More on FIFA’s New Live Season

petermoore — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 16:52:00 GMT

Just back from a good trip to Leipzig for the annual Games Convention. It was my first trip to this event and I was impressed by the scope and scale of the convention, and was also impressed how seamlessly it evolved from a trade event to a consumer extravaganza on the second day. A useful template for a future E3 maybe?

For EA SPORTS, the announcements we made in Leipzig were important examples of our commitment to globalizing our business and the priority our teams are placing on pushing innovation in the online, connected space. The response to both of our big pieces of news last week – that we have a tennis game in development at EAC, and that FIFA 09 will debut a new feature called adidas Live Season – is a testament to the opportunity we have to continue to evolve the EA SPORTS brand and become even more relevant to a new era of both sports fans and gamers alike.

Before either of us got out of town though, I had a chance to ask FIFA 09 Executive Producer Andrew Wilson a few questions about adidas Live Season. As you can imagine, the first question I got from many people was how Live Season was the same or different than Dynamic DNA in NBA LIVE. Here’s a little of what Andrew had to say:

Q: What exactly is adidas Live Season and how does it work?:

A: adidas Live Season is a new premium service for FIFA 09 PS3, Xbox 360 and PC that will update in-game player form each and every week. It will change the way real life is reflected in a football videogame forever. Our new service will run from the launch of the game to the end of the 08/09 season and is based on how real players performed in the most recent real-world matches. FIFA 09 will feel different every week throughout the entire season matching the weekly rhythm of football. That means that the actual form and strength of a player in the game is based on his real life performance. Believe me Peter, Liverpool will be as good in the game during the course of the season as in real life – or as bad….

Additionally, let me explain a couple more interesting points of Live Season:

The data that changes on a weekly basis is the form of a player. No other data will be changed weekly. We will however be making adjustments to the data with the ‘Day 1’ updates – meaning, updating player transfers and the resulting line-up changes – and the winter updates where necessary based on player performances.

On a weekly basis, players will be assigned a “player form” rating, which can be one of five ratings: bad, poor, neutral (no change), good, and excellent. For the four non-neutral form settings, we update a variety of that player’s attributes based on what position the player plays and what form setting they were assigned. Form is relative to how players are rated in our player database.

Q: Who actually is responsible for rating players and how does the system work?

A: We have a global football data experts network that works with us every year to make sure the FIFA franchise includes the most accurate player and team data. This same team of passionate experts monitor every player in the Live Season leagues to supply in-depth data each week.

Q: What happens if a player gets injured? Would he simply vanish from the game?

A: We thought a lot about that, but the players are so important to the game that we decided that we won’t take them out of the game altogether. If and when players are seriously injured, they may get a poor or bad form rating to reflect the fact they aren’t able to play up to their rating in the database. But we are not making players unavailable due to suspension or injury for the service this year.

Q: Not that I expect this from Liverpool, but what if my team is having a bad season and I’d prefer to not have the team reflecting real-world form?

A: It’s simple. You can always turn off Live Season. If Liverpool, for instance, is having a bad season you can reset the service and play with a much better Liverpool squad that was included in the game when you bought it. You can reset your squads back to the same way when you first opened the game. You can decide whether you want to play with the latest form, or with the default player database: offline and online. It’s your choice each time you play. But as a sportsman that you are I bet you would never reset it. With both Dynamic DNA in NBA LIVE as well as Live Season in FIFA, we’re finally able to create sports experiences that evolve with the season. It brings sports fans that much closer to the real-world of sports.

As I mentioned in my previous post, I am off to New York this week for the Tiger launch. I’ll bring all the news from the Big Apple, including some of the behind-the-scenes shots from the numerous events we have planned. BTW – we’re now well over 1 million views of the Tiger viral video on You Tube as of this morning...

Peter Moore Blog : adidas Live Season

More on FIFA’s New Live Season