Robert Bowling, creative strategist for the Call of Duty franchise and the face of Infinity Ward, announced today that he will be departing from Infinity Ward and Activision.
“Today, I resign from my position as Creative Strategist of Call of Duty, as a lead of Infinity Ward, and as an employee of Activision,” Bowling wrote in a tweet earlier today.
Since Call of Duty 4, Bowling has more or less been the face of Infinity Ward’s titles, especially after the departure of founders Jason West and Vince Zampella, so his sudden departure comes as a bit of a surprise. Bowling did not offer a reason for his departure, either, so all we can do is guess at why he is moving on.
Shortly after Bowling made the announcement, Activision sent out an official statement on the departure to press outlets, but the statement does not shed on any light as to why Bowling is leaving.
Here is what Activision had to say: “We sincerely thank Robert for his many years of service. He’s been a trusted and valued member of the Infinity Ward team. We wish him all the best on his decision to pursue future opportunities.”
We here at team bRos think that there are a numerous amount of reasons why he would have left, especially because he tweeted the following in reply to someone:
“@deantak It’s the year of change Dean. Big budgets are no longer necessary for amazing gameplay experiences. Time to reconnect to our roots.”
This makes us think that he could have left for any of the following reasons:
- What the Call of Duty franchise has become, and not so much what it use to be. Especially when it comes to creating the “same” game every year (2 different developers) and milking money from all the paying customers when it comes to map packs and much more.
- Creative differences.
- The numerous issues with the game; bugs, glitches, weapon issues, network code and much more. though I doubt he cared much about these.
- The numerous issues with the Elite service and more especially the website and features such as clan operations taking months (too long) to launch.
Whatever the reasons may be, we at least thank him for his hard work at the times which he did so while at Infinity Ward and for the Call of Duty franchise fans. We wish him the best for his future.