GAMINGtruth

Day Two

“Breakfast isn’t breakfast without pancakes” - Me.

Luckily, that’s how it was. We arrived at EAC close to 9am and had breakfast, and there were pancakes abound. Having a thing for a pretty stack of pancakes, I introduced myself to a couple while Clive Gorman (Worldwide Product Manager) and Rob Aoki went over the day’s itinerary. After breakfast, we got to tour the facilities, and I have to say - it’s MASSIVE. We quickly found out that EAC employs over 1800 employees, has an outdoor soccer field, both indoor and outdoor basketball courts, a full gym that’s open 24/7, multiple wall-sized screening rooms, a cafeteria, and a library of all EA published games.

Yea… That’s massive, alright.

After the tour, we sat down with developers aplenty as each explained their part in the game’s completion. I’m expecting a more thorough list, but these are the ones I was able to jot down:

• Kaz Makita - Creative Director on Gameplay / AI
• Haroon Qureshi - Fifa 07 Technology and Physics
• Matt Jones - Art Direction
• Simon Humber - Online / Performance Tracking / Database

I’m well aware that i’m overlooking names right now - and will be correcting it immediately upon receiving the full listing.

What amazed me about the morning’s presentations is that everyone presenting seemed genuinely anxious to finish their presentations so we could get to the game. There wasn’t the feeling of the presentations being rushed because even going faster than the slides, there was a very large amount of information passed on. When they were done, they wished us well in our hands-on, and let the next person start.

The hands-on time was awesome, and i found many differences between their previous efforts and Fifa 07, but that’s another article entirely…

Pages: Page 1 Page 2 Page 3