I couldnât get Robert Bowling to use the words Battlefield 3 in a sentence.
Heâs an Infinity Ward guy, which means heâs a Call of Duty and Modern Warfare guy. And I guess that means that, in public, heâs not going to try to talk about Battlefield 3, the latest taste-test challenge to the mighty CoD, to a pesky reporter.
After we played some pre-release Modern Warfare 3 together, I told him about the hate I see for his series. Every time we write about your games, we have hordes of Battlefield 3 fans attacking Modern Warfare 3 in the comments below our articles. They root for its failure. Surely, I asked Bowling, you get that too?
âAny game that has two very different audiences, youâre going to see it,â he told me. âEvery game has its passionate userbase. We see it from everybody.â
But, is it annoying?
âI wouldnât say itâs annoying. Itâs what it is. Itâs what games have been forever.â
Call of Duty is on top. Itâs Goliath. Itâs the New York Yankees. Itâs LeBron James going into the NBA Finals. Bowling says the franchise has 30 million fans to please, and counting. Thatâs the kind of popularity that spawns competition and hate. I wanted to know from Bowling what it feels like to be in that position, what it feels like to have people preparing to cheer if you fall.
Itâs helpful to get the hate, Bowling told me.
âWe may have the number one selling game,â he said. âWe may have, at times, the number one most played game. So itâs very easy to sit back and say. âWeâve done our jobs perfectly. We have the best game ever created. Look at the numbers.â But then you can get online and have people kick dirt in your face constantly every day about anything that they may not like about the game. It allows you to have a gut check and a perspective that this is where we still need to go. This is work that we still need to do.â
Where do people kick dirt on his face? Twitter He says joining Twitter âwas the best thing Iâve ever done from a development standpointâ for just this reason. âIt allows you to not rest on acclaim alone, whether critical or commercial, and makes you realize that there are still audiences out there that want to enjoy your games that may not even play shooters, that may not be into the type of game you make. You can look at that and find ways to introduce them into the experience.â He cited MW3âs co-op Survival Mode as an example of the kind of franchise improvement made because of heat on Twitter. It is designed to give single-player Modern Warfare fans a way to experience the franchiseâs multiplayer perks by including them in a relatively safe horde mode.
But those Battlefield 3 fans⊠they are such a consistently fiery and vocal bunch that I wonder about them. They seem marshaled to dog Modern Warfare in ways that wonât necessarily spawn a new gameplay mode for Modern Warfare 4 or whatever. Shortly before Bowling and I were chatting, news had come out that www.modernwarfare3.com was re-directing to Battlefield.com (It doesnât anymore). No reaction?
A public relations person from Activision jumped in to point out that Battlefield publisher EA was not behind that. I turned to Bowling once more. Nothing more to say about these Battlefield folks?
https://lastchance.cc/what-the-hells-going-on-with-modernwarfare3-com-5820226%3C/a%3E%3C/p%3E
You can contact Stephen Totilo, the author of this post, at [email protected]. You can also find him on Twitter, Facebook, and lurking around our #tips page.
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Battlefield 3 Isnât Competing With Modern Warfare 3, But it Still Wants to Win
The way I see it, Battlefield 3 and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 arenât really competitors. Theyâre just two modern shooters that happen to be coming out two weeks apart from each other.
When I suggest this to Kevin OâLeary, brand manager for Battlefield 3, heâs quick to agree. More »
