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Mark Gordon is retiring from the developer after 22 years.
"Hello everyone and welcome back to another GRTV News, today we're going to be touching a little bit on the folks over at Treyarch, believe it or not. A few interesting stories have been breaking as of late and one of them is in regards to, what you have to say is one of the two main Call of Duty developers, I mean there are technically more, but I think when you think of Call of Duty as a whole, you think of both Infinity Ward and you think of Treyarch, I mean granted Raven's becoming more and more popular as the Warzone team and Sledgehammer's always been around there and what not, but really when you think about the longevity and the history of Call of Duty, it's often Infinity Ward, which is tied to the modern warfare stuff, and then Treyarch, which is tied to, most recently, sort of the Black Ops stuff, even if they did in the past do World at War. The reason why we're talking about it, is because for a long time, Treyarch has had, well, they've had a lot of long time employees over at Treyarch and one of them has been at the top of the studio for a little while and they are officially moving on. Now, I know what you might be thinking, Xbox is making a lot of changes as of late, is this tied to it? It doesn't seem like it, it seems like they're having a bit of a leadership change because somebody's looking to retire and move on and they've already named the replacements with two veteran Treyarch employees stepping up to the role."
"So yeah, Mark Gordon is stepping down as Treyarch's studio head after 22 years at the Call of Duty developer. The role will be filled by two individuals serving as co-studio heads.
So yeah, Call of Duty developer Treyarch is going through some major leadership changes.
The good news is that this doesn't seem to be tied to the bloodbath currently happening at Xbox, which has even seen Xbox Game Studios head Craig Duncan resigning recently. For the sake of Treyarch, we seem to be looking at an individual looking to simply retire."
"After 22 years working at the company, overseeing it change from being a multi-purpose studio known for projects like Spider-Man games, NHL titles and even 007 Quantum of Solace, all to being solely a tentpole Call of Duty team best known for the Black Ops saga, Mark Gordon will be stepping down from his studio head position. Treyarch has commented on this in a blog post where it explains, we're incredibly grateful to Mark for his steady guidance and deep care for the studio, its culture and its people. Mark's impact on the franchise has been immeasurable from Call of Duty 2, Big Red 1 and Call of Duty 3 to World at War and the entirety of the Black Ops series."
"As for who is coming in to take over the studio head role, this is being split between two individuals with Kevin Hendrickson and Hale Miller stepping up to become co-studio heads. Both are regarded as veterans of the franchise and have decades of experience behind them with a commitment to Treyarch's culture and creative ambition. It's unclear what's next in store for Treyarch following 2025's Black Ops 7, but no doubt we'll hear more within the next year or two."
"So yeah, Treyarch is seeing a bit of a leadership change. When you see changes like this and you see people, well you know, major changes at the top of a game developer or a game company, it doesn't really impact the developer in a noticeable way for a little while. It takes a bit of time, video game projects take such a long time to make that a studio head change like this, you probably won't really notice it until, well if you notice it, you probably won't notice it until Black Ops 9 or whatever they'll end up doing. It will be interesting to follow in Treyarch for the foreseeable future though because they do have a little bit of goodwill to repair following Black Ops 7 being just a challenging game to like I would say in a lot of different respects. We don't know what Treyarch is working on officially, obviously Activision and the Call of Duty brand, they don't share their projects officially until a few months out from launch. We only properly met Modern Warfare 4 for this year, two, three weeks ago. So for Treyarch, which you'd half expect Treyarch to be the 2027 Call of Duty developer unless Sledgehammer is something in the works. Sledgehammer games are always challenging among the community, people that are either really loved or people just sort of kind of let them slide a little bit. So you'd have to say that Treyarch will probably be the 2027 developer and if that is the case, what are they going to do? Are they going to go back to Black Ops which we've had, you know, it'll be like the fourth or fifth Black Ops game in the 2020s or will they go somewhere else and potentially return to a sort of a period World War setting that we haven't seen Treyarch explore for quite some time actually. It's unclear, you know, a lot of question marks in regards to that but the one thing to know is that the company will not be headed up by Mark Gordon anymore, rather two individuals, two very veteran Treyarch employees are stepping up to take on the responsibilities and the role. That's all the time I have today's GRTV News. I'll be back tomorrow for the next one of the week and until then, hope you enjoy the rest of your Wednesday. I'll see you all on the next one."
