The user interface has become a hotbed of frustration and discussion among Call of Duty players. Fans of the franchise are getting tangled up in the web of Infinity Ward’s new menu system for its flagship title, Modern Warfare 2. It begs the question, what steps is Infinity Ward taking to improve these features? Here’s the scoop.
For the past 3 years, experienced television seniors, directors, and trainers have been hired for Infinity Ward’s UI/UX department, despite the expansion of the team and their talents throughout development, leaving gamers behind. Lost Call of Duty Navigating Modern Warfare 2’s Dark UI and UX Systems; a confusing mess that goes against the intuitive menu layouts established by previous Call of Duty titles.
The user interface (UI) and user experience (UX) play an important role in the game and the execution in general, since they serve as a great tool to evaluate the quality of a product. However, due to some internal disparity between departments, which complicates instructions and workflows, it has produced the results that many players now see. The issue was pushed internally for discussion, and some flags were raised before release describing the UI as ‘difficult and invasive to design targets’ The user interface tends to directly impact gameplay, and without an emphasis on particular features, it can make or break the player’s experience.
Renewing the Call of Duty interface
With the introduction of Warzone and Call of Duty: Mobile, it signaled a slight shift towards Activision’s desire to revamp Call of Duty’s interfaces to a more modern screen optimized for content discovery and storage.
They sought out that talent and opened up hundreds of UI/UX/Engineering positions to hire, bringing in experts from Hulu and Microsoft.
Design reviews are always polarizing and complicated, as the UI/UX team is often a forum for several other important departments including art, design, QA, marketing, and more.
The results mostly come down to time, coordination, and working from home. In a conversation with an associate, it was mentioned that there will be a UI/UX overhaul for the future of Modern Warfare 2 and Warzone 2.0,
“it’s a work in progress, there are a lot of moving parts […] updates have been underway.”
Seemingly a more piecemeal approach to refining the UI/UX in stages, rather than at release. Various departments continue to work collaboratively to improve the user interface and additional interfaces for Season 1 and beyond.
