Peter Moore Blog : NHL

Learning From World of Goo

petermoore — Sun, 18 Jan 2009 04:16:00 GMT

Well sports fans, I hope you had a great weekend watching the NFL's conference championship games. Be honest, how many of you predicted the Arizona Cardinals - the Arizona Cardinals?!? - would be in the Super Bowl? Keep an eye out later this week for our official Super Bowl simulation, where we predict the winner of Super Bowl XLIII using the Madden game engine. Of course, this one is worth reading, since we've correctly predicted the winner five of the past six years ... don't even get me started about last year, and don't blame our game for that one! We'll make our announcement by the end of the week, but in the meantime let me know who you like between the Steelers and Cardinals. By the way, as a Cal fan who followed DeSean Jackson's career at Berkeley, I was delighted to see him have yet another strong game yesterday, even if it was in a losing cause. He had a brilliant 4^th quarter TD catch, he's a great friend of EA SPORTS, and of course he was on the cover of the PS2 version of NCAA Football 09.

Meanwhile, as fun as yesterday was watching two great games, my eyes will be peeled an important game at Anfield today, with Liverpool taking on Everton, our rivals from across Stanley Park. I have not seen the team selection yet, but if Rafa does not play both Torres and Keane together up front then I fear we are tempting fate against what will be a very determined Everton team who have had a tremendous run of late.

Before we close the door on one of the lively discussions that was breaking out here over the past couple of weeks, I want to come clean on my promise to play World of Goo. While I do have a day job, I had to at least download the demo and have a hand at the game before I moved on (trust me, I have pictures to prove it coming soon). By every admission, I am more of a sports guy and this isn't my default cup of tea, but there's a ton to admire in something so simple, yet full of impressive physics that make for an elegant and somewhat addictive experience (even in the demo!).

You've heard me talk for some time now about making our games more approachable and of our need to deliver more compelling direct to consumer experiences. There's a lot to learn from the EA alumni who started 2D Boy and built something as creative and unique as World of Goo, with such a small team and little money. It's that type of creativity and entrepreneurial spirit that can really drive innovation, and I'd like to think we're setting the right priorities and taking the right steps to deliver more experiences in this vein from EA SPORTS.

As such, it's been encouraging to see the feedback on a few of our newest projects coming in the next couple of months. While we may have more than two or three people working on them, they are a far cry from what it takes to make a new Madden or FIFA, yet still a ton of fun and hitting the market at a time on the calendar when, in years past, we had little shipping as we geared up for the start of many of the major sports seasons in the summer and fall, and with them our annual simulation products.

Yet in the next three months, we'll launch 3 on 3 NHL Arcade, a $10 downloadable game that's already one of ESPN's most anticipated new games of the year and a blueprint for many more inexpensive, approachable, and downloadable experiences from EA SPORTS in the year ahead; NASCAR KART Racing, the first of at least three EA SPORTS products that will be either exclusive to, or lead with, the Wii in 2009; and the EA SPORTS Complex, launching for free this spring on PlayStation Home. I also know many of you await our plans on PC this year, and I think there are learnings here as well, beyond just downloads for console gamers, for going online to deliver compelling experiences to the PC community as well.

If you have any plans to be in Montreal this weekend for the NHL All-Star game, be sure to stop by and get your hands on 3 on 3 NHL Arcade. Our producers will be there demoing it for fans. And, of course, if you want to lob in your predictions for the Super Bowl, be my guest. I'll have to wait and see what Madden tells us before I start placing any friendly wagers...

Cheers,

Peter

P.S. And thanks to Megan from D3 for the copy of Bangai-O Spirits. I look forward to playing that on my next extended airplane journey.

Not Resting on our Laurels

petermoore — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 00:32:00 GMT

I don’t know about you, but I’ve been captivated by the NBA Finals this year in a way that I haven’t been in years. There’s no Cinderella teams this year, no surprises. The Celtics and Lakers are the two best teams in the league, period, and both playing at their peaks. Even the best players are going to have their ups and downs in a seven game series (Kobe in Game 1, Pierce in Game 3), but what you see in basketball in perhaps more than any other sport is how hard it can be being number 1. I marvel at how Kobe and Pierce can consistently handle the double and triple teams, the constant pressure defense and the scrutiny. Yet, when all eyes are on them and expectations are at a climax they continue to deliver. It also underscores the importance of home court advantage. Whether it is the proximity of the fans to the action or the controlled indoor environment, it always seems to me that playing at home is a greater advantage in basketball than just about any other sport…particularly in the playoffs.

As any business does, we’ve been completing our annual performance reviews the past few weeks as well as setting objectives and strategic priorities for the year ahead. I find sports always serve as a great metaphor, and so as I was watching the game last night and reviewing our upcoming plans, I thought about what it takes to be on top, to stay on top and to constantly be in the crosshairs of the rest of your industry.

Some people don’t like the heat. I actually love it, and it’s been inspiring for me to see that our teams here do as well. Our teams are talented, passionate and motivated.   It’s a changing marketplace and they’re responding to the demands of our consumers by developing some incredible products for the season ahead. You’d expect nothing less from EA SPORTS, especially when you look at the successes of 2007. To set the record VERY straight (despite what you might have read to the contrary in the last day or so…), we had:

•   Four EA SPORTS titles get Sports Game of the Year nods by various outlets, including FIFA, NCAA Football, Madden and NHL. Of course NHL was consensus best in class, as I mentioned a few days ago. Named sports game of the year by seven publications. No one comes close to that.
•   Three EA SPORTS titles in the overall industry top 20. It was a great year for videogames, and Madden was No. 1 in sports and No. 4 overall.
•   Seven platinum titles (more than one million units sold).

I read the forums, I read your posts on my blog, and we do extensive research and testing to deliver the best sports games on the market each year. We care what you say, we respond as much as we possibly can, and so I’m not surprised that early NASCAR reviews are very positive and that our Madden and NCAA FB community event recently had folks applauding the efforts coming out of Tiburon (more on that to come, BP). I’m not surprised that NBA LIVE, which jumped 15 points in review scores a year ago, has the most ground-breaking feature from our lineup this year and we’ll unveil it next month at E3. And I’ll say with supreme confidence that the future couldn’t be brighter for two of our most critically acclaimed products from a year ago – FIFA and NHL.

We’re never satisfied. There’s always more we can do. It’s what we love about our business. I hate to sound like a cheerleader, but the facts are the facts. And I don’t expect them to change any time soon. We’re hitting this season in terms of quality and innovation stronger than we ever have at EA SPORTS. If I’m wrong, you’ll see me sporting a new tattoo - maybe a competitor’s logo?

February 20th

petermoore — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 19:11:00 GMT

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