Former Call of Duty director stopped making foreign countries the enemy because he wanted 'to go to these countries' without needing a bodyguard

Call of Duty has been around the block a few times, and across the years it's turned a lot of foreign countries into videogame enemies. In the first batch of games, when CoD was still a World War 2 shooter, it was simple. Fighting Nazis is extremely cathartic, and they don't reflect modern Germany.

In contemporary or near-future games, though, it can be more problematic, as former Call of Duty director Glen Schofield realised when he was promoting the first incarnation of Modern Warfare 3.

"I was doing 30 days of press for Modern Warfare 3," he tells us during a wide-ranging chat about his history with the series. "I'm all over the world, and the last stop is in the UK, and I'm having dinner with some journalists from the UK and I get a call. They say, 'We need you to go to Russia tomorrow and do some more press.' And by then, I was really tired. I'm like, 'Do you know who the enemies are in Modern Warfare 3?'. They're like, 'Don't worry, we'll have a bodyguard with you.' And I'm like, 'I don't feel any better.' And so I was a little worried about that aspect. And so I didn't go."