DICE CEO: "What is it that the people really liked about Bad Company?"

Battlefield: Bad Company 2 was selected as the 2010 Shooter of the Year by PC Gamer UK. So why, four years later and despite insistence that it's " still out there ," is there still no Bad Company 3? DICE chief Karl-Magnus Troedsson says he knows people want a sequel, the problem is that the studio can't quite figure out exactly what people loved about the series.

It's not that Troedsson and company think the Bad Company games were substandard by any measure; if anything, it's the opposite. "Some people say they found the multiplayer controls faster and more direct," he told Eurogamer . "Some people liked the single-player and the characters and the humor. People love different things about it. It's starting to almost get to that place where, if we were to make a sequel to Bad Company, what would than even imply?"

"It's scary to go back and try to remake an old fan favorite when actually no-one can really put their finger on what it is people love. Bringing back the characters and creating a great single-player out of that, sure, I can understand that," he said. "But some people say this: the Bad Company 2 multiplayer is the best you've ever done. Okay, why is that? It's hard for people to articulate what that is, which is actually hard for us. It would be hard to remake something like that."

Here's a thought: Start with interesting, not-too-serious characters, throw them into an interesting, slightly over-the-top and occasionally goofy story, and wrap it all up with plenty of guns, explosions and small-scale, class-based online combat. It might just work.