Treyarch is an American video game developer company, founded in 1996 and acquired by Activision in 2001. Treyarch is located in Santa Monica, California.
Treyarch has developed several games in the Call of Duty series, which are listed below. Call of Duty 3 and Call of Duty: World at War have been set in the WWII timeframe, Call of Duty: Black Ops is set in the 1960s. Unlike Infinity Ward, Treyarch has developed games outside of the Call of Duty franchise, and traditionally makes Nintendo Wii versions of their games.
Some of Treyarch's Call of Duty team comes from an older studio known as Gray Matter Interactive, responsible for games like Kingpin (while under their old name "Xatrix") and Return to Castle Wolfenstein. The team was responsible for developing Call of Duty: United Offensive before merging with Treyarch. Some of the Gray Matter team still resides at Treyarch, although its founder and several executives from the former studio have found employment elsewhere.
Treyarch is sometimes referred to as Call of Duty's "B-Team", since the Call of Duty games that they made in the past weren't as successful as those made by Infinity Ward up until the release of Black Ops. Treyarch's latest game, Call of Duty: Black Ops, was released on November 9th, 2010.
Games developed for the Call of Duty series
- Call of Duty: United Offensive (As part of Grey Matter Interactive)
- Call of Duty 2: Big Red One
- Call of Duty 3
- Call of Duty: World at War
- Call of Duty: Modern Warfare: Reflex Edition (a port to the Wii)
- Call of Duty: Black Ops
- Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 (Wii version)
Employees
- Mark Lamia - President and Studio Head
- Josh Olin - Community Manager
- David Vonderhaar - Game Designer Director
- Dan Bunting - Online Director
- Jimmy Zielinski - Creative Lead Zombies
- Brian Tuey - Audio Director
- Gary Spinrad - Senior Sound Designer
- Kevin Sherwood - Sound Designer and Composer
- Elena Siegman - Singer
- Paul Mason Firth - Level Designer
- Phillip Tasker - Level Designer
- Daniel Cheng - Senoir Concept Artist
- Jason Blundell - Executive Producer
Trivia
- Compared to Infinity Ward, Treyarch's versions of Call of Duty are usually more gory and mature. Both developers include swearing and prevalent blood, but in World at War and Black Ops (The two most recent CoD titles made by Treyarch) gore and mutilation are present as well as the use of flame based weapons such as the Flamethrower underbarrel attachment (Black Ops) and the M2 Flamethrower (World at War). Also notable is the Zombies game mode, exclusive to Treyarch games.
- Treyarch's games seem to feature a lot of Easter Eggs or secrets compared to Infinity Ward. Whether or not it is simply because there are more opportunities to do so (Zombies is infamous for having Easter Eggs), or simply because they have a natural preference for it.
- Much like Infinity Ward, Treyarch makes references to their company name many times throughout their games, often with the word "3ARC", or "III ARC".