How I Decided Between Battlefield 3 and Modern Warfare 3
First things first. I’m not a gamer. I’ve never owned a Call of Duty or Battlefield title. I’m not very good at FPS games, but the hype surrounding these releases has piqued my interest. Being a relatively broke college student and pretty busy as well, buying both games is not an option. I spent a couple of days reading reviews and watching game play videos and what did I conclude? EA's Battlefield 3 looks amazing, it’s the game I want to play. I’m buying Modern Warfare 3.But wait Yani... that makes no sense, WTF?!?Gather round kids, and jump in the Way Back Machine as this story dates to a much more innocent time in gaming’s history. Fall 2008.Some of you might remember the mega hyped and ultimately disappointing title released by EA around that time, a little game called Spore. It promised to revolutionize gaming, bring happiness to lonely gamers and bring world peace. What it actually did was piss off everyone that had the decency to support EA and actually pay for the game. Take a look at the reviews on Amazon. Yea, that’s over 2600 one star reviews. Why all the hate? Well, the game basically sucked, but this isn’t a gaming blog so why am I even writing any of this? Because EA locked the game down with some amazingly draconian DRM. I preordered the game and was excited to play it on the release date, and seeing how it was a digital copy, I figured it would be available at midnight. Wrong. The EA servers didn’t unlock the game until that afternoon, so anyone that bought it at a brick and mortar store played the game before the loyal fans that pre-ordered direct from the manufacturer. Even so, that’s not the DRM problem. The problem with the DRM was that once I finally got my digital fingers on the digital bits, I realized I didn’t own this game. Actually, EA was kind enough to lend me this game for a while at the price of $50usd. That was so generous of them. The game came with a limit of 3 installations, which they later, ever-so-kindly, raised to 5 . Right now I can take a walk around my house and count about 8 computers. Why can’t I install this game I own, on each machine I own, for personal use? But wait, there’s more. Even relatively minor hardware changes would count as a new installation in EA’s mind. At the time, I was heavy into PC modding, and as you’d guess, I went through those 3/5 installations mighty quickly. The game I paid $50 for was now useless. What did I do then? I turned to torrents. I had to crack my own game so I could play it. I had to break the law to play the game I owned. Luckily I was in good company.Spore quickly became the most pirated game in history. Thank you EA for supporting your customers. This experience left me with a strong dislike for EA, and I’m sure I’m not the only one.When it came time to choose a game in 2011, this experience in 2008 was the ultimate deciding factor. I don’t know Activision’s history with DRM and customer support, but I do know they haven’t burned me yet, so they’ll be getting my cash this holiday season.
