Battlefield 3 is very centered on the social networking Battlelog, so much so that the PC version relies on it. And while the service shares some passing similarities to the Autolog from EA's line of racing titles, DICE producer Patrick Loving says the team took cues from social networks and even their shooter competition.

"I looked at all social networks, from Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, to of course [Halo] Waypoint, [Call of Duty] Elite," Loving told Gamasutra. "We looked at everything. That's inspirational for me -- just finding out what other people do, and just sort of grabbing the good pieces out of it." He says they picked some of the common, popular elements to form the basis of Battlelog.

Meanwhile, setting up their own form of social network may help avoid some of the pitfalls from other games that have tried to integrate existing media tools in their games. "I don't think everyone would like to spam the Facebook feed with what they're doing in-game," he said. "But I think it fits perfectly into a branded social network such as Battlelog. So that was the key: people want to keep it within the Battlefield community. The friends you have on Facebook are probably not the same friends that you have on Battlelog."

As for the possibility of added features or integration into other EA shooters, Loving is very focused on the Battlefield 3 launch and iterating on it first. "I'm very happy with the features that we have, but of course we're going to keep adding stuff as we go along," he said. "I just want to see how people react to it, so that we can give the consumers what they want.