Advertisement

Welcome to Peter Moore's Official Blog

In this blog you'll see what Peter thinks about sports, sports video games, and the industry in general. We hope this gives you an inside look at EA SPORTS, so please enjoy!

Peter Moore About Peter

Browse by Tags

All Tags » FIFA (RSS)

March 26th

Posted Mar 27 2008, 03:14 AM

So it’s 6am Sunday and I’m here in the office at Redwood Shores. Why? Workaholic? Nope. Stupid? It has been said. No, I’m watching my Mighty Reds vs. Man U on Setanta Sports in the EA SPORTS Bar…
And I wish I had never bothered. Down to 10 men after Mascherano’s completely avoidable red card (never get in the referee’s face while you already have a yellow card), Liverpool look second-rate in the face of the United onslaught, and any dreams of a Premier League title this year are now dashed once-and-for-all.

On a more positive note, as you probably know, all of our development work and brand and product marketing is conducted in our studios in Vancouver (EAC) and Orlando (Tiburon).  I spend a lot of time at both studios, and this past Thursday was a particularly fun trip for me up to EAC in the Vancouver suburb of Burnaby. Purpose of my trip was to spend a day with our very talented FIFA team. It was both an educational as well as motivating day for me. I got to visit with many of the team at their workstations, and get a deeper understanding of the work we doing to maintain our positive momentum in the very competitive soccer category. It was also personally fulfilling to me to interact with so many teammates that are supremely passionate about their work (as well as “the beautiful game”).

While I can’t divulge much about what I saw as we prepare for a busy soccer year, with our Euro 2008 game shipping in advance of the tournament being held in Austria and Switzerland, and then of course our FIFA game later in the year, I can tell you that the team continues to do stellar work. Anyone that is a fan of the franchise has every reason to feel excited about what is on tap for 2008.  I also should mention that one of the best moments of my day was getting out on the pitch and playing some soccer at lunch time with the team.  Here’s a picture of the team.



You’ve also heard me start to talk about what a special year this is going to be for EA SPORTS with the 20th anniversary of Madden upon us.  As our planning and development continues to kick into high gear, I can promise you this is going to be a year to remember.  Even though I have people starting to stop me in the halls even at EA trying to get the latest scoop on this year’s game — who’s going to be on the cover, what bands are on the soundtrack, what are Tom Brady’s ratings going to be, etc. — I’m sworn  to secrecy to not divulge too many details until next month.  But I can tell you this, we do have some news to announce in the next day or two.  Keep an eye out for the first in what will be a series of announcements over the next few months about the Madden 20th anniversary...

As a preview to my next posting take a look at the following web site: http://www.myfootballclub.co.uk/index

For the princely sum of £35 (about $75), I am an part “owner” of the club. It is a fascinating experiment in social networking applied to sports. Stay tuned for a interview with Will Brooks, a UK sports journalist who is the creator of the concept.

I'd be remiss if I didn’t mention the start of the NCAA Tournament last weekend.  If only I had put a little more faith into the simulation we ran with our NCAA March Madness 08 game engine, which correctly predicted 13 of the Sweet 16, I wouldn’t be bringing up the rear in our friendly EA office pool.  That’s right, I’m in DEAD LAST.  I have to say, kind of an embarrassing.  But, what do I know about college basketball?  

-    Peter

February 20th

Posted Mar 14 2008, 08:11 PM En route to Orlando from Vancouver, where I have spent the past couple of days meeting with development staff and reviewing our plans for the upcoming year. Our core franchises out of this studio, FIFA, NBA, and NHL, are all looking very good and the teams are crunching as they all get ready for alpha milestones. Picture attached of the studio, EAC, in the Vancouver suburb of Burnaby – wonderful campus. We are also developing FaceBreaker there, which will be a departure from our usual fully-licensed sports games. I’m sure all of you have read about the game and seen the various screenshots that the team has published. It’s a ton of fun, and will help us enormously broaden our reach with the more casual sports fan.

I want to take a moment to address how I am utilizing the feedback that I am delighted to see accumulating on the various threads. First of all, I want to thank all of you who are taking the time to post your thoughts and provide the thoughtful input about the various franchises. While it pains me to read some of the issues that we clearly need to do a better job resolving, I am encouraged to read how passionate you are about these titles, and how much you want us to improve in certain areas. I am condensing and prioritizing the issues and addressing them with the executive producers. Now let me be clear – just because you badly want something integrated into the game doesn’t mean that we can, or even agree with. Our teams do a tremendous amount of research for every product we create and start laying down their new feature roadmaps in advance of production work beginning. Having said that, many of you have provided great ideas that we may already be implementing or that we will see if we can add before we lock down features. No guarantees on anything, but please know that I am reading every post, and pulling out some of the innovative ideas that you are proposing.

As we get further into the development cycle, and the teams feel more comfortable talking about new innovations, I will report back to you on what we have included based on your feedback. Consider yourselves honorary members of the extended development teams…

Feeling better about my Mighty Reds again today. Magnificent victory over the powerful Inter Milan club yesterday, which I watched over the lunch period up in Vancouver. We were fortunate that Materazzi got shown a second yellow, which put them on the back foot for the rest of the game, but I thought we fully deserved the margin of victory and it sets us up well for the second leg in the cauldron that is the San Siro on March 11th