FIFA gets more online
20th December 2008 by Diane
Interesting article from FIFA 09′s producer on Edge Online. What he says are very classical elements of online game design, development and publishing, but it’s still very interesting to hear about them from such an established and mainstream offline franchise perspective.
Maybe it’s just the interview being published long after it was made, but the game was released early October, so insisting on the first weeks results might mean that the game is not that sticky?
Takeaways :
- 1 million players registered for online play in the first few weeks, about 300,000 logging in every day (no breakdown by platform is specified)
- 35 millions games played in the first two weeks, which in regards to the total number of players seems to make it quite “hardcore” , especially as they state the following:
- The 10 on 10 mode seems very successful (although no breakdown for each mode is provided, leaving the notion of success quite unclear), which seems to confirm the “hardcore early adopters” thesis : playing 10 on 10 requires more time to get all these people in a match, and more management skills and teamwork than playing just 1 on 1(in the same way that playing Battlefield is less accessible than Counter-Strike) . For a traditional FIFA player, it’s also probably a big step.
- The plus side of the 10 on 10 is the team spirit, of course, but also that players can really identify to their characters, although at the moment they can play only real-world footballers, which the producer recognizes gets in the way of emotional attachment, and they plan to change it in FIFA ’10. I wonder how the population of this mode will evolve over time (as more players, maybe less committed, start playing online too after getting the game for Xmas). It will be interesting to see how it will translate for Football Superstars, considering their character-centric approach?
- The producer sees an opportunity for a economic football management game emerging out of it by letting players attach a value to and trade human players, clubs, etc (which is only logical : as soon as you are online and multiplayer, you have an economy, whether it’s planned in the design or not.)
- He understands the value of customization, reputation and achievements.
- He is talking about FIFA as a service.
One will wonder if they will at some point in the future merge the FIFA Online franchise (for now available only in Asia) and the classic FIFA franchise? If traditionnal FIFA gets totally online in the future, will there be any sense in keeping both?
It would certainly be an even bigger step forward for the franchise to go away from the yearly edition and properly embrace a platform approach, and having the game evolve at a quicker pace and in smaller steps. It will probably take EA’s current experiments with the new business models to be sucessful before we can see FIFA going that way, but it is more likely than even a few months ago.
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