Football games are bigger business than they ever were and with the arrival of all three next generation consoles, we spoke to Andrew Wilson, executive producer of football at EA, to find out what the next-gen can do for football games.
We might be coming to the end of the current football season, but EA and Konami are both busy preparing next season's football games that should be with us in time for the new season kicking off in August/September.
But what will they offer that we haven't seen before? Surely it's not just a case of better graphics and more stats than we actually give a Klaxon about? To find out we grilled - and we do mean grilled - the man almost in charge of FIFA for EA, Andrew Wilson.
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What does next-gen really mean for football games?
Andrew Wilson: The thing we saw on current-gen was a lot of limitations with technology and processing power. There were a lot of things we wanted to do on current gen that we wanted to do but couldn't.
Like what?
Wilson: Well the intelligence of the football player and the amounts of levels in which they make decisions. On current-gen they had one or two different levels; so they're in the box, in comes a cross, what do they do next? That's it.
On next-gen machines we can process so much more data. We can run more data in terms of giving them decision-making options about how they come to those decisions.
We're starting to see levels of decision-making options that we never saw before and this will make the game far more realistic. You'll also see less repetition on the field. Our aim is to get 100/200 hours of gameplay where you are constantly seeing different things and different decisions being made even if you're in the same context.
Why haven't we seen this in EA's first two attempts at next-gen football on 360 with FIFA 07 and Road to the World Cup?
Wilson: We launched our new engine for FIFA 07 and that was the first year of a new engine. We saw a few things with the new engine that became the foundation for these new ideas.
We saw a different level of athletic ability in the player, so how the player moved and how they interacted with the ball. We also gave the ball its own level of physics. But we started to see the different levels of decision-making on the pitch with depth and context to what's happening.
The thing with writing artificial intelligence is that once you build the infrastructure you can start building on top of it. And year on year we can build more attributes on top of this.
The World Cup game didn't use that engine, it used an old engine. FIFA 07 was the first and 08 will be the second run of that engine.
We were very happy with where we got to with 07 and the launch of a new engine because they're a risky manoeuvre. If it all goes bad, it's not a great thing for us. The player-ball interaction felt very next-gen and we want to capitalise on that with 08 in terms of animation, AI, physics, decision-making. That will give us a level of gameplay that we've never had.
Are we ever going to see AI in the crowd, so they affect players' performance?
Wilson: We had one of our engineers at GDC who started last year what we termed 'Emotion Engine' which was about building a foundation for driving crowd reaction based on little micro-trends within the game.
So different things happening within the crowd will have an impact on how your team plays on the field. If you're getting booed constantly it will have a mental affect on your performance. We started this last year and we're continuing development of that feature. We don't know where it's going to end up or what it's going to do but if we do a good job, you'll never notice it.
What about in-game commentary where you hear repetition after an hour or two? Can next-gen consoles change this?
Wilson: We ran out of space on the disc with current gen. Last year's FIFA had 26 leagues, 15 thousand players, kits, players, stadiums, audio and music, so you just run out of space. The next-gen discs have got more space so in the short term we will have much more commentary on our games.
Looking long term, these consoles are now online. And I would love to think that we can start to pump dynamic commentary into the game on a weekly basis so you never hear the same thing twice.
But think about competitions. Imagine having commentators popping up to commentate on interactive games. So you're not reliant on commentary from our game anymore you got a gamer who gets online and comments every week instead, who then gets a reputation.
No matter what you ship on the disc you'll never get that depth you want. We want to get people involved and creating. We can start that by offering free stuff to download but it's only a matter of time before players start talking to each other about what's going on on the pitch.
On to the PES / FIFA issue. Do you think you have a good enough football game to beat PES in terms of sales even if you didn't have the licenses you have?
Wilson: I hope so. What we've seen in the last five years is that the market has grown substantially and I believe this is a result of the competition. Both companies are pushing to make betters games every year. We've gone from a market that sold us 2 millions units to a market where we're selling 20 million units and that's a result of the competition.
Yes, there's pressure and yes we want to build the nest game we can. But the reality is the world would be a bad place if here was only one football game. Konami's competition pushes us to be better.
Tell us one thing about FIFA 08 that will be different from others?
Wilson: I can't - not at this point.
Go on, hint it...
Wilson: ...
One element that isn't going to be an annual update...
Wilson: If I'm hinting around things... what we've seen with next-gen consoles is that they spend a lot of time online. And when I look at the future of football gaming, online has to play a very integral part and we don't want to be left behind.
But you held the FIFA Interactive World Cup online. It can't get any bigger than that, can it?
Wilson: Yes it can... Much bigger.
Really?
Wilson: Absolutely.
How?
Wilson: There were three people once uploading videos to the web, now we have YouTube. There were once three people chatting via the internet and now we have Skype. The FIFA Interactive World Cup is a great start but we want to get more people involved than that...
