4 ms·

Rejection, tragedy and billions of dollars – The story of FIFA Video Games

110 points by muratmutlu 13y ago

fsckin 13y ago
For a long while I thought FIFA wasn't a 'big' game at all, not worth my time. Turns out I was pretty wrong. If not already, FIFA is close to a billion dollar per year franchise. "For this first game EA had to go without [licensing]. And so the dev team decided to put themselves in the game. Matt Webster went upfront for England. Joey Della-Savia was in the Italian squad. Assistant producer Marc Aubanel became a striker for French team." Humble beginnings, indeed.
- f137 13y ago
  And Don Mattrick was fielded for Ukraine :) It was fifa94 if I remember right
tejaswiy 13y ago
Can we keep out the usual discussion about the game dev work culture from this one? What EA did there was pretty inspiring.
- lotharbot 13y ago
  I don't think this story is as much about game dev work culture as it is about cultural blinders. American bosses simply had no idea about the market for what one guy called "proper football".
- AdrianRossouw 13y ago
  EA as a whole seemed to have it in for the game. What a small team of dedicated developers did was stop EA from shooting itself in the foot. team usa soccer indeed.
brianbreslin 13y ago
Its fascinating to look back at the origins of this game. I remember getting hooked on FIFA98 on the playstation. I would venture to say the hardcore fans of FIFA each have dropped over $500+ lifetime on buying new versions of the game. Some easily $1k+ ($60/year over 10+ years). I am surprised no one has built a truly good link between fantasy sports and FIFA/Madden or other sports franchises. Despite both being multi-billion industries, they still seem siloed from each other.
- muratmutlu 13y ago
  Totally agree, I've probably spent around that. What's really interesting is where the game started and where it is now, and what FIFA 2023 might be like. I posted this question on Quora and got a response from a former employee, here's what he said "In 20 years time, FIFA will advance towards the real sport as much possible - in both aesthetics and emotion. Where it will be exactly depends on how much the technology advances in parallel. Graphically it will go down the way it has always been going down - more polygons and well scanned faces. Unless FIFA regulates that the pitch be a virtual hologram, there's really no other options for a football game to go in direction other than real life. Maybe bigger fireworks. Emotion and Gameplay is probably where you will see the biggest difference. One of the biggest problem in FIFA right now is that the game still has to live within the restriction of the 17-button current-gen controllers. These controllers don't have enough fidelity to replicate what you want the player to do. It's actually impressive that EA Canada has been able to replicate football to this level by only using 17 buttons in FIFA 13." http://www.quora.com/Electronic-Arts-company/What-will-the-console-game-Fifa-by-EA-Sports-look-like-20-years-from-now http://www.quora.com/Electronic-Arts-company/What-will-the-c...
- lmm 13y ago
  O'Leary Total Soccer kind of fit in both camps - statistical management and live gameplay. It was pretty successful at the time, though I haven't heard of any follow-up.
landryraccoon 13y ago
The real question for me is, how did an American company beat every European company to publish the leading FIFA game franchise, when the corporate culture was so hostile to the idea? It's hard to avoid the conclusion that whatever hostility US corporate culture had towards football, there was some countering factor in European culture otherwise a company on the continent would have published a better one.
- muratmutlu 13y ago
  Konami has the Pro Evolution series which was better than FIFA up until 3/4 years ago when EA completely changed the game mechanics. I can't ever recall any European publishers making any hit football games, not sure why. You probably won't see any for a long time either such is EA and Konami's dominance I actually haven't played any football games on a console in the last 6 years that haven't been either Konami or EA. Sega Virtua Striker went from arcade to console but never took off.
  - mpclark 13y ago
    Yes, early footy games sold really well. My next project at Codemasters in 1987 was going to be a soccer game, but then stuff happened and I moved over to the business side. Pete Williamson wrote a series of four mini games instead, called Four Soccer Simulators, which sold very well. It was quite hard to do a convincing 11-a-side game at the time, with the hardware constraints on 8-bit machines. A young Ted Carron managed to get that side of things working really well, but in a rugby game. He then moved on to a super-secret project which became the Game Genie, so didn't get a crack at footy either. There were many about though, and they were regarded as money in the bank if you published one. Fact was, though, it was really hard to find devs that understood or were passionate about the game. Most self-taught programmers back then learned their craft at the expense of time spent outside kicking a ball, I suspect.
  - enqk 13y ago
    In the old days, Europe was mostly playing on home computers such as the Atari and the Amiga. There Dino Dini's Kick off 1 and 2 and Sensible soccer where the leading games. They did not however license directly from FIFA. Football Manager is a strategy game that is still running, and still very succesfull in its niche.
kailuowang 13y ago
Having been a football fan for almost 20 years, I am not sure if this is a sad thing but playing Fifa is starting to give me more pleasure in enjoying football than watching games. Part of the reason is that in FIFA, controllers can see clearer the whole field than the limited vision real players have in the real world, so that often times controllers can make more creative plays provide that the AI controlling the teammates making interesting runs. Now that I said that, I realized that creating such AI might be even more fun than the above two.
- muratmutlu 13y ago
  I'm starting to feel that way too, if I'm immersed in Fifa 13 now I can't imagine what Fifa 2023 will be like
mccolin 13y ago
I spent many many many hours of my youth playing that game. It was so groundbreaking for its time and just so much fun to play!
chrismealy 13y ago
Does anybody else have favorite versions? I really loved FIFA 99.
- sachitgupta 13y ago
  FIFA 2001 with Paul Scholes on the cover. Spent many days playing 10+ hours till computer access was taken away :) Fond memories!

110 points by muratmutlu 13y ago

For a long while I thought FIFA wasn't a 'big' game at all, not worth my time. Turns out I was pretty wrong. If not already, FIFA is close to a billion dollar per year franchise. "For this first game EA had to go without [licensing]. And so the dev team decided to put themselves in the game. Matt Webster went upfront for England. Joey Della-Savia was in the Italian squad. Assistant producer Marc Aubanel became a striker for French team." Humble beginnings, indeed.

f137 13y ago
And Don Mattrick was fielded for Ukraine :) It was fifa94 if I remember right

tejaswiy 13y ago

Can we keep out the usual discussion about the game dev work culture from this one? What EA did there was pretty inspiring.

lotharbot 13y ago
I don't think this story is as much about game dev work culture as it is about cultural blinders. American bosses simply had no idea about the market for what one guy called "proper football".
AdrianRossouw 13y ago
EA as a whole seemed to have it in for the game. What a small team of dedicated developers did was stop EA from shooting itself in the foot. team usa soccer indeed.

brianbreslin 13y ago

Its fascinating to look back at the origins of this game. I remember getting hooked on FIFA98 on the playstation. I would venture to say the hardcore fans of FIFA each have dropped over $500+ lifetime on buying new versions of the game. Some easily $1k+ ($60/year over 10+ years). I am surprised no one has built a truly good link between fantasy sports and FIFA/Madden or other sports franchises. Despite both being multi-billion industries, they still seem siloed from each other.

muratmutlu 13y ago
Totally agree, I've probably spent around that. What's really interesting is where the game started and where it is now, and what FIFA 2023 might be like. I posted this question on Quora and got a response from a former employee, here's what he said "In 20 years time, FIFA will advance towards the real sport as much possible - in both aesthetics and emotion. Where it will be exactly depends on how much the technology advances in parallel. Graphically it will go down the way it has always been going down - more polygons and well scanned faces. Unless FIFA regulates that the pitch be a virtual hologram, there's really no other options for a football game to go in direction other than real life. Maybe bigger fireworks. Emotion and Gameplay is probably where you will see the biggest difference. One of the biggest problem in FIFA right now is that the game still has to live within the restriction of the 17-button current-gen controllers. These controllers don't have enough fidelity to replicate what you want the player to do. It's actually impressive that EA Canada has been able to replicate football to this level by only using 17 buttons in FIFA 13." http://www.quora.com/Electronic-Arts-company/What-will-the-console-game-Fifa-by-EA-Sports-look-like-20-years-from-now http://www.quora.com/Electronic-Arts-company/What-will-the-c...
lmm 13y ago
O'Leary Total Soccer kind of fit in both camps - statistical management and live gameplay. It was pretty successful at the time, though I haven't heard of any follow-up.

landryraccoon 13y ago

The real question for me is, how did an American company beat every European company to publish the leading FIFA game franchise, when the corporate culture was so hostile to the idea? It's hard to avoid the conclusion that whatever hostility US corporate culture had towards football, there was some countering factor in European culture otherwise a company on the continent would have published a better one.

muratmutlu 13y ago
Konami has the Pro Evolution series which was better than FIFA up until 3/4 years ago when EA completely changed the game mechanics. I can't ever recall any European publishers making any hit football games, not sure why. You probably won't see any for a long time either such is EA and Konami's dominance I actually haven't played any football games on a console in the last 6 years that haven't been either Konami or EA. Sega Virtua Striker went from arcade to console but never took off.
- mpclark 13y ago
  Yes, early footy games sold really well. My next project at Codemasters in 1987 was going to be a soccer game, but then stuff happened and I moved over to the business side. Pete Williamson wrote a series of four mini games instead, called Four Soccer Simulators, which sold very well. It was quite hard to do a convincing 11-a-side game at the time, with the hardware constraints on 8-bit machines. A young Ted Carron managed to get that side of things working really well, but in a rugby game. He then moved on to a super-secret project which became the Game Genie, so didn't get a crack at footy either. There were many about though, and they were regarded as money in the bank if you published one. Fact was, though, it was really hard to find devs that understood or were passionate about the game. Most self-taught programmers back then learned their craft at the expense of time spent outside kicking a ball, I suspect.
- enqk 13y ago
  In the old days, Europe was mostly playing on home computers such as the Atari and the Amiga. There Dino Dini's Kick off 1 and 2 and Sensible soccer where the leading games. They did not however license directly from FIFA. Football Manager is a strategy game that is still running, and still very succesfull in its niche.

kailuowang 13y ago

Having been a football fan for almost 20 years, I am not sure if this is a sad thing but playing Fifa is starting to give me more pleasure in enjoying football than watching games. Part of the reason is that in FIFA, controllers can see clearer the whole field than the limited vision real players have in the real world, so that often times controllers can make more creative plays provide that the AI controlling the teammates making interesting runs. Now that I said that, I realized that creating such AI might be even more fun than the above two.

muratmutlu 13y ago
I'm starting to feel that way too, if I'm immersed in Fifa 13 now I can't imagine what Fifa 2023 will be like

mccolin 13y ago

I spent many many many hours of my youth playing that game. It was so groundbreaking for its time and just so much fun to play!

chrismealy 13y ago

Does anybody else have favorite versions? I really loved FIFA 99.

sachitgupta 13y ago
FIFA 2001 with Paul Scholes on the cover. Spent many days playing 10+ hours till computer access was taken away :) Fond memories!