance to officially leap through the air while raining an unlimited supply of explosives on the ground below us when the game arrives this November. Hooray?
Joystiq interviews Mark Lamia of Treyarch and Call of Duty the Fifth
Mark Lamia with all the games he's worked on. After having a good look at Call of Duty: World at War, we decided to hurl some questions at developer Treyarch's studio head, Mark Lamia. Find out what we learned from the guy who has worked on everything from CoD5 to Santa Fe Mysteries: The Elk Moon Murder, after the break!
