CROW'S NEST

How Raven Software became kings of COD after vanishing from view

- Jeremy Peel

ACTIVISION WAS SITTING ATOP ITS NEW CALL OF DUTY EMPIRE, AND RAVEN WAS TO BE ITS SCAFFOLDING

Putting out a Wolfenstein game ought to be the highlight of any developer’s career. It was the making of MachineGames and Gray Matter Interactive, which became the backbone of Treyarch after Return to Castle Wolfenstein—not to mention id Software, whose tribute to a prison-break game launched the FPS genre.

But for Raven Software, it was a disaster. There was nothing wrong with the game, as such: Wolfenstein (2009) is a perfectly serviceable shooter, with an arsenal of impossible weapons built for colorful Nazi evisceration. But it was also a doggedly faithful sequel to Gray Matter’s Return to Castle Wolfenstein, and by that time the b-movie blankness of BJ Blazkowicz seemed terribly old-fashioned. The eight years between the two games had seen Halo, Half-Life 2, and Bioshock—a sea change in the sophistication of first-person adventures. Beyond a surface-level nod to City 17 with a train station opening, Raven had simply failed to learn the lessons of its peers. Wolfenstein shifted a meager 17,000 copies on PC in its first 12 days on sale, and layoffs followed.