October 6 2011
Last week the Battlefield 3 beta brought me face to face with EA's new digital distribution service, Origin, which is also in beta. Origin currently consists of a store, download application, and game launcher not entirely unlike Valve's Steam or Blizzard's Battle.net.
At the moment Origin is a very sparse service compared to its competitors. The selection of available games is quite small, but with a publisher the size of EA behind it, that is bound to change rapidly.
Downloading the Battlefield 3 went smoothly. The critical function of being able to pause and resume downloads seems to work good, although Steam has more options in this regard, such as being able to throttle download speeds.
One complaint I have about Origin pertains to the way it installs. You are given an option where you want Origin installed, and it's natural to assume that games downloaded through the service will end up in roughly the same place, or at least let you know about it. At some point during the download I noticed that, regardless of where you put Origin, the game gets installed in a folder created under C:\Program Files(x86)\ by default. You have to change the destination folder in Origin's options to get your game files where you want them, and it won't move games that are already installed. Note that Steam didn't get this quite right either, but at least once you know that all your Steam games are going to end up in your Steam folder, you can simply install Steam on an appropriate drive.
Another annoying thing about Origin is that it wants to load on startup, and there is no way to stop it other than going into Windows configuration. Most programs, like Steam and Skype, give you the option to turn this off in their settings, but in Origin it's nowhere to be found. Do gamers really want dozens of different services from competing publishers loading up automatically every time they start their systems? I think not. Frankly I'm sick of having every new program configure itself to load on startup, as if that's the only thing I'm going to use my computer for from then on.
Central to BF3 is the new Battlelog, where you can browse for game servers, find friends, and view your stats. Curiously, the Battlelog doesn't run in Origin. Rather, when you press "Play" in Origin, it opens your web browser to the Battlelog site. As well, if you try to launch BF3 from Battlelog, it will start Origin first if you don't have it running. The thing is, Origin itself really adds zero functionality to the mix once you have the game installed. Of course, it's still in beta so there is a good chance that more features are planned for the service.
Battlefield 3 actually launches from the browser-based Battlelog, and Battlelog already seems to work better than the server browsers in most previous Battlefield games at release. There are decent server filters, a friends list, and a vast amount of information about your soldier's performance and progress unlocking new items. I think integrating Battlelog into Origin would make the latter much more appealing, because it is a bit awkward to have to run both Origin and a browser to play BF3. It works, but right now it doesn't strike me as the most eloquent solution.
