Infinity Ward has temporarily employed mapMonkeys, a group which describes itself as "a community of gamers who have become infatuated with discovering and sharing glitches, exploits, tricks, and strategies," to test Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3. It isn't the first time that the group has been asked to help, but this time they are getting much more time to do find holes.
"Four members of mapMonkeys are being flown out to California on Sunday, July 10th, to test Modern Warfare 3, including mapMonkey, IM Buddy8, skateboard, and myself! We've been flown out to test other games in the past (Such as Call of Dut:World at War and Modern Warfare 2), but we only had 2 or 3 days to test the game and find glitches, which wasn't nearly enough time," mapMonkeys founder Rezzzo wrote on the mapMonkeys website. "This time, Infinity Ward is keeping us there an entire week so we can find more bugs and glitches than ever before! "
Rezzo admits that this goes against what mapMonkeys is all about since the community thrives off of finding and sharing glitches with each other, but he argues that they can't pass up such an amazing opportunity. He plans to share his opinion about the game "without giving away anything that hasn't been revealed yet of course." Rezzo even says he purchased a Kodak Playsport to film the trip (not the game).
Infinity Ward creative strategist Robert Bowling confirmed the news. He explained that mapMonkeys are obviously not the only testers for the game, but they are good at finding specific bugs.
"The mapMonkeys are correct," Bowling told CVG. "They're out at the studio to help us run Modern Warfare 3's multiplayer through its paces. While we've been hammering away testing on it since it's been up and running, these guys focus specifically on exploits that can potentially be used to an unfair advantage, such as getting outside a map's playable area, inside geo, or find weapon / equipment exploits that were not intended by the designer so that we can catch and address these before it gets out to the public. They're a great addition to an already rigorous QA process that the internal team here at Infinity Ward / Sledgehammer and additionally at Activision have been doing since development began."
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 is the newest installment in Activision Publishing's number one first person action series. It is being developed by Infinity Ward and Sledgehammer Games. The game is slated to be released for the PlayStation 3, the Xbox 360, the Wii, and Windows on November 8, 2011 (though this is still not official).
Modern Warfare 3 has a lot to of expectations to live up to. Call of Duty: Black Ops, the game's predecessor, set a new record for the video game industry by selling 5.6 million copies (more than $360 million) on its first day and then broke theatrical box office, book, and video game sales records for five-day worldwide sell through in dollars (more than $650 million). In less than two months, it raked in over $1 billion in sales worldwide.