IndustryGamers - Informing the Games Industry

Medal of Honor Team Looking to Bring Franchise 'Back into the Conversation'

Posted May 4, 2010 by James Brightman

On Wednesday, EA Games is preparing to unveil a brand-new trailer and announce a launch date for their “reboot” of Medal of Honor. Prior to the announcement, IndustryGamers had a chance to hop on the phone with the Medal of Honor team to get a sense of their priorities for rebirthing this franchise in the ultra competitive shooter market. On the call, we chatted with Greg Goodrich, executive producer on Medal of Honor, Richard Farrelly, senior creative director, and Kevin Hendrickson, senior development director.

We also conducted a separate interview with Frank Gibeau, head of the EA Games label, so please stay tuned for that. Here's our Medal of Honor team interview: 

Greg Goodrich: We’re kind of in that moment now where the game is completely stood up, it’s playable from beginning to end, and we’re just turning the crank right now. We're just getting every last bit of polish we can get into it before we ship this thing. We’re in a really good place; we are very happy with what we got, and the team is just cranking.

IG: I know [CEO] John Riccitiello has talked about how he has huge aspirations for the franchise as you guys are rebooting it now. With all the fallout with the Infinity Ward mess, as you look across at your rivals at Activision, do you feel like this is an even bigger opportunity for you now to really kind of jump start the shooter genre since they seem to be having problems over there? 

Goodrich: Well, the way we look at it is we have an opportunity, you know, full stop, meaning that opportunity here with rebooting this franchise, pulling it out of World War II into modern times. We feel we've got a great story to tell; our core tenets have always been about authenticity, respect for the soldier, honoring the soldier and telling the soldier’s story. And although we’ve moved it out of World War II and into modern times, those core tenets remain. And you know, it’s a historical fiction; it’s about a group of individuals that are in an event that actually happened, or inspired by events that actually happened. We feel regardless of what’s going on in the industry, with what we’ve got and the team we’ve built and the product we're getting ready to release this fall, our goal has always been to create a great experience, and to put Medal of Honor back at the forefront of this genre, where it once was, and we feel we’ve set ourselves up pretty good to do that, especially by employing a strategy of getting the game stood up and playable early on, and then putting the full force of the team on it at this point and just turning the crank and squeezing every last bit of polish out it as we can. 

Richard Farrelly: As far as our competitors... as far as what’s happening out there I mean, you know not only with the Infinity Ward guys, Respawn and Bungie, the three of us sitting in this room right now first and foremost are consumers of first-person shooters and we’re fans of this genre; it’s what we love and quite frankly we wish them the best of luck. Those guys create phenomenal projects that we consume, so more power to them.

IG: Bringing Medal of Honor into the modern era does make it more reminiscent of Call of Duty and Modern Warfare of course, and I think John Riccitiello had said something after seeing the massive entertainment launch and record breaking sales to the effect of, “I want that.” I think he sort of envisions that sort of blockbuster success for this reboot of Medal of Honor, like it could become the next Modern Warfare. Does that put a huge amount of pressure on you, on your team?

Goodrich: I’ll let Rich speak as well, but for us, what we want to do is create a great game for this franchise that we love. I’ve always been told, if you concentrate on the work, the rewards will come. If you concentrate on the rewards, you forget to do the work. So we’re concentrating on the work, and making it a great product, a great game that will fit and stand amongst the greatest shooters of this generation.

Farrelly: We’re not just concentrating on making this Medal of Honor great, the best game we can make, but we’re looking to the future to kind of just really bring the franchise back into the conversation in the long-term. So we’re building a strong team, we’re getting on the same tools, iterating on attack and looking ahead towards the next iterations... and if you look at those other teams, if you look out there in this marketplace, you’ll find that all the great shooters, all the great games quite frankly are made by teams that stick together, made by teams that iterate and turn the crank and move onto the next one and that’s what were setting ourselves up to do.

IG: Now that EA has such a close relationship with the guys that created Modern Warfare, given that Respawn has a publishing deal with EA, are you able to have conversations with Jason West and Vince Zampella, sort of pick their brains on ideas? Going forward, is that an asset that you view as sort of a wealth of knowledge?

Goodrich: I think that, the three of us also have a very long history of making shooters, and I think that any sort of force multiplier you can get within your organization is one thing; but they have their thing that they're going to do, and we certainly have our thing. We're very happy with our team, and I’ve been doing this for almost 20 years and Rich over here has been doing it for just as long, as well as Kevin. It’s been a long time with the Medal of Honor franchise; we have veterans on our team that have worked on every single Medal of Honor since its inception. We're real happy with our team, we’re fully confident in our abilities to make a great product. We think it's showing in the software, and we hope fans will see it and appreciate what’s going on; and as far as competition goes internally, you know Medal of Honor has always stood apart, it's always had its own tone, its own intent. So it doesn’t compete directly with Battlefield; they certainly do their own thing and they do it very well. We feel Medal of Honor certainly has its place in the ranks of the great shooters – as long as we deliver a quality game, and that’s our number one goal, to achieve quality and get it back to where it once was.

IG: You kind of addressed one of the questions I was going to ask you in terms of internal competition. With EA DICE and Battlefield, the new Medal of Honor and whatever Respawn does, it seems like a very crowded shooter market even internally for EA, but it seems like you’re pretty confident that they all can coexist and be successful... 

Goodrich: I think so, I really do. Again, as long as you show up with quality, and EA certainly has shown its commitment to this franchise; we 've got a fully-staffed team here in Los Angeles and a fully staffed team in Sweden at DICE working on multiplayer. That’s not necessarily the most economic way of doing things, but what it does show is Electronic Arts’ commitment to the franchise and getting it right. So again, this is a chance for us to, as Rich, my colleague said, our chance to get Medal of Honor back into the conversation amongst the great shooters.

IG: You guys are calling this a reboot, but is there anything in the game that's sort of reminiscent of the older Medal of Honor titles? Is there any kind of throwback here and there to fans of the older games? 

Goodrich: Absolutely, there are certain things that the Medal of Honor fan expects and quite frankly deserves, and there are certain things – not only little Easter eggs we’ve already put into our trailers – but game mechanics in the game itself, like peak-and-lean, going prone. All those things that Medal of Honor fans have appreciated in the past will continue, and actually there is an Easter egg and a nod to Medal of Honors gone by in the trailer coming out on Wednesday, so if you pay close attention you’ll see it and hear it. 

Hendrickson: Piggybacking on what Greg said, we do have people here from the Medal of Honors of the past. We’re constantly trying to make sure we’re giving the fans what they want – little winks, little nods here and there, so yeah, we’re always looking at that.

Farrelly: With Kevin in the room too, I’m going to give his due props. We’ve got a smaller, leaner team than normal, than what Medal of Honor has had in the past. We’ve got veterans, we’ve got experienced individuals and we’re much smaller than what we were in former Medal of Honors, and right now we haven’t hit that crunch phase you’d expect at this point – meaning that he’s planned it and scheduled it, and he’s pulled the puppet strings very well in that we’re really in a good place and we’re real excited. We’ve got our weekends, we're seeing our families at night, we’re just in a good place right now. And I think it’s showing in the product.

IG: Sounds good guys. Looking forward to seeing the final product!

James Brightman has been covering the games industry since 2003 and has been an avid gamer ever since the days of Atari and Intellivision. He was previously the EIC of GameDaily Biz.