Treyarch producer Jason Blundell has apologized for the recent incident where Call of Duty‘s Twitter account was used to livetweet a fake terrorist attack.
“Here’s my view–and again, I’m a simple director and not involved in the marketing at all,” he told IGN. “However, it was absolutely not done for any kind of attention in any way. It was not done maliciously, or as any kind of scare tactic. I personally am very sorry for anyone who looked at it and got the wrong idea because it genuinely wasn’t meant that way.”
In late September, the official Call of Duty account was modified to make it look like an account that reports real-world news. Following a series of innocuous tweets, it began sending out messages about a terrorist attack in Singapore. This culminated in a tweet reading, “This was a glimpse into the future fiction of #BlackOps3.” The account has since returned to its standard Call of Duty name and branding.
While Activision appeared to be going for a sort of War of the Worlds-style marketing campaign for the game, there was an extremely negative backlash in the wake of the tweets.
“It was done on our channel, and it was to talk about the fiction of the world,” Blundell continued. “I think we were as shocked as everybody else when it started blowing up, because essentially we were teeing up ready for a story beat. So again, very sorry for anyone who took it that way. It wasn’t meant that way at all–it was supposed to just be getting ready for a campaign element.”
Activision has still not commented on the incident. We’ve reached out to the company but have not yet received any response.
Only the current-gen and PC versions of Black Ops III feature a campaign mode; it’s been dropped from the Xbox 360 and PS3 versions due to technical constraints. Blundell tells GameSpot in a new interview that he supports the decision, though he thinks story needs to remain a key part of Call of Duty.
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