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Gary Paterson (EA SPORTS Vancouver, FIFA09 Next Gen) Interview
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-What’s news with the gameplay in FIFA09?
Where to start, there is so many new things in FIFA09. You may have read about the 250 improvements that we have made, some of them are small, some of them are much bigger but in effect every major feature of FIFA gameplay has been improved in some fashion. I guess the biggest changes can be grouped into 3 areas; Responsiveness, Physical Play and Intelligence,
- Responsiveness
Clearly an important concept for FIFA, responsiveness was one area that we and the community identified as needing some improvement in 08 so we devoted a lot of time to working on this. We spent time improving Dribble responsiveness to make sure that the time between pad direction change and players touching the ball was reduced, also adjusting how long the turns were so that you could transition out to another turn or into a pass. On passing and shooting we worked on time to touch but also on adding stretch and slide passes/shots to make sure that when you press the button the player will make every effort to get to the ball. The trapping system was also re-written to give the player more freedom and control of the ball, ensuring that you can move to or away from the ball also making controlling the ball and time between control and your next action (pass, shot, turn) faster.
- Physical Play
We spent a lot of time working on collisions, jostling and shielding this year and I am really happy with the way it turned out. We wanted to ensure that gamers could feel the strength and weight of the players and I think we succeeded in this. Jostling in particular feels really good, the visuals, the feeling and the outcome are all much better than before. Similarly with collisions, we added lots of new animations so that you could really feel the size and direction of the impact, the results can often be dramatic and very satisfying. Add to this the re-worked shielding and new in-air jostling system that allows you to battle for the ball while it is in the air and then allows your players to collide mid air, using attributers and positioning to determine the winner and I think we have a really strong physical play package this year.
- Intelligence
In FIFA you only control one player so it is important that the intelligence of the other 20 players on the field is strong. With this in mind we have spent a lot of time on player positioning and also on the GK. In positioning we added lots of new behaviours to the AI to ensure that they make the correct runs whether it be supporting the ball carrier sideways or backwards or making overlapping, curved or crossing zone runs. And to counter this we added defensive behaviours like covering, man-marking, double marking, swapping markers, position swapping etc… With the GK our aim was to ‘humanise’ him, by that I mean remove occasions where he was super-human and also occasions where he was a little stupid. Again we added lots of new AI that made the GK analyse the situation better, thus he makes decisions on whether to do anticipation saves, reflex saves, preparation saves, catches, parries or simply watch the ball as it sails over or wide of the goal. Finally, we have worked on the AI of the referee, making his decisions more realistic and consistent.
- And much more
Almost every aspect of FIFA gameplay has been altered or tweaked in some fashion, things that I can think of that I have yet to mention include:
1. Swerve Passes – good players will swerve some through balls to avoid the defender
2. Net Physics – has been tweaked to give a more satisfying bulge and recoil more realistically
3. Ball Physics – Has been tweaked to give more realistic in air behaviour, plus the addition of rain and snow effects
4. Through passes – Have been improved to assist the user and create some spectacular plays
5. Combo dribble turns – skilled players can perfrom very quick, fluid combinations of turns
6. Skill Moves – more responsive also new moves have been added
7. Outside of the foot shots
8. 100s of new Animations
9. Lay-off free-kicks
10. Custom Team Tactics
11. Slide Tackling – improved targeting logic to make them more useful
12. Jockey Pressing – a new feature which allows you to contain a possessor instead of diving into a tackle
13. Player Reactions – players will react to the plays, applauding or criticizing or pointing for passes
14. Referees – refs and linesmen are actually part of the game
15. etc…
Overall, we concentrated on all of the fundamentals of the game and rising their quality, we did not want to add any fancy new features until we were happy that the fundamentals were very, very solid. I think you will agree when playing that this was the correct decision.
- What was the role of the fan’s community in these changes?
Community is very important to FIFA, this time last year when we were planning our features for FIFA09 we gathered as much feedback as we could, much of this from the community via our community managers, Obviously we do not have the resources to act on everything that our community suggest, it is our job as Producers and Designers to prioritize what we feel will have the greatest impact to the largest number of gamers and ensure that the game has a common direction, but rest assured that any ideas that we did not use will not be forgotten but stored away for future versions if the game. Going forward we as a development team are becoming more and more involved in communicating with our community, I think you will shortly see a change in the way and frequency with which we, the dev team, communicate with our gamers.
- Today, the realism of the FIFA09 gameplay is recognized by all, we imagine that you should be very proud...
As a lifelong football fan (Aberdeen and Scotland), a lifelong football player and a lifelong football gamer it was always a goal of mine to work on FIFA and it is a great privilege to be able to do so. It also carries a lot of responsibility as I know that there are literally millions of fans out there who buy the game and look for lots of different features from it. We work hard to keep our fans happy and build a game for them so I’m just glad that they are liking what we have done so far but we know that there is still lots we can do so we won’t stop building on what we have.
- About the 10vs10, how does it work with the gamepad in hand?
10v10 is a lot of fun, though it takes some discipline to play well. The first games we had in the office were a little manic, and perhaps not as much fun for the football purist, but once everyone got used to playing in one position and keeping possession we have started to have some really fun games. We have even got into a little trouble as we were making too much noise celebrating goals so the people from other teams were getting a little annoyed J.
- In what position will we see you in that mode?
I’m not sure yet, we are going to put a team together with some of the guys from FIFA but we have not decided who will play where. In real life I play anywhere on the right or centre, in fact I have mostly played sweeper recently as my team does not have many defenders, I would like to play either CM or RM but I have a feeling that I will end up in defence.
- Let’s talk about live season adidas, how does it work?
adidas Live Seasons is a great new addition to our game that adds variety and tactical depth to our game by adjusting players form/attributes on a weekly basis. The feature is available for six top leagues (Mexico, England, France, Italy, Germany, Spain) and is a service meaning that you have to sign up for it in game via XboxLive or PSN. Gamers are given one league for free and will be asked to pay for any additional leagues. A team at EA will be analysing the form of each player in real life and updating this in our database, gamers will then be able to download this data into their console every week. Of course you have the option to turn the form updates off, on a game by game basis, if you wish (say if your top striker is off form J). Overall the feature is surprisingly effective as it adds a whole new dimension as even a kick-off match will have variety and tactical subtlety that it never had before.
- What is your favourite Interactive League Team, and what is your goal for this new season?
Being an Aberdeen fan my team do not have an interactive league, but being Scottish I support any team with a Scottish connection so I follow Manchester Utd (as Alex Ferguson used to manage my team Aberdeen) and Everton. I chose Everton as my IL team, we did well last year, better than expected perhaps (just like in real life) so anything better than that would be a bonus.
- In a way to conclude, do you have a word for the French FIFA09 community?
Thanks for the support and I hope you enjoy the game. We will be in touch soon to get your feedback on FIFA09 to help us decide the features that we should put into future FIFA games.
Traduz please..sembra bella corposa come intervista...
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[Modificato da Nam 77 09/09/2008 21:37]
Niente e' per sempre..ma tu non passerai mai...