There’re a lot of big releases coming up, but the unquestionable headline dominators are Modern Warfare 3 and Battlefield 3, intense rivals from the start. We’ve seen a lot of back and forth between the two, with plenty of blows being traded.

While the publishers are squabbling however, it seems the community managers are BFFs – or so they’d like us to think perhaps.

At Gamescon 2011, Modern Warfare 3’s community manager turned “creative strategist” Rob Bowling and his Battlefield counterpart Danil Matros sparred in-game at the Battlefield 3 booth for roughly an hour.

Instead of taking the opportunity to laugh uproariously at Battlefield 3’s inferiorities, Bowling’s been as sweet as saccharin. The two had the following friendly banter on Twitter:

fourzerotwo Robert Bowling

GamesCom completed! Spent an hour playing @Battlefield 3 multiplayer with friends from DICE, I loved it! Also, Batman: Arkham City = amazing

zh1nt0 Daniel Matros

@fourzerotwo @battlefield was an awesome session! Got your tags 😉 stay safe Rob! COD is lucky to have you 🙂

fourzerotwo Robert Bowling

@zh1nt0 I promise you, you will never get my fourzerotwo tags. That is a challenge my friend. Come for them and receive bullets in the face.

zh1nt0 Daniel Matros

@fourzerotwo bring it 😀 and @locust9 , it was a lot of fun

Call me a cynic, but all the friendly rivalry and jabs seem a little bit too manufactured. It’s an “Aw, shucks” and a “Gee whiskers” away from being totally unbelievable. Still, it’s nice to see everyone getting along anyway, the constant bickering between publishers and fanboys does get tiresome.