{"id":11769,"date":"2025-12-23T18:15:00","date_gmt":"2025-12-23T18:15:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nextlevelnews.co.uk\/blog\/2025\/12\/23\/i-never-met-vince-zampella-but-heres-the-thank-you-i-would-have-wanted-to-say-to-him\/"},"modified":"2025-12-23T18:15:00","modified_gmt":"2025-12-23T18:15:00","slug":"i-never-met-vince-zampella-but-heres-the-thank-you-i-would-have-wanted-to-say-to-him","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nextlevelnews.co.uk\/blog\/2025\/12\/23\/i-never-met-vince-zampella-but-heres-the-thank-you-i-would-have-wanted-to-say-to-him\/","title":{"rendered":"I Never Met Vince Zampella, But Here\u2019s The Thank You I Would Have Wanted to Say to Him"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
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It\u2019s no stretch to say I wouldn\u2019t possess the privilege of having this job without Vince Zampella. Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare changed the way I played games, interacted with them as part of a community, and made me think deeper about level and mission design than I had up to that point in my life. I was fifteen upon its release in 2007, and, although I had enjoyed playing games throughout my childhood up until then, nothing had a stranglehold on me quite like the rhythmic nature of the original Modern Warfare\u2019s multiplayer. For hours on end, I\u2019d run around the tight hallways of Vacant\u2019s disused office block with a shotgun or sit cowardly waiting at one end of Crossfire, hoping someone ran across my sniper-scoped view. You see, I had also been firmly rooted in single-player until now, growing up on a mixture of point and click adventures and Grand Theft Auto (at far too early an age), but it was COD 4 that opened my eyes to this whole other side of gaming that I have grown to love in the years since. Thousands of hours of my life have now been lost to Call of Duty, Rainbow Six Siege, and Overwatch, and I have Vince Zampella to thank for that.<\/p>\n

Of course, no one man makes a game of the scale of Call of Duty by themselves, but there\u2019s no denying the impact that Zampella had on that particular series and the shooter genre in general over the past two decades. Long before Modern Warfare, unbeknownst to me, he had been shaping my video game tastes for years. A lead designer of Medal of Honor: Allied Assault, he helmed EA\u2019s signature WW2 shooter at a time when cinematic aspirations were a relatively new idea in the medium. Taking cues from Steven Spielberg\u2019s Saving Private Ryan, I\u2019ll never forget the first time I played through its phenomenal Normandy landing sequence on Omaha Beach and how it evokes the terror of that scenario to full effect. <\/p>\n

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That philosophy would then be translated to the series with which Zampella will always be synonymous: Call of Duty (which, in Zampella\u2019s own hilariously blunt words<\/u><\/a>, only exists because \u201cEA were dicks\u201d). Its early entries were fantastic, with 2 being a particular favourite of mine back in 2005. I\u2019d always had a fascination with this period in time, with my dad subjecting me to many, many WW2 films as a child \u2014 The Great Escape, The Longest Day, The Dambusters, A Bridge Too Far. I\u2019d sit down in front of all of them on a Sunday afternoon (at, again, likely far too young an age), so it was only natural that once I reached my teens, I\u2019d want to experience these battles and behind-enemy-lines missions for myself. <\/p>\n

I\u2019ll admit, then, that I was sceptical about Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare in the run-up to its release. I\u2019m someone who is naturally wary of change, and I was hesitant to trade in my trusty M1 Garand for an M16. I couldn\u2019t have been more wrong, though, as it would almost instantly become my favourite shooter campaign I\u2019ve ever played \u2014 with Titanfall 2, a later Zampella project, the only one to run it close. The way it took those movie-like aspirations into the present day was stunning, turning its lens from the likes of those films my father showed me to discoveries of my own, such as Ridley Scott\u2019s Black Hawk Down and Body of Lies. The way it placed you in the action was unlike anything I\u2019d played up until then, with the exhilarating opening to Crew Expendable and the explosive crescendo of Shock and Awe just two of its many highlights. <\/p>\n

And then, of course, there\u2019s All Ghillied Up, which turns each of the campaign\u2019s ideas on its head at its halfway point, in what is still to this day one of video gaming\u2019s most iconic levels. It\u2019s no hyperbole to say that this is one of the missions that opened my eyes to what goes into video game design and what is possible when ideas are taken out of the box and given the freedom to be built upon. It\u2019s such a delicate, balanced piece of work that runs like clockwork, even when you try to mess with its systems, that I couldn\u2019t help but think about how it was constructed. The stealthy crawl for a haunting Pripyat is a masterclass in level design, and credit has to go to Zampella, who was Studio Head at developer Infinity Ward at the time, for encouraging and incubating such creativity.<\/p>\n

<\/section>\n

Modern Warfare\u2019s campaign is a landmark in its own right (among many other achievements, it\u2019s also got one of the most memorable blockbuster sequences in gaming history), but when you also add to it, perhaps the most revolutionary multiplayer shooter pre-Fortnite, a package that would set the stage for a series to take over the world, is born. Call of Duty 4\u2019s multiplayer is the first time I can remember engaging with video games online to a great extent. For my sins, I didn\u2019t own an Xbox at the time, so I was late to the Halo party. Instead, Modern Warfare was my gateway into this world, as I began to hoover up anything I could to get better at the game, and watch clips at a skill level I knew in my heart I could never reach. I\u2019d look up meta builds, which felt like a novelty at the time, and engage with wikis and guides on sites like IGN at a time when I had zero aspirations of one day being someone who would pen words there myself. The simple but effective loop of Modern Warfare\u2019s multiplayer opened my eyes to all of this, with its moreish loop of levelling up guns and unlocking attachments, only to prestige and do it all over again, filling most of my after-school evenings. I simply could not stop playing, and didn\u2019t want to, either.<\/p>\n

Zampella\u2019s influence on me would ring on long after his time on Call of Duty was done, though. After forming Respawn, his work on Titanfall saw its 2016 sequel reach, and some would argue maybe even eclipse, the heights of Modern Warfare\u2019s campaign. The fluidity of its movement, the destructive joy of piloting its many mechs, and, of course, the level design of the likes of Effect and Cause and Into the Abyss are all-timers when it comes to single-player shooters. From that universe, Apex Legends would form. Still, my battle royale of choice captures that Titanfall mobility and combines it with a punchiness to its arsenal of weapons that few can match. And then there\u2019s Star Wars. 2023\u2019s Jedi: Survivor is one of my favourite games to come out in recent years, and fulfilled the promise of its original to fantastic effect, making me feel like I was playing a new Star Wars film, much like the original trilogy my dad also used to show me as a kid in between those WW2 epics. Incidentally, I had been floating the idea of replaying Survivor around in my head over the Christmas break. I now know, I definitely will be.<\/p>\n

As I said earlier, no one person makes a game of the scale Vince Zampella would be a part of creating by themselves. But there is just no denying the impact that the legendary Call of Duty, Battlefield, Medal of Honor, Titanfall, and Star Wars Jedi developer had on video games in the 21st century. Not only a pioneer when it comes to first-person shooters, but his drive to consistently create cinematic experiences is one that has permeated through the medium for decades now. On a personal level, I\u2019m incredibly grateful. Not only because many of these games have been some of my favourites to play throughout my life, but because if it wasn\u2019t for how much more engaged they made me in them, I likely wouldn\u2019t be lucky enough to enjoy writing about them for a living. To Vince, I say thank you. I may never have got to meet you, but I have loved playing the games you helped create greatly, as I know so many millions of others have too.<\/p>\n

<\/section>\n

Simon Cardy is a Senior Editor at IGN who can mainly be found skulking around open world games, indulging in Korean cinema, or despairing at the state of Tottenham Hotspur and the New York Jets. Follow him on Bluesky at <\/em>@cardy.bsky.social<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/section>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s no stretch to say I wouldn\u2019t possess the privilege of having this job without Vince Zampella. Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare changed the way I played games, interacted with them as part of a community, and made me think deeper about level and mission design than I had up to that point in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":11770,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pagelayer_contact_templates":[],"_pagelayer_content":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11769","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nI Never Met Vince Zampella, But Here\u2019s The Thank You I Would Have Wanted to Say to Him - Next Level News<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Stay on top of the gaming world with Next Level News. 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