Kaz Makita: la Progresión de FIFA

Revogamers: We’re going to talk just about the Wii Version. You are the producer from EA Canada. Let's talk about the All-Play mode, which is kind of sensitive, depending on what you are doing on the screen, you may push just two buttons. How does it work?

Kaz Makita: All-Play is a new EA Sports-Wii brand that we are going to establish this year. And not just FIFA but the EA Madden or the other Wii games. So All-Play is meant for everyone to be able to play the game. So, for FIFA, we’ve been always focusing for more hardcore gamers but when we realized Wii is not just for hardcore gamers, there is a lot other people who never played FIFA who own the Wii hardware, and now they want to play. So we want to provide a unique experience for those users and an easy-to-pick-up game. And that’s what All-Play is for.

Revogamers: How does the control work in All-Play mode?

Makita: Yes, All-Play mode has very simple control functions. You don’t even have to control player movements, that’s all automatic. What you need to know is the pass button, which is A button, and shaking the Remote for shooting or tackling. That is all you need to know to play the game.

Revogamers: The previous FIFA had a “vertical” camera which felt some kind of difficult at the first time for new users. Is this game going to have the vertical camera aside from the sideline camera?

Makita: We have a sideline camera and we also have a Be A Pro Camera, which is for single player mode -it wasn’t in the previous game-, and also we have an end-to-end one, which is what you’re talking about. We have that option as well.

Revogamers: We have to mention Pro Evolution Soccer

Makita: Of course!! (Laughs)

Revogamers: In PES, which has been different from previous soccer games, you have to control the whole team, not just one player. Have you thought about doing something similar, or are you focusing more on a single player.

Makita: I think it is a great point. Our really focus is to make the game to be easy to pick up and play, but still have a lot of depth in the gameplay aspect, as well. We have been playing PES Wii, they did a lot of good things in the game that they are trying to change in the Wii Console. We learned from that. And also we have been reading articles about what consumer feel about Konami’s game. That is something that gave great results for us, to understand and for the marketing, being a “Super Game”, too. You know, that's how we came up with this new control signals thing. About controlling one player, single player or multiple players… [FIFA] is in between, you know, you can control the ball player because we have the '-' button to run the player and thinks like that.

Revogamers: I didn’t understand it when I was playing. So, with the ‘-‘ button, what you do is to drag and drop a player or you just order him to run.

Makita: Just order to run. You don’t have to point the direction of the run, because that, we tested and it seemed too difficult to do, because you had to control your player as well, and then after define the pass direction and now you have to do another thing. For us it is not enjoying, it is too much, if you ask. We want CPU to supporting that for the consumer.

Revogamers: Another thing we didn’t catch. In the previous FIFA, when shooting with the Wiimote, if you shot upwards, it was the strong shoot, and if you shot downwards, it was the accurate shot. Is it the same?

Makita: No it is different now. Last year, what we heard from FIFA is that not always the game was executing what the user wanted to do.

Revogamers: Yes, that’s right

Makita: (Laughs) So, if you try to do a super precise shot, it may be not recognized. And we don’t want to see that happen. We want users to get in what they want to do. So we actually removed that. It is all CPU-controlled. So you can actually shake the Remote and then it defines it for you, depending on the context. For example, if you’re in the behind, and looking back, then you ain't gonna get a fast shot. But if you shoot in the right moment with the right speed, then you get a perfect shot. That's all we capture this year.

Revogamers: So it also depends on the player, on its capabilities to shoot… and you don’t control the strength with a bar or something.

Makita: Exactly, that’s it.

Revogamers: We’ve seen in the other presentation with your partner [FIFA 09 PS3-360] that there’re a lot of improvements in the gameplay engine, like for example the dribbling system, trapping, the “directional leg”… are those things on the Wii version?

Makita: No, it is different. We use a very different game engine. “Next-Gen” is running very, very hard on PS3 and 360. So we can’t take that to the Wii. We need Wii to reach a very different audience and different gameplay aspects. It is not about, you know, having great dribbling animations or great players interactions. That's not the Wii. For us Wii is more about casual, it is more about action play and that why we have new game modes like 8 vs 8. That is where we spent more efforts on. It doesn’t mean we don’t do much on the gameplay; we still work a lot on the gameplay aspect like shooting, collisions... Things like that still happen in the game.