Sledgehammer Games threw a week-long company-wide party and gave away swag, and digital goods to Advanced Warfare fans through an event called Hammer Week. Well, recently, Suicide Squad, a DC comics film – just came out. Sledgehammer Games had a private screening reserved just for them to view Suicide Squad with their comrades. It was done to show appreciation for their work, according to Sledghammer Games in a blog post…
Greetings from your friendly Bay Area Dev Studio!
We recently took a trip up to Alamo Drafthouse in San Francisco to watch an early screening of Suicide Squad in a private theater reserved for our team. Team outings are always a great opportunity for everyone to take a step back from their work for a moment, share with others outside their department, and visit nearby San Francisco. Out of the many conversations happening before the movie started and in the bar afterwards, one thing was abundantly clear – we’re all deeply appreciative of the love and support we received from all of our fans during #HammerWeek. Thanks so much for coming out to play, sharing your AW stories, and hurling compliments at us. It’s incredibly important to us to have a strong relationship with our community and we’re so lucky to have each and every one of you! Another great #HammerWeek in the books. Thanks so much.
Be sure to share your stories with us using the hashtag #SHGfam on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. For more information about joining our team, please visit our careers page here and our LinkedIn.
Here is the launch trailer of Suicide Squad…
Congratulations to Sledgehammer Games on their 7th anniversary!
2014’s Hammer Week festivities were fun for the team at Sledgehammer Games, that they’ve decided to do it again. On July 19th, Sledgehammer Games wrote a letter to Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare fans. They’re planning to celebrate their 7 years in business with a series of events called “Hammer Week 2016.”
Building our #SHGfam community over the last seven years has been such an amazing journey. We’re so incredibly thankful for all of the talented developers who call Sledgehammer Games home, and for the amazing fans that drive us to do our best work every day. Your passion, enthusiasm, and support fuels us and we look forward to moments when we can celebrate the success together. #HammerWeek 2016 and our 7th Studio Birthday Celebration starts on Sunday, July 24th. We’re rolling out a combination of studio events, community contests, in-game giveaways, and in-game activations over the course of the entire week. Tune in for opportunities to join the activities, and perhaps take home a great piece of SHG or Call of Duty memorabilia. And don’t worry, we won’t be giving away any Ronin Helmets this year!
Sledgehammer Games celebrates Hammer Week 2016 with Hammer Box Social Meida contest
Furthermore, they’re going to give away a limited number of “Hammer Box” to a few lucky winners on Social Media. How, you ask?
Giving back to our community is one of our favorite things to do and this year, we’ve prepared a limited edition “Hammer Box” filled with unique prizes. Only five of them exist and they’re packed with studio swag, signed copies of games and posters, and exclusive Hard Hitter coins. We’ll be dropping these boxes from Monday, July 25th through Friday, July 29th – so be on the lookout on our Twitter Feed for your opportunity to RT and win!
These are the Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare Supply Drops for the week of July 24th through 29th.
Sledgehammer Games also revealed that they will be releasing Supply Drops during the week…
For those of you still playing Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare – THANK YOU! We love the feedback and we’re happy to support our active community. We have a number of in-game activities planned for #HammerWeek this year! First off, for our 7th Birthday we’ve got an incredible line up of Seven Weapon Variants we’re giving away to celebrate [XB1, PS4, and PC only] – we’ll also be automatically unlocking the base variants (when applicable) with each gift! So break out your calendars, build out reminders to collect the weapons missing from your armory, and simply play to unlock. Also, for all the Legendary hunters and our Grand Master Prestige hunters out there, we’re activating #2XLegendary and #DoubleXP throughout the entire week on all platforms! And if you’re lucky, you might just catch one of our limited edition SHG Pokemons, PokeHammer, while you are out chasing. Ok, that’s not true. But it would be pretty freaking cool. The Pokémon Go craze is, well, crazy and most of SHG has caught the bug too (Congrats, @NianticLabs!) So we’ll see you online, or maybe wandering around San Francisco. If you happen to see one of us, or want to shout out via our social channels, we’re always happy to hear from you.
Be sure to share your thoughts, videos, and images throughout the week using the hashtag #HammerWeek and we’ll bump our favorites. Thanks so much for being a part of our studio’s 7th birthday celebration!
See you on the other side,
The Sledgehammer Games Development Team
Also, Sledgehammer Games released Patch Update 1.23 on PS4, and Xbox One. It makes some minor improvements to Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare. I’m sure we’ll get a few updates during Hammer Week 2016, so keep a lookout for those.
With 16 days to go until Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare is released to retailers worldwide on November 4th, Activision released the launch trailer of Advanced Warfare. It shows new footage of the game, and small tidbits. Enjoy!
A lot of people complain that Call of Duty hasn’t been about skill for quite some time now. Infinity Ward has gotten a lot of backlash for both Modern Warfare 2, and 3 general gameplay balancing, weapon imbalance, glitches, and so on. Sledgehammer Games from the beginning, has always wanted Advanced Warfare to be about skill. In an interview with GamesTM, the lead multiplayer designer working on Advanced Warfare said “Advanced Warfare is always about going back to the main goal which we had from the beginning, which was gun-skill.” And this is reflected throughout the entire game…
Everything has to enhance that. Everything with the Exo-movement has to enhance that. Everything within the modes has to enhance that. Everything within the maps has to enhance that. Having that goal to always point back to has been a huge guiding factor within everything we do in the game.
If you don’t believe him or the team at Sledgehammer Games, Activision gave the okay to GameStop, and IGN on releasing some videos to show just how important skill really is. The first video is about grenade techniques, these grenade techniques are meant to help you trap, or slow down your opponents, or kill your opponents with “on impact” hits. Some of these grenades either help you destroy objects, or flank locations.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d3hXRhuVLg8
Supply Drops are ‘care packages’ that give you loot, like a loot crate does. You can use these items to help you gain an advantage over your opponents. Take a look at the possible items that can be looted…
And finally, IGN released a new video showing off just how customizable your Advanced Warfare operator is. These customizations, are obviously unlockable through ranking up, completing challenges, and achievements during your match in Advanced Warfare…
Activision is getting ready to launch Advanced Warfare in a few weeks. Over the past week, Sledgehammer Games has been teasing Call of Duty fans with pictures of prestige ranks, and emblems.
Michael Condrey teased his followers that he’d reached 7th prestige with a possible 50 ranks, and 15 prestiges. The image clearly shows that the developers are being creative with prestige images this time around.
Here’s the first look at new weapon upgrades, a new map, and new prestige icons. Greenband is a map that we’ve yet to see before. Possibly included in the recent Co-Op trailer.
Michael then revealed that Emblems and Emblem editor both return in Advanced Warfare. Looks like there will be a robust editor this time around. Look at the detail on the emblem! It’s a card, yet it looks like several layers and designs.
Another picture of the emblems on operator’s back. A user asked if Sledgehammer Games will stop abusive folks using emblems as a means to offend others, Condrey responded saying that there will be an aggressive ban policy on toxic emblems…
For months, Advanced Warfare has been roaring loud enough that it intends to change Call of Duty, forever. Advanced Warfare’s story has elements that hasn’t been done in films, let alone a video game. Advanced Warfare’s story was inspired by The Last of Us. One of the co-founders of Sledgehammer Games went on the record to name some games that he likes, and are inspired by…
As you can tell, Michael Condrey is showing passion for making Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare a breakout hit. He wants to make sure people understand why Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare is and was an ambitious title. As a matter of fact, Sledgehammer Games are touting Advanced Warfare as the “Best game of our lives.”
We r almost done! Last couple of polish items & I'm being kicked out. In the closers hands now. Best game of our lives. No doubt about it.
Sledgehammer Games staff aren’t resting on their laurels any time soon. When discussing the 3 year development cycle, Aaron Halon, the Senior Development Director working on Advanced Warfare said that there’s a lot of pressure to make Advanced Warfare a great game…
There’s a lot of pressure just to make a great Call of Duty game because the franchise has been so phenomenal. So we feel that and then to also be truly next-gen to have three years to work on the game helps.
He continued, saying that while there’s pressure to make Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare the best game in the Call of Duty franchise, the 3 year development cycle takes a little bit of pressure off because it allows them more time to do what they need to do…
In a way, the three years takes off the pressure a little bit because you have a little more time to cook your ideas, proof things out, to prototype, to iterate.
Aaron also mentioned that pre-production of Call oF Duty: Advanced Warfare was a little longer than usual for a Call of Duty title…
Our pre-production was longer, which allowed us to do more concept work, a lot of prototyping, R&D, and then obviously our production is a lot longer. Bringing all of our levels and story to the full potential it could be, makes all the things I just said better.
He concluded with saying that there are times he wished he had more time to work on games, but with Advanced Warfare, he got that luxury…
I’ve been doing games for 18 years, and I’ve never done a project where I didn’t wish we had an extra six months or an extra year, and I feel like I have that with [Advanced Warfare].
In another interview, Aaron says that there’s a good kind of pressure with Advanced Warfare…
Yes there’s pressure but it’s the good kind of pressure.
Meaning, there’s a healthy kind of pressure to make Advanced Warfare the best yet.
Boohoo, it’s Call of Duty! It’s going to be the same thing!
Actually, Sledgehammer Games is trying to assert, inform, and instill confidence that this is indeed a fresh new take on Call of Duty. In an exclusive interview, Michael Condrey wanted to stress how important the three year development cycle has helped them shape an innovative Call of Duty title…
We’re really grateful because we had a chance to go after the next-generation experience and really innovate, It was time to give you a new experience.
We want to make sure that people realize it’s not a turn of the crank. The amount of research we put into this game is insane — the books, the articles, the scientists we talk to, the trips we’ve taken, the people we’ve brought in.
Next Generation is already here. Call of Duty Ghosts didn’t improve the franchise.
Well, Sledgehammer Games spent the past 3 years working on Advanced Warfare. After their work with Modern Warfare 3, they got to work on their next big title. Sledgehammer Games wanted Advanced Warfare to be a true Next Gen title. So, Sledgehammer Games designed Advanced Warfare to be a Next Gen-only title, while another studio develops the current gen (PS3, Xbox 360, etc.) versions. Sledgehammer Games uses the same technology Avatar [2] uses. As a matter of fact, Aaron Halon, the Senior Development Director working on Advanced Warfare had this to say about their focus with Advanced Warfare…
Now I don’t need a character necessarily to say something to react, you can just see it in their face and fidelity picks it up.
Sledgehammer Games is focused on pushing for more graphical fidelity in Advanced Warfare…
You’re able to have a lot more processing power, so if you can push things on screen, like more special effects and higher-res textures.
Moreover, Sledgehammer Games aims to tell a great story with Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare…
I think through our ability to tell a great story, and with our history of telling really great narrative with games like Dead Space, I think we’ll really bring something great and different to the franchise that way.
One of our goals when we worked on Dead Space was constant immersion – don’t ever have them snapped out of the world in any way. We have that in Advanced Warfare, where you’re getting rid of elements that are distracting, as much as possible.
So, how did Activision land Kevin Spacey?
In an interview, the C.E.O. of Activision explained that the way that they got Kevin Spacey on board, was by really catering to how far he can go with his involvement, his character, and his own reach. Eric explained…
We sat down with him and described the character to him, described the narrative, and first and foremost, I think he responded to that, but also when you sit down with him and say ‘this is how many people you’re going to reach, here’s the kind of engagement we get with this content,’ it’s pretty compelling.
Kevin Spacey seems to like to do films in emerging digital media technologies, such as what he did with Netflix’s House of Cards. He also likes to work with brands that has a large fanbase, with a high engagement to the media. With 100 million Call of Duty owners that play every day, Activision had a value proposition for Kevin Spacey.
This is significant even for Call of Duty. A lot of game companies aren’t able to attract high-profile actors like Mr. Spacey. In fact, Aaron Halon reflects exactly that sentiment…
Usually on games we are used to getting our B or C character, but to be able to get Kevin Spacey who has been in mind since the beginning has been an awesome experience and really helpful to the whole narrative of the game.
And that’s not all. Kevin Spacey puts his 2 cents into some scenes that Sledgehammer Games at times had to change the script or story a few times. See for yourself in a major interview with Time Magazine…
And the team at sledgehammer Games are very excited about his involvement, because not only did Spacey study the material, he pointed out plot holes in the story as he was working on the set…
I live for that! I’ve had actors point out plot holes and I’ve had to fix those because the actors mentioned them.
Where did these Exoskeletons, and all of this tech come from?
The tech you’ve seen so far on Advanced Warfare are all real, and being developed as we speak. Sledgehammer Games says that most of the tech already exists today.
It’s funny because there’s a back and forth. We’ve had both the experience of coming up with the idea and then reading about it the next week, or reading about something and saying ‘whoa, that’s got to go in the game.’
Most of the game is grounded in current reality. However, Sledgehammer Games is considering adding new concepts, new design, and whatnot into Advanced Warfare to keep it from being too real. In fact, Sledgehammer Games is considering adding in vehicles in the multiplayer portion of the game.
Moreover, Sledgehammer Games wants to give players more freedom in the single player portion of Advanced Warfare. Sledgehammer Games will allow CODAW players more customization to their operators in single player.
Activision expects Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare to be the most pre-ordered game this year. Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare will be released on November 3rd for folks who pre-order the game, or the Day Zero edition. For the rest of the world, Advanced Warfare will arrive to retailers worldwide on November 4th, 2014.
On Monday, July 21st Sledgehammer games revealed that they’d be scheduling a week-long celebration of the Studio’s 5 Year Anniversary. To start off the week, Sledgehammer Games co-founders wrote a letter to the fans about their monumental milestone, and at the same time, coined the week as “Hammer Week,” with a surprise to boot. So, what happened over the week? Let’s over the week, shall we?
On Tuesday (July 22nd), Sledgehammergames held a Challenge Coin and Patch sweepstakes on their Twitter account. See for yourself:
Sledgehammer Games’ 5 year anniversary coin.
Sledgehammer Games’ 5 year anniversary patch.
On the same day, Vice in partnership with Activision released a video talking about how Private Military Companies (PMC’s) are changing the face of war…
If that wasn’t enough, MLG revealed on their Call of Duty channel, that Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare’s multiplayer will be fully playable at GamesCom 2014 in London…
This means a reveal of Advanced Warfare’s Multiplayer is likely to be set for the days before GamesCom even opens. That’s speculation at this point, though.
There’s more: A famous, well known musician by the stage name “Afrojack” went to Sledgehammer Games’ headquarters in Foster City, California and talked with developers. He offered a few kind words about Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare after playing the game.
On Wednesday (July 23rd), Sledgehammer Games revealed their Advanced Warfare Exclusive Digital Content…
New Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare image during Hammer Week
On Thursday (which is today), the Surprise turned out to be a Sweepstakes for Call of Duty fans to enter and win a chance to be in Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare…
Sledgehammer Games reveals Advanced Warfare sweepstakes
To enter the sweepstakes, you’re going to need to enter your Full Name, Home Address, Gamertag, Date of Birth, and e-mail address to join the contest here.
On Monday morning, Sledgehammer Games co-founders opened their week with a celebration that they’ve been open for 5 years now. The company was incorporated in 2009 with the goal of achieving excellence in everything it does.
Enjoy the letter from Michael Condrey, and Glen Schofield…
This week marks a huge milestone in the history of Sledgehammer Games. Today, we celebrate our 5-year anniversary as an independent development studio with our publishing partner Activision. From the beginning, we’ve set out to create a unique studio founded on the values of hard work, transparency, and a culture that empowers developers to do the best work of their careers. From day one, we set a singular goal – to achieve excellence in everything we do.
We’ve had the chance to build our team from the ground up, hire the very best developers in the industry, and work on some of the biggest games in our industry. In 2011, we co-developed Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, a game that went on to become one of the largest entertainment releases of all time and won 2011’s Action Game of the Year.
Since that time, our team has been heads down, hard at work on our next project: Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare – a true next-generation Call of Duty experience that signifies a new era for the franchise.
We couldn’t be more proud of the game, and can’t wait to share it with fans in November. Until then, we hope you’ve had the chance to watch some of the behind the scenes videos outlining our development process and design philosophy. Check back regularly on our Facebook and Twitter for the latest updates.
As our studio celebrates its five year anniversary, we also want to include you, as our games have always been for the player. Here’s what you can look forward to this week, and we’ll be updating this blog post throughout the week as this content goes live.
If you’re behind on their design philosophy, here are their behind-the-scenes videos…
Advanced Warfare Story:
Advanced Warfare Futuristic Design:
Advanced Warfare Art & Animation:
Advanced Warfare Sound Design:
The “Hammer Week” schedule is as follows:
#HammerWeek
Monday – 5th Anniversary and Photo Gallery
Tuesday – Challenge Coin and Patch sweepstakes on Twitter
Wednesday – Exclusive Digital Content
Thursday – Surprise
Friday – Studio Happy Hour & Toast Photo Album
What do you think? What’s the surprise? My money’s on at least a Advanced Warfare Multiplayer teaser, or at the very best: Advanced Warfare Multiplayer reveal.
