Decommission started life as my final intern test. I was allowed to pick the setting, basing it off the Modern Warfare 3 singleplayer mission "Return To Sender". I thought the cut up ship shapes would be an interesting MP level, and we didn’t have any DLC levels yet that used the PMC and Militia factions. It proved impressive enough that it was greenlit for production.

The design was simple enough at first, I started with a grid of ship shapes and through playtesting opened/closed connections to start forming lanes. The map ended up with four lanes, but the layout and setting of each was distinct enough that navigation wasn't a problem. We had a call with Infinity Ward designers weekly where we continued to hammer out the layout.

I worked closely with the senior designers on COD standards, using what I knew from the mod community work I had done about relationships between gameplay and level design, and made my best guess on what would be fun.

Performance on the map proved difficult but not unsolvable and it taught me several lessons for performance forward designing.