Re: Re: Re: Why EA are not interested in making realistic football
Originally posted by Rport03
Well its easy, any Konami fan will bash FIFA because even though the game is getting better and better I havent seen that many Konami fans admitting that the game is getting better...
I don't think the game is getting better; I think that the fixes for gameplay flaws are getting more inventive, and that features for that year (which may or may not be taken away next year) are interesting, but unfulfilled, and that all that, over so many years, can no longer be attributed to lack of focus or a relative lack of competentcy, but, rather, must be atrributed to the annual business model, i.e., EA has institututed the sensibility expressed by fans and critics alike of the series of anticipation of "what's been fixed/screwed up THIS year?" as a marketing plus.
In the end analysis, EA is what it is; I used to have to care. That's no longer the case (although EA latest efforts - successful in the case ofthe NFL - to buy up all possible licenses is worrying, because while I do think that thier expression of gridiron and hockey and baseball [MVP, not that Triple Play ****e!] is superb, I quite simply don't agree with what they think constitutes world football.
But, like i said, as long as they don't buy up the license market and make it exclusive (and thus drive Konami out ofthe market), I don't have to care right now; PES4, as I've visually demonstrated in other threads, is a far deeper football sim.
But it is correct that EA models Disney; when I ran ESPNZones in Tmes Square and Washington D.C., we had EA Sports consultants on our "SPorts Arena," our proprietary gaming floor, on a semi-regular basis, along with most other entertainment concepts and companies, all trying to capture aspects of Disney's "experience creation" dynamics.
The big trick about that is that Imagineering starts with the premise that experience must be authentic first and foremost, be it illusion or physical reality in terms of the attraction (which, with Disney, can get quite large and complex). I don't think that EA Canada see enough matches (live), nor do they have the Producer structure (the FIFA series, for some time, has been, in essence, a set of results reflecting how Danny Issac sees football) to produce the type of game which one might think they could produce, given Tiburon's success and what is belied by their annual reports in terms of resources.
Again, I offer what I offer for dialogue's sake, but it is refreshing, as an Alienware and Xbox gamer, to be in a position over the last two years to not have to wreally care what happens with the FIFA franchise.
On a positive note (for FIFA adherents), I do think that UEFA CL 2004-2005, having played it upon launch in-store, after hours, for some time, is possessed of better gameplay fixes than FIFA 2005; in removing the radar and adding widescreen, EA Canada and its subsidiaries continue the parallel tradition of "What FIFA giveth (one year), FIFA taketh away (next year), but this time they've increased that give/take cycle to making it all happen in one season...
Right now, it's PES4, with anticipation, rightly so, for PES5 and the next-generation PES6. But, for me, even if they took a year or two off, I'd be happy with PES4. Hell, I re-installed PES3 just for sh!ts and giggles, b/c I was happy with that.
With FIFA, the above question ("what's been fixed/screwed up THIS year?") remains the question for next year, as the mod community gears up for more "gameplay patches" and stores up more hope for the future. That's not to say that FIFA 2005 isn't better fixed than FIFA 2000-2004, nor is it to say that UEFA 2004-2005 isn't better, in terms of gameplay fixes, than FIFA 2005. What it is saying is that EA's business model when it comes to football is markedly different than that of gridiron, or baseball, or even basketball, and that the reason for that might, at this point, best be offered to us by Matt Holme.
Sadly, offering us that inside truth is no longer in his best interest, as he IS EA Canada now.
All I can say is having worked in games development and flow theory from 1997-2001, I have rarely come across a development model like the FIFA franchise over that period of time; it doesn't quite "give in" to the Disney LCD "experience" model, nor does it go for football simulation status...it does sit in the seemingly unmagageable middle, and manage it, to the credit of EA marketing dept.
They should just hope that they continue to gain more consumers than they lose to the WE/PES (and other) series.
I wonder how many games consumers will be asked to consider in 2005-2006? At least three (FIFA, UEFA, and WC)? Or will they distill that which they offer even more?
(off to try out Wolf's WE8@I Version X FM 2005 option file)...
