sledgehammer posts

With today's launch of Call of Duty Black Ops to stores and online, Activision's first person shooter franchise has moved into the 1960's as a setting after several WWII shooters and two games set in the present. So will one of the next games in the series be set in the future?

That's what Gamasutra is suggesting in a new article about the franchise. One of the three studios that is making new Call of Duty games for Activision is Sledgehammer Games, formed in 2009. The article claims, " ... industry sources say Sledgehammer's Call of Duty will be set in the future and feature, for lack of a better term, space Marines ... " Treyarch, the team behind Call of Duty Black Ops, will likely be making a new game in the series as will Infinity Ward even though its founders and a number of its team members either left or were fired earlier this year.

Publisher Activision is determined to expand its massively successful Call of Duty franchise and one of the ways the company is doing that is putting a third developer in charge of making a game in the series. Adding to Infinity Ward and Treyarch is the newly launched Sledgehammer Games division. However it was previously announced that the Call of Duty game Sledgehammer was making would be an "action-adventure" title.

Now it looks like that may be premature. A job listing on Gamasutra specifically states that Sledgehammer Games is recruiting people to work on its "Call of Duty FPS development team." Unless they plan to put in some adventure game elements it doesn't sound like this new title will deviate very far from the normal Call of Duty game.

A lot of gaming news web sites (us included) had fun with the recent official announcement of Activision's new internal development studio Sledgehammer Games. Now the Northern California-based studio has more than just a press release. It has a whole new web site to attract people who might want to join their team.

Their careers web page may offer up some hints on their still unannounced first game. It looks like some of the job listings are calling for people with "Serious passion for Shooters, Console or PC." Others ask for multiplayer experience for PCs as well. It sounds like the studio won't be a console-only team which in our eyes is a good thing. Our guess for their first title? A Zhu Zhu Pets shooter (Ok, not really).