But ok. This was all on the PC. So let’s skip 15 years ahead. I bought an Xbox360 and became a console player. And then Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare came out. I loved it! The whole online experience was balanced and addictive. I played it for a year, until World at World was released and I switched to that. And I kept on ‘upgrading’ my Call of Duties until Modern Warfare 3.

But Modern Warfare 2 already felt different. Too chaotic. Too massive. Just too much. But yeah, I got used to it and played it. But I also bought another game, Battlefield Bad Company. And when Black Ops was released, I also bought a couple of months later Battlefield Bad Company 2. I just liked the change of gameplay.

But somewhere in August/September of this year, I was doubting if I even wanted to get Modern Warfare 3. I had seen the trailers, liked it, but also liked what I saw about Battlefield 3.
Eventually (long story short) I preordered MW3, was all hyped about it, played it and kinda liked it. But yeah… especially the first few hours it felt different. But I figured I just needed to get used to the faster pacing – especially if you compare it to the slower pacing in Black Ops…

For the last 2 months I played MW3 and I liked it. I was addicted and just wanted to play it. But sometimes we got overrun by another team of quickscopers and other stupid, irritating methods of play… and then I just often had the urge to rage-quit (which I usually never did, maybe once or twice).

But ok. A couple of weeks ago I bought Battlefield 3. Just to get some variation in my gaming experiences. I just had enough of every night MW3 and wanted to see some other scenery. And since the moment I started playing Battlefield 3, I never played MW3 anymore… except a few instances where my wife asked if I wanted to play together splitscreen.

Let me – as an old-skool Call of Duty fan boy – try to explain what I love about playing Battlefield 3.
When I’m playing Battlefield 3 I feel more part of a team. We all have the same objective and don’t mind about our kill-death ratio or killstreaks. Better yet, there are no extra benefits to staying alive for a long period, except the spawn-tickets for your team won’t drain. There are no killstreaks, so nobody has benefit in being a lone wolf. Of course there are people who go lone wolf, even me. But all with the same goal, getting to the objective. And I start to learn that sticking with a few teammates works even better… since some can heal/revive others, others can give out ammo… so we can all help each other… and it works like a charm!

The nice thing about BF3 is that everything gives you points, so helping your teammates can sometimes even be more rewarding than only killing the enemy. I have been the MVP for a few times, by maybe only killing 5 enemies… but also placing mines (and destroying tanks with it), healing or reviving teammates, repairing friendly vehicles or just one of the pure basic things… spotting enemies.

That’s just one of the best features of BF3… spotting enemies. It helps your teammates, it gives you a spot-bonus (if the enemy you spotted gets killed), but most of all… it feels like you really help your team.

The thing I first had to get used to – except the controls – was that the maps were a lot bigger than MW3… if you die, you sometimes have to walk a bit longer before you encounter an enemy. But eventually that just fits with the whole slower pacing. And I love it. Especially because every match still feels different, because of the size and no predictable patterns.

So. Just to make a long story short: I love BF3, but will likely also play MW3 – just for the short snacks and the times my wife wants to play together.
Because that’s the one and only downside of BF3 … it has no online splitscreen support.

http://www.mywebsite.com/category2/ for examples. They’d both have the same domain – mywebsite.com – but they’d each be tracking Open Graph Likes that occur ONLY within those categories, right?

Cheryl Posner
Executive Director
Chuck Jones Center for Creativity