22-Jul-2003 EA's perennial big hitter dusted off for another outing, but this time things have changed... The FIFA games are beautiful to look at, they're stuffed to bursting point with detail, and they're an absolute cinch to pick up and play. But recent years have seen EA's iron grip on the football genre weaken, thanks to the brilliant but less immediately gratifying Pro Evolution Soccer series from Konami. So what can we expect from the latest FIFA game? Line producer Danny Isaac bends our ear like Beckham...
What's changed for the latest version?
Isaac: From the front end stuff, we're going to have upwards of thirty stadiums in the game, so that's a lot of the more famous stadiums of teams that will be included. We have the Nationwide league included, Divisions 1, 2 and 3, which is a first for FIFA and great for me as I'm a Brighton and Hove Albion supporter!
There's career mode, and one of the more important elements of career mode is relegation. It's a single-player experience, and you'll start off with limited skills, so that if you immediately went to a big club like Manchester United you wouldn't be skilled enough to fit in and you'd get sacked. So you need to learn your trade in the lower divisions and then work your way up.
There's all the options you'd expect; similar to last year, you can play a normal Premier League season, or you can set up your own tournament. There's a new addition called Rival Mode where, for instance, if you pick Arsenal as your home team your choice for a match will be Chelsea or Tottenham.
You can also play FIFA alongside our new management title Total Club Manager, which will allow you to manage the side through a cup run, for instance, and actually play those games in FIFA.
Another new feature this year, for the PS2, is the ability to play online. So you'll be able to go online and play friendly games, and also tournaments. You'll be able to type in chat and talk to people, and we also have the headset for even more instantaneous communication.
What about the actual gameplay?
Isaac: As always with FIFA, our main concerns are the basic fundamentals, like AI, passing, shooting, positioning. So we have some new technology this year in our formations that allow us to link players together more accurately. So my centre-half goes up the pitch, I can run, and my leftback will run up to cover.
Last year in FIFA 2003 we worked on moving the ball away from the players which made the game look a little more realistic. We've hopefully made it a little more responsive this year. We've also allowed you to have analogue control over his feet so that if you ease off on the stick then he slows down, apply more pressure and he speeds up again.
Also this year, one of the things we have to deal with each year is people saying: "If the football game's going to be the same as it was last year, what's the point in releasing a new one?" We want to provide good value for money, we want to provide a different experience each time, so this year we've invented off the ball control.
The inspiration for it was just football, watching football matches. When people play, of course there's a lot of off the ball activity; so with a press of the R2 button in the game, I get a camera shift and then I can pick the receivers that I want [in a way reminiscent of the John Madden Football games].
How do you feel about the success of the Pro Evolution games?
Isaac: We think we've got a product to compare with Pro Evolution 3. Everyone else is asking "aren't you concerned, aren't you concerned?" but we outsell Pro Evolution three to one, so we've definitely got a market.
Pro Evo is obviously a good game, but it is much more simulation based, and some people don't like that. We actually play Pro Evo, we play all the games - we have to, it's our job.
So lots of people play it, and we think some things are good, some things aren't so good; but I always say to people: "For me, the better they do, the more resources we get." It's like the console wars - if Microsoft and the GameCube go away, what incentive will Sony have to make the PS3 that much better?
The football business is big. There's enough room for who knows, two, three, four of us going in there. And if Konami went away tomorrow someone else would just jump in. We're happy selling lots and lots and lots of copies of FIFA; we're doing very well.
So the new off the ball system you're implementing, are you doing that to make this a better football game or is there a possibility you're doing it to make the game more palatable to a worldwide audience?
Isaac: We honestly feel that it makes for a better football game. You don't have to use it if you don't want to; what we want to do is give the user who's been playing it for a month that extra level, so it's: "Okay, I've mastered this part of the game - now I want to get a little more expressive, now I want to play." And so that's what you can do.
This is still early, we're still looking at things, still trying to tune the game, but you can see how we're trying to get that depth into the product, trying to get it so that you're not just focused on the ball, looking at that all the time.
How much work actually goes into recreating the actual look of the players?
Isaac: A fair amount. We've got over 400 stars this year, so that means we have to get reference material from the players. We've improved the player model, we have organic motion to make the players move better, so there's a fair amount of work. But the majority of our time is spent on actual gameplay details.
Are you disappointed that FIFA won't be appearing on Xbox Live?
Isaac: As a producer I guess I am. For myself I want everyone to have the best experience, on any platform, and online's going to be really, really big. Unfortunately the two companies - EA at a much higher level than I can influence - and Microsoft are just not seeing eye to eye.
Historically EA has always got into things that it can see working; we'll see. obviously we're still talking to Microsoft, we're not just going to say: "That's it!".
So what about FIFA 2005?
Isaac: Career mode and online will be there, we're gonna keep pushing those forward. We're obviously going to keep working on the fundamentals. Even if you look at something like Pro Evo, it's still not perfect, far from it, so even in ten years we're gonna have a lot that we can still do.
I can see making players more realistic, making their intelligence more like their actual type of play, and just making a bigger, better, more user friendly game, which is more about entertainment than just playing a football game. A whole entertainment experience.
How about multimedia-style possibilities?
Isaac: I envisage, and it's not going to be far off, especially with online, I'd love to see people put FIFA in just to see the scores from that day's real life games.
If there was some way you could see match reports and scores and video action, it could be like a one stop football shop, rather than just a game that focuses on the world of football. I can see us going in that direction, and EA is probably just about the only company who could.
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