Pixelenemy managed to get an interview with Bohemia Interactive, the developers behind the Arma franchise. One of the questions was referring to ArmA 3 coming to next-generation platform such as the PlayStation 4 or the Xbox One. Bohemia Interactive outright and confidently said that the game won’t be coming to any consoles, and Arma 3 was designed for the PC platform from the ground up.

Here is the full statement from Bohemia Interactive regarding console versions of Arma 3: “We do not have such plans for Arma 3, no. The design of the game is part of the reason. Arma 3 was designed for the PC and porting it directly would not do it justice. Any potential future Arma experience on console would need to be designed with those platforms in mind from the beginning,” said Project lead Joris-Jan van’t Land from Bohemia Interactive.

There you have it folks, Arma 3 won’t be coming to PlayStation 4 or Xbox One.

Let us know what you think of this in the comments below.

Stay tuned to GamingBolt for more news and updates.

VG24/7 has gotten a chance to get an interview with the producer of The Division Fredrik Runqvist and production director Petter Mannerfelt. The interview is quite lengthy, and you may have a read right here.

However, one of the most interesting details from the interview is that fact that the game is aimed to have endless gameplay that will provide a ton of replay value.

“We designed the game to be endless gameplay. It’s hundreds, if not thousands of hours of gameplay that we hope people will enjoy,” Rundqvist stated.

The developers have also confirmed that the game’s world/map is gigantic, but that doesn’t mean that they won’t be expanding the game by any means whatsoever if people want more content.

“The game is based in New York now, but if there’s demand, we’re going to keep on building,’ he added.

Check out the rest of the interview for tons more details on The Division. Thanks VG24/7 for this informative interview.

Let us know what you think of The Division in the comments below.

Check back on GamingBolt for more news and updates.

Hideo Kojima is the mastermind behind the Metal Gear Solid franchise. However, today he will be sharing his views on game development and how important it is for technology to stay up to date at Kojima Productions.

“Making hi-end game takes for 3-4 years if we were to include the concept stage. This time we reconstructed our engine and tool related materials. Even if it’s franchised title, we risk ourselves to add new surprise element. We don’t create with emotions or just because something pops in our mind or but we do carefully consider over and over.”

“I had experienced similar adversity when developing MGS4, where casual gamers were dominating the market. Now with social game domination, it is difficult to keep creating hi-end game solely. But I am not watching only now. Both social and hi-end will be linked together with multidivise or cloud. For the future, I shall hang in there.”

“Game is a media that depends on technology and it advances but does not degenerates. Thus once you step out from ladder of technology, you never able to step on the ladder again. Even in a short period of time not paying attention, the era steps beyond. It’ll endanger you if you get caught up with only the horizontal advancement.”

The PlayStation 4 combines cloud gaming, casual and high end games all into one single box. Kojima said that he will trying to find ways to use the PlayStation 4 as a multi-gaming device and that he has been thinking about it for a while.

Source: Kojima’s Twitter.

Jordan Garland: How did DYKG come about?

Shane Gill: The original idea came from two places. There’s a few pretty big Facebook trivia groups, and I always thought the amount of followers they had was amazing. Some even have hundreds of thousands. Those were part of the inspiration. The second part was where the gaming came into it, and that was via a thread on a gaming forum called neogaf. Everyone was linking to little known facts and theories that were all really interesting.

J: Why do you think you’ve been so successful in such a short amount of time?

S: I know a few people who have started gaming trivia sites or groups, but I don’t think they’ve done it quite right. Having all the information on a single image keeps everything together and makes sure the site name is carried along with the information. Even if someone just hotlinks an image rather than linking to the site, everyone will still see the site name. I think that’s partly why. I also have a few friends who helped spread it around at the beginning.

J: Where did you first get all of your trivia from?

S:A few places. The first wave of images were based on things I’d found myself, and were from various places. A few staples were trivia threads on forums, Easter egg websites, even browsing YouTube for videos with bits of information in them. I’m not doing much of that any more though. The majority of the sites content (videos not included) is based on user submissions.

J: What is it about the nature of trivia, especially nostalgia, that gets people so giddy with excitement?

S: I think everyone gets enjoyment out of learning, especially when it’s a subject you love. When you combine that with something from your past it can be very emotive. I think the nostalgia factor might be why the Pokemon posts do so well. Flashing back to something you may have overlooked.

J: What’s your favourite piece of trivia?

S: Probably the Star Fox universe amputee theory. It’s always a shocker when you first start thinking about it.

J: Could you elaborate?

S: I’m actually going to elaborate on this in a video in the next week or so, so all will be revealed then.

J: It must be strange having so many people waiting for each new bit of trivia with such anticipation, nearly 20,000 Facebook fans in just under 8 weeks is very impressive. Did you ever anticipate this sort of response?

S: Honestly no. I thought it would get a few thousand likes, but I never thought that it would develop into what it is now.

J: What’s on the horizon for DYKG?

G: Lots of video content. We’ll also be opening a wiki where each pieces on the site has a page dedicated to it, but going into a bit more detail, displaying alternate theories and evidence. It will also be the place where other languages will be displayed for our fans whose first language isn’t English.

If you feel the need to whet your trivia appetitive, visit Did You Know Gaming’s website, Facebook, Twitter or YouTube account.

Enormous plot spoilers below. 

For the first edition, I’ve been in discussion with the Lead Writer of the truly fantastic Spec Ops: The Line, Walt Williams. Last month I gave Spec Ops: The Line 9/10, the best score of any game I’ve played this year, so here’s our chance to dig deeper and walk The Line with one of it’s main creators.

You have been warned: huge, bone-crushing spoilers below.

Jordan Garland: To anybody who has completed Spec Ops: The Line, the stand-out scene in the game has to be White Phosphorus. That scene was both compelling and mortifying in equal measure, what challenges did you face when depicting something so horrific?

Walt Williams: There are 3 challenges when trying to create a scene like “White Phosphorus.” The first, and to me this was the biggest challenge we faced throughout the game, was making it feel organic. It would have been very easy for a game like Spec Ops to fall back on exploitation and shock value. But we made a choice early on that every horrific moment in the game had to be earned. If it wasn’t the obvious result of cause and effect, and if it wasn’t absolutely key to the narrative, then we threw it out.

The second challenge was getting the Player to take part in such a terrible act. This is where the brilliant designers at Yager had the idea of mimicking the “Death From Above” mission in Modern Warfare. The idea was that we, as gamers, have been trained to disconnect from a game when the gameplay experience drastically changes. We stop thinking about the enemies as Soldiers and instead see them as glowing dots that need to be turned off. Once the Player disconnects from the reality of the situation, something truly horrible happens. And it hits Players in the gut, because now they have to face the consequences of their actions. They don’t get teleported to the next location. They have to face the human cost of their actions.

Finally, the third challenge is animation. Writing a scene for an actor is very different than writing it for an animation team. Walker’s reaction to what he has done is told almost entirely through his facial expressions. Again, that we were able to pull this scene off is due entirely to the amazing animators at Yager.

JG: In creating something so compelling and, to some extent, distressing, did you ever find yourself in a position where the creative process had desensitized you to the horror it depicted?

WW: In many ways, I wish it had desensitized me, but unfortunately, it did not. To be honest, Spec Ops was emotionally a very hard game to write. You don’t simply come up with horrible scenes, you also have to live them through the eyes of your characters. You have to get inside their heads, see these horrors through their eyes. Then, you have to destroy them on every level.

This would be hard enough to experience just once. But, writing a project like this takes time. About 3 years, to be exact. That is a very long time to be immersed in a game like Spec Ops. There were definitely times when I wanted to walk away from the project, because it was taking a serious toll on my life. But in the end, I couldn’t walk away from a story and project that was so personal to me and the team at Yager.

JG: Is it a nod towards real-life atrocities, such as the infamous Wikileaks ‘Collateral Murder’ video?

WW: No. We made a decision early on to not connect Spec Ops with any real world conflicts or situations. The connection “White Phosphorus” has to reality is simply that these things do happen. Our actions do not always play out as intended. We cannot always control the consequences of our decisions. Horrible things happen to people every day. They have to make the decision to keep going. Whether that involves lying to themselves or to others, that’s entirely up to them.

JG: It’s quite refreshing to see a genuine comment on another title beyond pure mindless tribalism. Is Spec Ops: The Line not only a critique of war itself, but its portrayal in video games in general?

WW: The reference is real world video. But the strength of the scene comes the established DfA sequence in Modern Warfare. When two games draw from the same real-world source, you cannot avoid comparisons. That Spec Ops forces the Player to face the aftermath of this reality could be seen as a critique of war in games. But really, we just wanted to be true to the situation. We didn’t want the Player to be able to hide from the consequences of his actions.

JG: Did you ever consider making the mortar scene optional, like other instances further down the line?

WW: It is optional, to an extent. The Player can open fire on the Soldiers using their normal weapons, but they are severely outnumbered. The Player will eventually run out of ammo and be overcome. Is that necessarily fair? No. But it’s not until you’ve used the mortar and seen the consequences of your actions that you start to wonder, “Could I have done something different?” And the answer is no. It was your only real option. To which you might say, “That’s not fair.” And I’d say, “You’re right.”

That’s a real emotional response and I can guarantee it’s exactly what Walker is feeling in that moment.

The choice isn’t “Do I use the mortar or not?” The real choice is “Can I keep going, knowing what I’ve done?”

JG: After that scene, you’re thrown straight back into the action and I for one was totally bewildered, was this yo-yoing of emotion something you wanted to explore?

WW: It is. We didn’t want the world to cater to the Player’s desires. In that moment, you wanted to digest what just happened. But there are other people in the world and they want to kill you for the same reason. In many ways, this is what “The Line” is all about. Some people think it means “The Line you don’t want to cross or have to cross.” But really, it’s The Line between expectations and reality. As gamers, we expect a game to embrace us… to yield to us and our actions. Spec Ops, however, opposes you. It subverts your expectations and reminds you that you are not in control. And that was entirely by design.

JG: Is Spec Ops: The Line a comment on the shooting genre, rampant glorification of war depicted with very little consequence, was this something you consciously wanted to address?

WW: “War is hell” isn’t just a saying. It’s true. You’d probably find it difficult to find someone who disagrees with the statement. And yet, we have allowed war to exist strictly as entertainment within video games. No other medium treats war strictly as a spectacle. With Spec Ops, we weren’t trying to make people feel bad about playing shooters, although that certainly is one reaction people are having. Our goal was simply to make people think—about the games the play and the reasons they play them.

JG: Was the player’s experience always intended to mirror Walker’s? You enjoy the killing and destruction as much as he does, so did you desire for the player to also feel guilty?

WW: Absolutely. On the surface, Spec Ops can be classified as a military game—you are a soldier in conflict against soldiers. But really, Spec Ops is a story about who we are as gamers… about the entertainment we choose to consume and our reasons for doing so. Walker comes to Dubai, wanting to feel heroic and powerful. He wants to overcome obstacles and save the day. Just like us, every time we sit down to play a game.

JG: Spec Ops: The Line’s various flash-points provide gamers with split-second decision points, where the most obvious route ‘out’ is arguably the most objectionable. How did you want players to react in these desperate situations?

WW: Believe it or not, we had no specific desire for players to make one choice over another. We tried very hard to remove any judgment from those scenes. Our hope was that players would follow their own hearts… whether their heart was feeling vengeful or merciful, that was entirely up to the Player.

JG: Nolan North, the voice actor for Captain Walker, also voiced the indomitable Nathan Drake, known for his almost blasé approach to the merciless slaughter of hundreds. Were you involved in the casting process and was casting him a conscious decision?

WW: I was involved with casting and I’d love to say we were brilliant to cast Nolan as a means of subverting Player expectation. But, the truth is, we hired Nolan simply because he is a fantastic actor with tremendous range. He’s also a great guy and a pleasure to work with. In fact, Nolan worked on Spec Ops for at least 4 years. He was the very first actor we cast. He even did the scratch VO for an internal vertical slice demo. Needless to say, he spent a long time with Captain Walker and really took the opportunity to explore his darker side.

JG: You’ve managed to make a great game with great endings, the holy grail of everything video-games. Just how many endings are there in total?

WW: There are 4 official endings and 1 unofficial ending. 1 in Konrad’s penthouse. 3 in the epilogue. And 1 in real life, for those players who decide they can’t go on and put down the controller.

And that’s all for the very first Aftermath, and I hope it was as insightful for you as it was for me. Spec Ops: The Line is a prime example of substance over gameplay, but give me a choice and I’ll choose narrative every single time.

Björn Pankratz, Project Director at Piranha Bytes, has mentioned in an interview with GamingBolt that Steam offers a high level of security and is undoubtedly the best digital distribution platform on the PC.

“It is far from lucrative for both our publisher Deep Silver and us to find that the game can be downloaded free of charge on the internet two days before the release, so we opted for Steam this time, a platform that is widely used and popular among gamers, as well as providing quite a high level of security,” he said.

“We hope it will prove to be the best possible solution for everyone.”

We also asked him about which platform offers the best experience for Risen 2, and this is what he had to say.

“Although, we develop our games on the PC, privately some of us are console gamers and others prefer PC games. The advantage of consoles is quite clearly convenience – you can watch the game on a big TV screen while sitting comfortably on your sofa, while PC gamers usually sit at their desks.

“On the other hand, PC gamers get to enjoy better graphics, for example. So people should decide for themselves what is more important to them,” he added.

Tell us what you think in the comments section below.

Check out some new footage from The Last Guardian. It shows how the developers at Team ICO created the game, and they praise the PS3’s processing power. Some of the footage is not new but the developer interview here is pretty good.

The game was initially supposed to release this year, but the release has been pushed back and we don’t have a definitive date yet.

Tell us what you think in the comments section below.

Our UK correspondent recently had the opportunity to conduct an interview with FIFA 12’s lead gameplay producer, Aaron McHardy. We asked him a lot of questions, and got a lot of great information! Check out the entire, megaton interview below, and tell us what you think via your comments!

Transcribed by Shubhankar Parijat and Pramath Parijat.

This is George Reith from GamingBolt.com, and I am speaking to Aaron McHardy. Aaron, what’s your exact job description, then?

I’m the lead gameplay producer for FIFA 12. So I’m in charge of making sure all of our designs come to fruition in terms of what the players are actually doing on the pitch when you’re got the controller in your hand and knocking the ball around. All that stuff is what I do.

Fair enough, sounds like a pretty heavy burden to be honest. So anyway, let’s drop right into the questions. I’m curious about the kind of competition that the FIFA series has to go against, if you know what I mean, in the market. Do you measure yourself against the kind of Pro Evolution Soccer games, for instance, in terms of playablity?

Yeah, I think it’s a good think to have big competitors like ourselves and Konami in the same space. We’re always pushing each other, and we’ve always got one eye on what they do. They’ve been making fantastic games for years. And, you know, we’re watching what they do and they like to watch what we do, and I guess the two big games in the same market really push each other to really not relax and keep pushing the boundaries of what can be done in a football game. So it’s good to have the Konami guys around. And I’m sure, like I said, they’re watching us and we’re watching them and we’re pretty conscious of each other.

Yeah, you get two better games in the process, I’m sure, with a lot of competition. So, I’m just curious about specifics to do with that. I mean a lot of new features in FIFA 12 look set to give the players a lot more control. So how’ve the recently announced Pro Evolution Soccer 12 features, like off the ball control and teammate control… have they concerned you at all, or…?

No, I don’t think they’ve concerned us. I think we have forms of those things but not to the same extent or the same way that Konami have done them. But we really wanted you to be expressive and be creative on the pitch and do what you like to do with the ball. And we wanted to build features that would allow that expression, and that level of control. That’s kind of where we’re taking it. I know that they’re taking it in a different direction, and being more specific about things like player runs and all that. But I think what we’re doing is better for our game, so we’re not concerned about the features they’re doing, but I’m sure they’ll fit perfectly with their game.

Yeah, kind of different directions, I guess. Fair enough! I’m just thinking back to like, you know, the old days when I was a kid, playing soccer games, and you didn’t have sensible soccer and this “pro” stuff like that. And you know, they’ve come so far, and now we’ve got three hundred and sixty degree movement, and we’ve got free ball control. What, in your opinion, is the next big step that football games need to make? You know, the next “holy grail” they need to get, so to speak.

That’s a good question. Something that we’ve struggled with every year is trying to come up with “what is that new innovation?” And I think that this year we’ve got a few features that are trying to push the boundaries of what can be done in a football game. I think the big one, off the top, is our Player Impact Engine. I think it’s probably the biggest change we’ve made for a game since we rewrote the engine for the next gen consoles. It’s a massive change and what it is, is that it’s putting real world physics into the game. The players, when they come together and they collide, they feel like they’re interacting and are understanding the impact that happen on the body, and it gives us a lot more realistic behaviours in this year’s game. But going back to your question, I think what it does is, it builds a new foundation for us to build cool, interesting features for years to come. I think the true injuries features, because we’re harvesting information on physics and contact, we wrote a system that helps us understand how much trauma the human body can take, and that when this stuff happens in the game, the video game player should be injured just like the real world player would. So we’re getting towards this realistic behaviour to take that realm of what’s possible in a video game one step higher.

Aside from this true collision feature, what else has changed in FIFA 12 for players who enjoyed FIFA 11? Like, what kind of new features do they need to buy FIFA 12 for? I mean, what’s the big new one?

I think there are a ton of changes. I will talk specifically about the gameplay and what I know. I don’t know if you’ve heard David Rutter, our producer, speak of the trinity of gameplay features. What that is, the big three features we’re doing this year, are the Player Impact Engine, which I told you briefly about, and the other two are a feature called Tactical Defending and a feature called Precision Dribbling. And again, going back to evolutionizing vs revolutionizing, they really change the way football games are played. I think Tactical Defending is big. I think it’s a bit difficult to describe in words or in videos, but you really get to notice it once the game’s in your hands and how different it is. And what it is that we’ve changed the way we fundamentally defend in football games. For many years, the functionality has been, both in our game and the Konami game, that you hold down the pressing button, and what that does is that sends your defender toward the dribbler, towards the ball and when he gets close enough, he launches an automated tackle. We thought it took half of the game away from the gamer because you only really have the deep, rich, engaging experience in the game when you’re attacking. Equally important is the skill involved in defense. So we wanted to try bringing some of the back into the game this year. So what we did was, we removed the pressing button functionality, something that fans call the heat thinking missile, because of the way it behaves in the game and it’s a little bit out of balance with the attack. So we’ve removed that functionality, we’ve put in a new functionality called “contain.” So what that is, is that your player will automatically, now, position himself in a good spot and wait and be in a good position to intercept potential passes or pick up a ball that the dribbler’s given a bad touch, or put yourself in a good position to make that decision to go in and commit to a challenge- which is the second piece of the puzzle.

We’ve also, actually, put all of the standing tackles onto a button press this year. And, I think that’s quiet neat. What it does is it introduces the element of timing in defending, which again, going back to what I was saying earlier, will bring in that skill and that art form of real world defending into the game. Now you can make the decision of when to go in and commit to making that challenge, which is what real defenders in the real world are thinking about constantly. “Do I need jockey, do I need to back off? Can I go in and defend all the way?” So now we’re putting that element of timing into the game and it really changes the dynamic of the way the game plays.

Could you explain to us the “Precision Dribbling” as well?

So, yeah, again, we’ve talked about the “holy trinity” of features, because the three of them are very nice together. And you have a new way level of control on the defending side of things. We wanted to, also, sort of changed the way you think about attacking and the way you bring down the opposition. A lot of people just hold the trigger and run as fast as they can along the sideline.  So you have that sprint pace that people stick to. So we had a job, that people don’t keep doing that. So now we have that one more level of pace, that slower, close controlled pace, which is what we’ve added this year, called Precision Dribbling. So it’s a new way to dribble, and you’ll be able to keep closer control of the ball in traffic and be able to hold that play and dribble well, shielding the player. So what we’ve done is, added, based on context, when we understand situations when a player on real world wouldn’t take such a big touch.

To give you a little idea about the inspiration of the feature- I was watching a game one day and Diaby had the ball at the top of the box for Arsenal. I watched him, and he made one, two, three, four, five touches, and he only moved about… maybe a yard. With five touches of the ball, you’re probably gonna move half the pitch, because that’s how far the touches go, and that’s the fidelity of touches you have. So we wanted to introduce that close control so we could spend time at the top of the box, dribbling the ball without traversing too much of the pitch, so you could spend time in that interesting are of the pitch, where a lot of goals are created, a lot of chances are created in football. Just that area at the top of the box.

Normally, in FIFA games, in football games of past, if you get into that area, there’s somebody covering you with our old pressing functionality with two players closing you down, with all attackers covered. It’s so difficult for you to spend time there, you immediately pass the ball out, and you try and find another way to dribble it down the opposition. So what we’ve done is changed the way the game plays, changed the way the game’s balanced, allow you to have a lot more time on the ball to think about your decisions, with the addition of both those features- Tactical Defending and Precision Dribbling. I feel that when they work together, you really get a new experience out of FIFA.

Yeah, it sounds like all the new features are working well together to create this kind of new football experience. But if you had to break it down, what would you say of the three is the big new feature? Like if you could only tell people about one feature to get them into FIFA 12, what would it be?

That’s a really tough question! I think the immediate impact, the immediate thing that people will pick up on is how different the collisions feel because they’re fluid. They’re organic, they’re almost living in themselves, and what you see in the game is what you would have imagined you’d see in real life. Things like clipping not really being as much of an issue this year because we’re doing things all in real time, so a player leg will bend according to how it is kicked and impacted. So you will see this when you go into a replay, and when you watch the collision. This just makes you feel like momentum is preserved a lot better. So I think immediately people will pick up on that.

As for what is changing the way we play video games, play football video games, I think Tactical Defending is quite a big feature because it really makes you think about the defensive side of the ball in a way that you haven’t had to do in football. I think it allows people to think about defending. Before they just turned off their brain and held that pressing button until they got a chance to get back on the attack. So it really doubles your engagement in the game. It makes you think tactically, it makes you think like a football player when you’re playing the game to find success. So, I think, fundamentally, that one’s probably is a very big change as well.

A few months ago, some other features like Matchday Atmosphere, Player Backstories, and the inclusion of dug-outs, these kind of other features were revealed. But they haven’t really been mentioned much since then in any of the press material or anything I’ve seen. Are these features still in the game? And if they are, can you shed a little light on how they’re gonna work?

So, the other features we are announcing are around career mode. So we have ton of stuff in the game. I think this is one of the biggest games we’ve put out in a single year in a long time on this franchise. So it’s difficult for us to cover everything. But I think the other big area we’d like to touch on is the Career Mode stuff. We’ve done a lot of work in Career Mode to make the mode a lot deeper and more engaging, but also make it translate more into the backend of the game. So we’ve got additions to things like team chemistry being played off your successes, having good morale for your players – they’ll understand how well your team is doing, they’ll understand their squad well, they’ll understand their contract and what it means to them, they might get pissed about their playing time, or they might get happy that they’re actually in the game. All these things well affect their morale, and it will be up to you as the manager to manage those kinds of things, because that will have a real tangible effect in the backend. So if they’re upset, they may not react to situations as quickly, or maybe not make that extra run, because they’re upset. Whereas if they’re all fired up and happy, they’ll be bustin’ their gut out there for the team.

I think you touched on match importances. Again, this will affect the game in the back end. So, for big matches, the guys will be getting up and doing everything that they can to make sure the team succeeds. The animations for when they’re playing in out of place situations, they’ll be like clapping teammates, or angry because they made a bad pass… you’ll notice the difference on the pitch.

There’s also form – form’s another big one, so we’ll be tracking the match to match performances of your players, and we’ll be giving you this information, so as manager, you have to make that decision, because there will be a real impact to their attributes in the backend. So do you want to play somebody who’s out of form? Maybe a striker who hasn’t scored in eight weeks, and he’s out of form… do you want to get him onto the pitch and out of the swamp, or do you want to go to the third striker and get somebody else there to get the job done? That transition between the career and the pitch mode is becoming more enriched, they’re tying up more tightly together, to make you feel like your decisions are having an impact on the team. So that’s one aspect.

The other aspect of what we’re doing in the career node is along the lines of news stories. All of it is dynamic, and it’s based on the intelligence of the player. So, say a player is out of form and then taken off the team, and he’s angry with the club, and he doesn’t want to play anymore, and he wants a transfer… before you know it, news stories are being generated around this, and other teams are expressing interest. It really makes you feel like you’re immersed in this whole world around you that’s operating all the time.

We’ve also done a lot of work in a lot of the fundamentals of career mode. I won’t go into much details on them, but things like the CPU picking up on players you haven’t listed, it creates this interesting environment where you might not have as much control over your team. So if a team like Chelsea or Man City comes tapping up, and they want a player, they can offer you something even if you didn’t list the player for transfer, which is kind of how it works in the real world. I’m an Arsenal fan, so I know very well when Barcelona tries to get Fabregas from us for the last year and a half(laughs).

So yeah, you don’t really have that same control as before, plus the way the CPUs of other teams are, they may overbid or underbid for a player, so you need to make an assessment of the value of that player is… to really make you feel like that person, that that club is out there, and it really wanrts your player.

Sounds like there’s a lot going on in there apart from just the match to match core football playing experience. Sounds like there’s a lot going into the world as well… which is great to hear. But just in terms of actual game modes, are there going to be any new game modes, online or offline?

I can’t tell you about everything just yet. If you come and check in in around a month’s time, I’ll tell you a little bit more about some of the cool new things we’re doing with the online. As for the offline mode, we’re focusing on the career mode and the pitch experience today, but we do have some cool new things for you too, so check back in a month’s time!

Well, it’s good to know people have something to look forward to then. And we recently found out there will be pre match build ups in FIFA 12 as well. Will these be just for the big matches, or will these build ups happen for every single game you play? And just how detailed will these be?

So I think what you’re referring to is the new presentations we got in the prematch. So what you’ll see there is a lot higher production value, so the overlays have been redone, you’ve got intro NIS’s, and badges coming in, showing the league you’re playing in, and the team logos and all these sort of things. So it’s just about a higher production value of what you see prematch, which makes it seem like you’re watching a broadcast of a match you’re about to play in.

I just wanted to go back to your previous question a little bit, because I think we were talking about new game modes, but I think there’s one thing that’s worth mentioning, it’s like an all encompassing thing that happens in FIFA. It’s something we call EA Sports Football Club, and what this is us tracking everything you do in the game. So it’s not exactly a game mode, you don’t select EA Sports Football Club from the menu, it’s just something that’s there all the time. And what it is is that it’s tracking how you do all the time in career mode, it’s tracking how you’re doing in the matches, it’s tracking how you do in everything you do in the game when you buy it. And what we do, we want to do that, and have a leveling up system for your player, so you can see how well you’ve done in FIFA just for yourself, you can see how you’re leveling up and progressing, but also you can compare how your friends are doing, and how you guys are doing against everyone else in the world to see how much you’ve actually accomplished in FIFA. And some other cool things that are going on is, we take that information and we apply it to your favorite club, because we want this kind of atmosphere like in the real world where we have this allegiance to a club, and everything you do in FIFA is contributing to that club. So it’s all about you, it’s all about your friends, it’s all about your club. And EA Sports football will also be injecting new ways to play the game and new ways to experience the game. So for the entire twelve months following from when you bought it, we’ll be putting in little challenges, trying to get you to accomplish new things in the game, and get more points and progress further through your EA Sports Football Club avatar. So, it doesn’t fit into a new ‘game mode,’ but I thought it worth mentioning as a cool thing we’re doing.

Yeah, it sounds like there’s going to be a community that’s going to be going on in FIFA 12, certainly more than the previous games. It’s definitely interesting. Something I’m curious about is, there seem to be a lot of new features, and every year we see a lot of new stuff being added to the “core” FIFA experience. Do you ever fear the series will stray too far from its roots?

Well, it’s a difficult problem that we have every year. I joined the team on FIFA 08, and I think back then it was quite clear what our goals were. It was to track down Konami, because at the time we felt they had the better game. We wanted to make our game as good, if not better, than Konami’s game. And that was our goal.

I think, over the years, we’ve done well accomplishing that goal. But as time progress, we sort of shifted. FIFA 10 was a spectacular game, in FIFA 11 we made a lot of subtle changes to try and deepen the experience, and that’s what we felt was needed at the time. And we love the way that they all turned out. But what we didn’t want to do was just put out another with  another roster updated. We wanted to make a game that was a revolution from the previous game we made, and to do that you kind of have to, well, the saying goes- “you have to break a few eggs to make the omelet.”

 So we’re quite excited that the changes that we’re making are gonna be there to lay the foundation for future. I mean, there’re really cool new ways to play football video games. But having said that, we still focus on fundamentals. In a lot of interviews that we’ve done, we talk about the big three “Trinity” gameplay features, we talk about the top line of what’s going on in Career Mode. But 100% per cent, we know how we got to where we are and that’s focusing on fundamentals, so we haven’t forgotten about all the things that go into making a great game, working on goalkeeper AI, working on position, working on tweaks to our shooting system, improvement in finesse shots, more variety in finesse shots, different  types of passes… all the little details that our fans have grown to love that we add year on year, we’re still doing all that stuff. We’re just not talking about it much, because we have these big innovations that we’re throwing at our consumers this year as well. So yes, I think the game’s gonna be a lot different than last year, but no, I think we’re still ground in our roots and we know what’s important in making our football games, so I don’t think we’re going to alienate ourselves from our fans.

Fair enough. I’m also curious- on the same kind of note. Are you ever concerned with all the new stuff that keeps going into the game that it might start to become complex to the point where it becomes inaccessible to newer players to the franchise?

Yeah, that’s another good question. Something that we’re always concerned about is the complexity and how difficult it is to play the game. There is a lot of detail there, a lot of depth. You hear us talking about building features based on context. So, like, understanding the situation and having things play in a certain way in a situation, so the user doesn’t have to think how they play the game in a specific context. He only needs to thing about simple things. Like, I know this button is pass, this button is shoot, and I’m pretty much good to go after that.

So in that regard, we try to keep the button schemes and the button controls very simple at the base level so you can do all the fundamentals in a football game very easily, and build on depth, by understanding how those things change in different contexts. As well as adding a few more complex button mechanics that we think prevent the game from becoming accessible. We like to add those things more as hardcore features. So we understand what kind of features will attract what kind of people and design the game accordingly.

So, it’s been mentioned that there’s gonna be a new menu system incorporated in FIFA 12. How do you think this is going to improve and change the experience?

Well, I think right off, as soon as you open the game, you’ll see that it looks a lot different than last year’s. I think that’s, in a large part, because of the menu system. For the last few years we’ve had that same system of vertical menu structure, and I think it was just time for a new look for us. We wanted to touch every aspect of the game this year to make sure it was new, different and fresh as soon as you got it. So one of the ways we did that was we put in a whole new side scrolling system. It’s a different menu system, it’s a lot more fluid , it’s faster, it feels more organic when you’re using it than the up and down. I know we’re talking about menus here, and it’s hard to get super excited about menus (laughs). But truth is, it does look good, and it does look new and it is interesting when you first see it. Of course menus will always fade into the background, but apart from being slick and impressive, we’ve got players, your favourite player will be featured into menu too. So it’s a cool little dynamic, and it just brings up and production value and what we’re doing in our menu system.

Yeah, it’s a small feature, but you can never put a price on a good menu system, I reckon.

I agree.

It’s interesting the way that the FIFA series, unlike a lot of other titles that have maybe three years between sequels, there’s a game every single year coming out. Do you think the series can continue with this kind of progress? Or do you think there might be a point where the team won’t have any fresh content to put in one year? I mean, do you think that’s a possibility?  

(laughs) It’s basically what keeps me up at nights. (laughs again) But no… I remember when we finished FIFA 09, we put it in the box, got it on the shelves and the producers were looking around, going… ‘what the heck are we going to do next year?’ (laughs again). And then eventually, we go back to the drawing board, we put our heads together, we read the forums, looking for feedback from our fans, take all that into consideration and then come up with some new cool stuff. And I think the same thing happened with FIFA 10. Probably even more so than 09, when we thought, “now what do we do next?” But this only lasts for a week or so, when you first finish the game and then you go back to work. We’ve got a lot of creative people here, a lot of passionate people about football. So once everybody puts their heads together, I’m not really worried about us being able to continue to come up with content for the franchise.

This is more kind of about publicity and marketing, so I’m not sure if this will be your area, but I don’t know if you have an opinion. There’s been a lot of recent allegations about corruption within FIFA as an organization, and obviously there’s been something to do with the players and commentators and some controversies about their personal lives. I mean, has his affected how you have to go about developing and publicizing and marketing the game?

I can’t touch too much on the marketing aspects, because I don’t deal too much with them day to day. I don’t know it really does have that much of an effect on us. In the end we’re making a video game, and our goal is to make the most authentic video game in the world. Things change in the real world, as far as authenticity goes, and we just follow. So we don’t concern ourselves on how or why they change. We just know what’s happening out there now. We try to replicate the most authentic things we can for the given day that we make it.

Yeah, fair enough. It’s quite good to have the separations from kind of those real world shenanigans, but at the same time, having an authentic experience. So, FIFA 12 is listed to come out on a lot of platforms, and we’ve got a lot of different platforms as well- we’ve got handhelds, and phone operating systems and stuff. Would you say players who get a more portable version of FIFA 12,- say on the 3DS or PSP or iPhone or whatever- , do you think they’re getting the same experience as console players? Or would you consider them very different kind of games?

I think it depends on which console you get it on. I mean, we make our next gen game for the 360, PC and PS3. So on those three consoles, you’re going to get absolutely, 100% the same experience. When you start getting into other devices, we have different teams working on them. The game may be very similar in some cases, very different in some cases. Usually that decision is left to the team that’s working on it and the way they make that decision is looking at the console, looking at what it has to offer, and try to build the best game we can for that piece of hardware. So in some cases it’s a very similar game, in some cases the hardware that you’re talking about just doesn’t make sense to make that same next gen game on. So we make something completely different but knowing well that it should be a good football experience on that console as well.

Yeah, nothing like being flexible. So, just in terms of the development cycle for FIFA 12, what would you say has been the most challenging part of making the game?

So much stuff going into the game. That’s always the most challenging part. The way the cycle works is, as soon as we ship this one, like I said, we put our heads together to try and figure out what’s best for the next one. And sometimes you get a long list of things that you wanna put into the game and there’s just not enough time for everything. So we have to prioritize that and figure out what we can actually make in a year.

We take it back to the feature we’re talking about this year- the Impact Engine is another one of those stories where, two years ago we wanted to start making some changes to our collision system, but we looked at the amount of work it was going to be to get this Player Impact Engine into the game and there was no way we’d be able to do it in one year. So we set off working on a three year plan for that specific feature. So, there’s a lot of stuff going into the game this year, so the biggest challenge, not just this year but every year, is trying to get all that stuff in, and working and making sure we still ship the highest quality game every year, with the amount of changes we’re making this year.

Yeah, in terms of FIFA in a wider context of football games… Because I remember, you know,
“back in the day” (he says, sounding very old), you know, there were a ton of different soccer and football franchises coming out on the PlayStation 1 or the Mega Drive or whatever. I mean, nowadays, we only see FIFA and Pro Evo. I mean, do you there’s room for more franchises, newer ones, in the market? Or do you think the big boys have kind of got the monopoly?

 I think competition is always a good thing. So having Konami here definitely helps us, because they’re always pushing us and we know that. And I think anybody else entering, they would like to enter and push that bar as well too. But I think the upfront investment in being able to create a game as deep and rich as what FIFA has and maybe what Konami has too, is very difficult to dive into because there’s a lot of years of change and research and development that go into these games that are quite complex. Like I mentioned, off the top, the Player Impact Engine being one of the biggest changes we’ve made since rewriting the game for the console generation. But we rewrote it for FIFA 07, so you can imagine there’re some years of development that have gone on since then. A lot of the stuff we do year on year is very intricate. So if you look at someone coming in now, they have to compete against the fact that we have seven years or six years jump on them, being able to make the game that we’re making today.

So their decision, they can come in, they’re welcome, the waters are warm so come on in and try (laughs), but we got a great game and several years of a lot of really smart people doing good work for us to get there. So it’s a daunting task.

Yeah, I think it’s great that the competition is driving you forward with FIFA 12, pushing the boundaries and stuff. But outside of the football genre, have there been any games, or other sports or other general genres or media that have influenced the design of FIFA 12?

Yeah, I mean, we look all over the place for different design ideas all the time, and we’re looking at different features that this game did or that game did. Something like Autolog that our Need for Speed team did is something that influences us in terms of how they attacked the social aspect of gaming, we wanted to incorporate some of that stuff and how we do EA Sports Football Club or the way we look at how Fight Night did physics engine some years ago. And we look at we can potentially leverage that technology or change that technology to build what we have now on our Player Impact. So we’re constantly looking at other games for other ideas to influence our game. So I don’t even know if I can mention them, ‘coz we’re looking at every game out there- what’s new, what’s cool, what new technologies are out there, what new design ideas are out there, and how can we relate that back to football.

A wide pool of influence, so to speak. Yeah, this is probably something you might be able not to say, but is there any DLC currently planned for FIFA 12 in the pipeline?

You nailed it, I can’t say. (laughs)

Yeah, fair enough. Well, you know me, I’m always gonna try for the world exclusive.

(laughs)

Just one final thing about general, indiscrete trends that I’ve been noticing. In a really recent interview, Marvin Donald, who is director of The Darksiders II, he said the PS3 is a pain in the ass to work with. I think this is interesting, because I’ve heard a lot of developers say the PS3 can be difficult to code for. Have you had any problems in the FIFA series developing for the PS3, or have any other specific platforms given your grief?

I think all the problems we have developing are different on each platform. I don’t know if anyone is better than the rest.

I’m not trying to start a flame-war here, don’t you worry. I’m just, you know…

(laughs) No, no, no, not at all! But I think the struggles come from the fact that the PS3’s architecture is a little bit different than the Pc or others. So you have to make changes, and if you make a game specifically for one platform and try to bring it to others, you can run into some problems in trying to make that work. But we’re pretty conscious about the platforms that we’re making our game for. As I mentioned before, it’s exactly the same game on the PS3 and 360 and PC. Because up front, we designed the game in a way so we wouldn’t run into big problems, because of the way they’re architected. So, not a big concern for us. I think, the way we build our games, it doesn’t really come into play that one is more difficult than the other. But you do run into problems specific to the PS3 cycle, or the Wii cycle, or the PC cycle. You just take them and try. I don’t know anyone’s worse than the other, though.

Assuming, again, just because you’ve had such an experience with this console generation already, creating several FIFA games, I’m pretty sure you probably have a very good idea of the various eccentricities of each platform anyway, so it’s nothing you guys cant handle!

Yeah.

Anyway, yeah, that’s all the questions I’ve had planned so far, so I think we’ve got a lot of new information, a lot of stuff that’s really worth getting excited about for FIFA 12 and we really can’t wait to get our hands on it. Yeah, so, thanks very much for taking the time to talk to us. It’s been a real pleasure!

No problem, and if you want any more information on any of our features, just fire off the questions across to me and we’ll get them answered.

Don’t forget to leave your comments behind!

Here I get a chance to interview the Executive Producer for Metro: Last Light at E3.  Although is was a short interview I was able to get some good info for you guys regarding the sequel to Metro: 2033.  The game will be out for the Xbox 360, Playstation 3 and PC sometime in 2012.