FIFA 09 (PC)

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VideoGamer.com: One of the ways you've tailored FIFA 09 to the PC is with widgets which give you real time information. Where can you take that idea in the future?

PH: We take a lot of inspiration from, how do you use a PC on a daily basis? The PC is part of my life routine and I'm sure it's part of your routine as well. I have my own customisable home pages. I think there's a lot of things we could learn from those other experiences on the PC and apply that to your football entertainment experience in the FIFA PC product. So where could it go? There could be transportability of these widgets between different... you're seeing a widget in your game, if your favourite website is iGoogle and you customise that maybe we could look towards transporting the widgets around. There's a lot of things you could start to do linking into people's daily patterns on their connected PC.

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VideoGamer.com: One idea I've thought of is having a widget with news stories relating to a big transfer maybe feeding into the game and altering the roster in real time. Is that something that could even work?

PH: Is that something that could even work? We use this internally a lot when people bring up new ideas, given enough time or money anything is possible, probably even a time machine, but you'd need a lot of time and money for that one! But those types of ideas, those are great things. I'm really excited about especially at this time and getting close to the launch of FIFA 09 is that we're putting out some different things on the PC. You've come up with an idea right away, well what about if you take that and what's the next step? And that's something that's an integral part of our development process. The way we make our games is we come up with lots of ideas, I told you before we can't execute on all of them, I'm not going to tell you about all of the ones we have hidden or haven't executed on yet but other people also ask us, reviewers and the gamers say guys please do this. When people start rallying around certain ideas that's a great cue for us to say hey, let's invest in it and start looking into these other ideas. I know a lot of cool ideas are going to come out this fall once we've release the game because people are going to start saying, love it but only why don't you have this? At least you love the feature and now we can listen to you guys and see what the next step is.

VideoGamer.com: So you guys pay a lot of attention to community feedback then?

PH: We do a lot. How we start normally brainstorming and prototyping for a future version of a game is we'll spend a lot of time looking through the forums, spend a lot of time reading the reviews, may do some focus groups, we'll talk to our marketing and publishing partners in the different territories as well to hear if there's different feeling coming from South of Europe versus Eastern Europe versus North America. Sometimes there are some regional differences in terms of what people are asking for. All that folds into our own personal experience. People who work on the game are from all over the world. We play the game a lot, we all love football. That's why we have these jobs. We're trying to synthesise what other people are saying but also use a bit of our own creativity and mesh it into what our thoughts are and see where that takes us for the next set of features.

VideoGamer.com: What will the minimum specifications for FIFA 09 be given that you're focusing on improving the graphics?

PH: PC unlike any other platform has a scalability issue. The platform isn't a set platform. So our minimum spec isn't going to be that much higher than it has in the past. It's going to be up a little bit but it's kind of what the general evolution of what's installed. That is going to change a little bit. But the rendering is going to be able to scale on FIFA 09 PC. So if you have a lower end system it's going to look roughly the same, a little bit better than last year. There's going to be some improvements but they're not going to be drastic. But if you have a higher end machine, what we call the recommended spec, then you get the full blown, all the features are turned on, the 3D grass, the full screen effects, the high polygon models, all the shaders, the lighting's all tuned up to the top level. We're still refining the actual specs right now, so I don't want to get quoted as saying it's this specific graphics card. We have certain targets though that if you say you had like an 8800 type graphics card most likely you'll be able to turn everything on, but that's the rough ball park, it's something I know is safe to say to get the full effect. But you may be just shy of that. So maybe it comes down to just changing which resolution you're playing the game at to make sure you're having a nice smooth game experience.

VideoGamer.com: With a sports game like this is DirectX 10 support even worth it?

PH: The way I look at it is more about what's the right technology to get done your objectives? I wouldn't say DX10 is, just because DX10 is the latest it's something we need to do. What the team is trying to do, my art director is trying to do, is give a really great looking experience and if that can be accomplished with DirectX 9 which is a more broadly deployed standard then we'll work with that. If it comes to a point where there's a substantial enough installed base of machines with DX10 and that can get us that much farther to what our art direction goals are then we'll look at that. But it's really listening to the consumers and seeing what they want and are expecting as opposed to necessarily just saying we need to have it running on DX10. I talk about it in that way because I'm actually really happy with what they've been able to do in terms of the look of the players in the game right now, the lighting effects, the skin, they've actually been able to do a lot of great things this year. So, pretty happy with that. Now we'll listen to the gamers' feedback and we'll see where it goes. We'll also look at the trends in terms of machines and what kind of cards are out there that support DX10 and decide in the future what are the next steps to take.

VideoGamer.com: Is it just that DX10 isn't in enough PCs to warrant spending on supporting it. Would you agree?

PH: I guess that's probably a similar sentiment. This year, to be completely honest, we knew from the start we could hit our goals with what we can do in DX9. My art director is a lighter by trade, that's where he comes from and his background. So given enough time and enough engineers to work with him he can make some great things happen, even with less than leading edge technology. He was the guy that last year on the PS2 game added HDR effects just by being creative and what technology they used to create an HDR. I don't know many PS2 games had this high dynamic lighting effect going on. Sometimes it's just a bit of ingenuity that can help you get done and achieve your objective.

VideoGamer.com: So what you're saying is if you're good enough you don't need DX10?

PH: Well! There's always other ways to get around. You might not get 100% of something but you might get 80% or 90% which for the large majority of the audience they really appreciate and is also widely applicable, can run on a lot of machines.

VideoGamer.com: What everyone is always interested in is what team you've made statistically the best each year. What team is best in FIFA 09? Liverpool is it?

PH: If I had more to say with it! We have this data collection team, in-house team of around eight guys who manage a community of hundreds of external experts, like football nuts around the world who give us feedback on all these traits. We're at the point now, early July, where there's still a lot of refining to be done on this so we'll actually be looking at the data and getting that polished all the way through August. So it doesn't matter what I tell you now. I could get on my email and find out what the best team is now and it won't be the same. There's going to be some differences if some big transfers happen too. One or two players changing clubs can make a big difference. There will be some changes. I don't think it will be the exact same teams as last year that will be the go to team if you're looking for the best online. It's a good point. It's totally valid. It's a very interesting thing when you play the game a lot and you play it online you want to know who's the best team, who should I be playing with, how should I be playing with that team? We hear that. It's definitely something we know that's important to you!

VideoGamer.com: So it'll all be sorted by the end of August then?

PH: Yeah. The thing is we're trying to replicate the real world. Part of this fantasy of playing FIFA is you play it because you love your club and you love the sport and you love the leagues. How those real world clubs and how the real leagues start to unfold as we start to see them finalise their squads, the line-ups they're playing with and how they start to perform even in early matches at the end of July and when the season starts in August, that will influence the game.

VideoGamer.com: That's great Paul, thanks for your time.

FIFA 09 is due out on PC Autumn 2008.

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