"Call of Duty" was created to be better than "Medal of Honor" and insult EA. The game franchise would not have existed if EA had not gotten pushy back in the past.
Infinity Ward and Respawn co-founder Vince Zampella spoke to IGN in an interview about the early days of their current video game. He revealed that his crew created it to spite EA and the video game they created for them in the past.
Zampella revealed that he was once a member of a studio called 2015 Inc, which was the creator for the 2002 release of "Medal of Honor: Allied Assault." During this year, it became one of the most successful military first person games. EA wanted to make sure that the franchise's future by bringing in 2015 Inc in-house for this.
Many gamers and people involved in the gaming industry know that EA used to be very pushy when it came to acquisitions. Some games that tried to get under the game company did not survive, unlike BioWare that became popular with their IPs.
Zampella said that 2015 Inc did not like what the game company did, which was an attempt to force their team to join EA. This is the reason why they went to Activision instead and joined them to create a new IP.
When the old 2015 Inc team jumped to Activision, they founded the new Infinity Ward and created "Call of Duty." He revealed that they wanted to create a video game that was better than the one from EA. They also wanted to spite EA for being too pushy with them.
The new franchise that Infinity Ward created overpowered EA's game franchise right away, due to the interactivity and gameplay it had. They could not compete with what Infinity Ward created at Activision.
The game franchise might have not even existed if not for EA's forcefulness in the past. According to Destructoid, if Infinity Ward's game franchise did not overpower "Medal of Honor" in its prime, EA would not have struggled to invest on DICE's "Battlefield" game franchise.
Currently, "Call of Duty" is one of the most popular brands in the gaming industry. "Battlefield 1" is getting great reviews and it is looking like it might become a real challenger against Infinity Ward's latest creation, "Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare."
Check out Infinity Ward behind the scenes 2016 video below: