How Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III was written: ‘you start with sticky notes’

From consulting with military advisers on raid tactics to tailoring responses for different player styles ... the game's development team take us inside their creative campaign

The Call of Duty games are huge, multimillion dollar affairs. They are built by hundreds of staff working in studios across the globe, each dealing with specific aspects of the production. Their budgets are the same as the biggest Hollywood movies - ie vast, but then so are the rewards. The last title in the series, Modern Warfare II, a reimagining of the hugely successful 2009 original, made $1bn in 10 days. This is as big as entertainment gets. So what is it like for the storytellers working on this leviathan, who need to create narrative cogency and tie it all together?

For most of its millions of players, Call of Duty is all about multiplayer mode, but each instalment's single-player campaign is an explosive, cinematic adventure, pitching lone players against waves of enemy soldiers as planes crash, buildings fall and nuclear missiles scorch across the sky. The protagonists of the current Modern Warfare series are Task Force 141, a ragtag group of spec-ops warriors led by SAS veteran and moustache enthusiast Capt Price; their arch-nemesis is Makarov, a Russian ultranationalist, sociopath and the Thanos to their Avengers.