14 DAY TRIAL // The biggest first person shooters of the fall are now out and gamers can now pick up both Battlefield 3, from Swedish studio DICE and publisher Electronic Arts, and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, from Infinity Ward, Sledgehammer Games and Raven with publishing handled by Activision, and measure the quality for themselves.
But earlier during the year representatives of both publishers, sometimes up to the CEO level, launched some pretty barbed attacks at the other side, suggesting that the quality would be low and that sales would fail to materialize.
Both companies realized that these kind of comments only pushed some players away and a kind of ceasefire developed before representatives of the development teams involved talked about playing each other's games and having respect for the amount of effort both required.
And they seemed to settle on the line that the fact that both franchises fought for the same space meant that the entire genre was pushed forward and the video game industry benefited from the rivalry, tough talk and all.
I don't agree with this position, mainly because one of the essences of innovation, be it in video games or mot other fields, lies in fierce competition, in tough choices, ultimately in someone maybe going out of business.
Sure, it's not good to hear executives and developers at DICE, Infinity Ward, Electronic Arts and Activision trash talk each other like over excited amateur football players but that shows they want to be better than each other, that they try to drive the other game out of the minds of players.
This is competition and it's great for the future of the industry, much better than any forced civil interactions between people who would probably like nothing better than see the other team get out of the first person shooter genre and into social games.