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I was at the Black Ops MP Reveal down in LA on September 1st, 2010 and was give the oppurinty to interview @pcdev about the PC SKU of Call of Duty: Black Ops...



Josh: Cesar thanks for doing this!

Cesar: You’re welcome my pleasure.


Josh: Dedis, first off everyone wants to know are they self-upload like World at War, or sort of like what EA did with Bad Company 2 with a trusted gsp?

Cesar: Excelent question, right out of the greatest hits. You just saw this presentation on multiplayer. My goal with this game is to give the pc community the entire game that the console guys get plus all the cool pc stuff that we as pc gamers need to have to make it feel like a pc title. Most of these new features in this game are predicated on having trusted servers, we are having a trusted server system as a matter of fact we are partnering with gameservers.com to be the exclusive provider for all of the Black Ops dedicated servers. These guys are big, they’re great and we’ve been working with them since world of war, they're going really big with this title, we're going to know on day one that there’s going to be a huge number of official servers for everyone to play on. We’re going to know every single one of our dedicated servers is going be running on top quality hardware on a great infrastructure that has great bandwidth. We're also going to know they're going to help us protect the integrity of the title. In addition, if you want to run your own server, you're going to be able to get a rank or unranked server from GamerServers at a great price


Josh: Mod tools, I’ve got to ask it, I know you’ve said before you aren’t sure what’s going to be in it, but I’ve got to ask, is there going to be a mapping ability?

Cesar: So, you know @JD_2020 and I kind of come from modding backgrounds, near and dear to our hearts, as soon we ship this game, get it in your hand so you can start playing it, and make sure its all good were going to focus on getting some tools to you this work isn’t done yet I can’t say what it is going to include what it’s not going to include, my hope is that it includes a complete set of tools. There are some difficult issue we need to solve the works not done I’m not going to make any promises. I feel pretty confident that the tools will be sufficient to make great competitive mods at the very minimum.


Josh: Do you hope for a possibility of Map Tools?

Cesar: Of course. I can tell you the most difficult issues, purely technical issues, have to do with the mapping tool. They have to do with the way we’ve change our shadder system our lighting system. Moving this tool from an in house tool to a tool you can put in the hands of our players is definitely not there yet.


Josh: With the server, I have a lot of questions on that, will there be customization, will we be able to turn o and off certain things on the server?

Cesar: Absolutely, even though a lot people are kind of scared of having rent only servers, the way were doing this is having highly customizable unranked servers. If you want to play no killstreak ,no perks, shotguns only, go for it, you want to have higher player counts? Go for it, knock yourself out.


Josh: With that, will there be an opportunity to change the game type and rotation on the server?

Cesar: Yes.


Josh: Everyone keeps asking about whether there will be a /Record and the Dev Console, or will it be the type of tool we saw in the MP teaser?

Cesar: I’ve seen that question a lot. So we will be including the Theater feature, the film editor, that you just saw in that presentation, which is super cool; but were not taking /record away. You want to do client side demo recording you can still do it old school.


Josh: Anti cheat…Punk Buster or VAC?

Cesar: We’ve got an enormous Call of Duty PC community, most of them already on Steam, this is going to be a steam exclusive title. Most of their friends are on steam. We’re going to use VAC, and together with our trusted server system I feel confident this is the best way we can provide cheat protection at this time.


Josh: With this steam requirement, will that also mean for the PC that DLC and patching…

Cesar: Were still trying to finish the game so were not thinking DLC


Josh: When the game comes out, there are always problems, will patches be regular?

Cesar: There are always bugs everyone knows this. I think we proved ourselves on our last title. We’re going to support this game.


Josh: How in-depth is the Dev Console be, will it be like World at War, where we can do what ever we want with it?

Cesar: Definitely including the Dev Console and this is a different title and its not finished yet, we can’t go into detail about what you can and can’t do, one of the things I’ll probably need to do with the Dev Console, is make sure that in the spirit of keeping the game fun and to protect it from those lowly cheaters (who are going to try and ruin the experience for us honest players ) is to make sure there aren’t things you can exploit with the dev console. Other than that, I love the dev console most hardcore pc gamers do


Josh: I didn’t see a Spectator Mode on the 360, will there be one on the PC?

Cesar: Yes. You can spectate.


Josh: Will there be Community features like with the Theater and Profile Linking your Game Account to Online Community Website for stats for the PC?

Cesar: Definitely


Josh: On that note for the Theatre, will pc be able to upload or is there like a whole thing where it uploads to a community site?

Cesar: This a feature were still working on stuff its going to be web friendly mobile friendly


Josh: I’ve heard rumors about Matchmaking on the pc, it being included…

Cesar: Where did those rumors come from? This title is, although it will support some old style listen servers, this is a dedicated server title. its going to have a newly designed server browser, that I think you’re going to love, and also if you don’t feel like browsing you can ask the game to pick the server for you with the click of a button, that’s the extent of anything that someone what some would call matchmaking its just putting them in a server.


Josh: You talked about the Server Browser and how it was going to be improved, how so?

Cesar: We did various things to improve usability for it we have the tabbed interface, we have a tool tips, context menus, it performs a bit better. There’s a bunch of improvements to it.


Josh: Will the Base Assault gametype return on the pc?

Cesar: Hopefully the modding community will help us out here, I’d love to see that.


Josh: Is LAN mode for the pc, get together with friends at a house.?

Cesar: We’re Not supporting LAN, it’s a steam title internet required


Josh: How many PC players can get on a server?

Cesar: We have not actually determined what the ceiling is going to be yet, this is testing we do late in the project because this is predicated on memory requirements, how fun the different game maps, game modes are with a lot of people. But we’re going to have higher player counts than the 360…Did I say that?


Josh: Thinking of what else to ask you….. What Is your favorite part of the PC SKU of the game

Cesar: The cool thing about this game, this title, is that you get so many (you just saw this presentation where you get thing after thing after thing, the customization is super cool) I dig the new game modes the wager matches gets really addictive, I don’t know, I’m more of a CTF guy. I like the objective game modes.


Josh: Last Minute question, is HQ back in the game like World at War?

Cesar: No comment.


Josh: That’s all I got, thanks!

Cesar: That’s pretty good man, I think we can go home now. Get that out on the web and we’re done man.



Thank you again Cesar for letting me be the first to interview you for the PC community at the MP event!


Shoutout to @BlackhawkDD and BaTs from www.FPSGamersWorld.com for helping me to transcribe my interview for me!