Black: 'Broken Agreement' Led To Departure From Codies

A broken agreement is what left respectedBlack designer Stuart Black to leave his job on Codemasters' Bodycount, according to the man himself, who describes it as "the hardest choice of my career." "There have been some quite odd and silly rumors," Black tells consumer site GameSpot of his decision to leave the Guildford studio. "At the end of the day these things are mundane. I've never spoken about it and don't have a lot to say. An agreement was broken. No one really wanted to fix it. I decided to move on. The rest seems to be self-generating noise." Specifically, Black says Codemasters was, in his view "unable, or unwilling" to support his vision for Bodycount: "Some of the marketing initiatives and trailers were not, in my opinion, doing justice for the game," he suggests. After leaving Codemasters, Black joined City Interactive to head up a new in-house development studio in London. As creative director, he's now leading development on a "story-driven WWII shooter" built on Crytek's CryEngine 3. He says his team is collaborating with City Interactive's Poland team on the product's development. "Bodycount was very important to me, being its creator and working through the things I hadn't done on my own before," Black adds. "I felt we got to the halfway mark and it was good. People who played it were digging some of the more risky choices. Then the future just shattered in front of me."