Despite previous entry to the Call of Duty series, World at War, successfully integrating a co-operative singleplayer mode into the game, Infinity Ward won’t be pursuing a co-op experience with Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, it’s been revealed.

Instead, the developers are focussing on making the singleplayer campaign the best it can be, and introducing a new, two-player co-op mode called Special Ops, which is designed to be endlessly replayable and completely separate from the singleplayer. Director of communications/community manager at Infinity Ward, Robert Bowling explained the move by saying:

“We don’t do co-op in our story because we’re crafting a very specific experience and we don’t want to ruin that by cramming co-op into it. We take the moments that work really well with co-op, we bring them out and we put them in Special Ops.”

“Story’s all about pacing,” continued Bowling. “Sometimes moments get toned down because they don’t fit with the pacing of the experience you’re trying to deliver. There (in Special Ops) it’s all about fun.

“It’s about playing over and over again, getting a better time – you’ll have a time at the end of it – it’s about challenging a friend going in on co-op and trying to beat it on veteran.”

The decision to go with two players for the Special Ops mode was taken, Bowling says, because it turns out that two is the “magic number” for co-op. “That’s when it stayed really fun and intense,” says Bowling, “without becoming a cluster[naughty word] of things. We just found that two-players was the most fun.”

What a potty mouth, but he speaks the truth – introducing a co-operative element for the sake of a feature on the box, or allowing too many players to ruin an experience to simply be able to tout large numbers isn’t good for the game. Good on Infinity Ward for taking these decisions.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 releases November 10th this year.