Sledgehammer Gear Grinder Introduction:

Sledgehammer Games, Inc. is a US-based video game development company that was established in 2009 by Glen Schofield and Michael Condrey. Prior to founding the company, both Schofield and Condrey had worked at Visceral Games and were notably involved in creating the game Dead Space. The company is headquartered in Foster City, California, and has been actively involved in the development of various titles within the Call of Duty series.

Schofield and Condrey had previously collaborated at Electronic Arts in 2005, working on the game 007: From Russia with Love, with Condrey as the director and Schofield as the executive producer. This collaboration continued with the development of Dead Space. These two individuals possessed complementary skills and shared similar backgrounds, both coming from middle-class families with fathers involved in the construction industry.

Gameplay:

In July 2009, Sledgehammer Games was founded, and shortly thereafter, Schofield and Condrey presented a proposal to Activision. They proposed to replicate their success with Dead Space by creating a third-person spin-off of the Call of Duty franchise. After some deliberation, Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick decided to bring Sledgehammer Games under the Activision umbrella. Schofield and Condrey saw this as an opportunity to maintain their company's creative culture, development methods, and staff while benefiting from the security of aligning with the industry's largest publisher.

Sledgehammer Games devoted approximately six to eight months in 2009 to develop a prototype for the Call of Duty project, which featured about 15 minutes of gameplay. This project aimed to expand the franchise into the action-adventure genre. However, during this time, a legal dispute between Infinity Ward, the studio behind the Modern Warfare franchise, and its co-founders led to their departure from the company. They brought several Infinity Ward employees with them to their new venture, leaving Activision with limited staff and a shortened timeline to complete the next game in the Call of Duty franchise, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3. Consequently, Activision requested that Sledgehammer Games halt development on the third-person shooter and collaborate with Infinity Ward instead.

This collaboration posed a significant gamble for both parties. Activision entrusted a studio that had not yet released a game independently, while Sledgehammer Games abandoned weeks of work in their familiar genre to undertake a demanding schedule within the franchise. Nevertheless, Sledgehammer Games sought the unanimous approval of its staff and accepted the challenge. Looking back, the success of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 overshadowed the risk the studio took.

The collaboration with Infinity Ward marked the first instance of a co-development relationship producing a Modern Warfare title, with both companies' logos featured on the packaging. Despite their differing histories and development approaches, this partnership was described as a rare symbiotic relationship for such a high-profile game by GamesTM magazine. The two teams met in the spring of 2010 to exchange ideas, finding some common ground, including setting the game in Europe and delivering a satisfying conclusion to the story that had been unfolding over the previous four years.

Final Words:

In February 2014, it was officially announced that Sledgehammer Games would develop a Call of Duty title slated for release in 2014, later revealed to be Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare. The game's release date was confirmed for November 4, 2014.

On April 21, 2017, Sledgehammer Games and Activision unveiled their next Call of Duty game, titled Call of Duty: WWII, which was released on November 3, 2017.

In February 2018, Glen Schofield and Michael Condrey departed from Sledgehammer Games but continued to work with Activision. In December 2018, Condrey left Activision to join 2K Games in the Bay Area with 31st Union, while Schofield left to establish Striking Distance.