Black Leaves Codemasters, Bodycount

Bodycount creator Stuart Black will be leaving Codemasters in October, shifting the responsibility for demoing the game to a colleague while he focuses on completing the design. Black, the creator of Criterion FPS Black, has been working on his newest first-person shooter with Codemasters only since the beginning of 2010. Revealing the news, UK site Eurogamer said that the game's executive producer Tom Gillo, a former SCE London executive producer and a longtime colleague of Black's, had left the project earlier, but Codemasters declined to say why Black is leaving the project, but said no one else on the "80-strong team" is quitting. Codemasters has described Bodycount as an "original action FPS"; Black had been serving as the project's creative director, and he and Gillo were joined on the team by senior producer Andrew Wilson, who will help fill Black's outreach responsibilities. The game is in development at the publisher's Guildford studio, which Codemasters has actively positioned as a key growth center for its strategy since the studio's founding in 2007. It's being built with Codemasters' proprietary EGO Game Technology Platform, which has already been used to develop the internal titles Colin McRae: DiRT, Race Driver: GRID, and Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising. Eurogamer's report suggested "post-E3 fallout" had driven Black from the project, but Codemasters denied this, telling UK trade site Develop that it was pleased with the response from the press -- indeed, the game received an enthusiastic preview from IGN. GameSpot was positive on what it saw as well, but said the game's demo had "the normal technical difficulties you'd expect at this early stage in development" and appeared "unfinished."