Why Modern Warfare 2 Does Not Have Co-op

Some Call of Duty fans might be disappointed that Modern Warfare 2 is dropping the co-op that was in World at War, but developer Infinity Ward thinks it’s for the best.

While Treyarch brought the Call of Duty franchise into the “co-op age” with World at War‘s two-to-four player co-op modes on and offline, Infinity Ward’s Modern Warfare 2 won’t be sporting a co-op campaign mode in any shape or form. Why not, especially after World at War did it? Well, Infinity Ward says it’s just a matter of how their campaign is built.

“We don’t do co-op in our story because we’re crafting a very specific experience and we don’t want to ruin that by cramming co-op into it,” Infinity Ward’s Robert Bowling told VideoGamer. Story, Bowling explained, is “all about pacing,” and sometimes having more than one player in the mix can kill that pacing. Instead, Infinity Ward will “take the moments that work really well with co-op, we bring them out and we put them in Special Ops.”

Special Ops is a two-player co-op mode separate from the campaign that sets specific challenges for players and is meant to be endlessly replayabale. “It’s about playing over and over again, getting a better time – you’ll have a time at the end of it – it’s about challenging a friend going in on co-op and trying to beat it on Veteran,” Bowling explained.

The mode has been likened to the memorable Mile High Club mission that served as an epilogue for Call of Duty 4, which should get you interested, but why only two players instead of more? “Two player seemed to be the magic number for co-op,” Bowling said, a remark that clarifies even more the philosophical differences between his studio and Treyarch, which had four-player co-op online in World at War. “That’s when it stayed really fun and intense without becoming a clusterf**k of things. We just found that two players was the most fun.”