Former DJ Hero developers set sights on mobile with 8linQ
UK studio is preparing to release its first iPhone music game, armed with major label tracks
UK startup 8linQ is hoping to spearhead a new wave of music games for smartphones and tablets, with its first game Say What?! due to be released on 20 July for iPhone armed with a licensing deal with major label Sony Music Entertainment.
The company is a joint venture between three partners: Music In Colour, Reactify and Metropolis Group. The first of those is a music production company formed by former staff from FreestyleGames, which developed the DJ Hero console games, while the latter is one of the most prestigious recording studios in the world.
Based at the studio complex in London, 8linQ has been working on Say What?! for several months, culminating in its launch next week with playable tracks from artists including Calvin Harris, Scouting for Girls, the Zutons and The Nolans.
"The music business needs to capture a new audience," says joint managing director Chris Lee. "Rather than make a game then license the music, this is much more of a partnership. We think there is a great opportunity to leverage the mobile platform to build something that reaches a wider audience, and monetises music."
Say What?! takes a different approach to DJ Hero and other console music games like Guitar Hero. Lee says that 8linQ's key aim was to avoid any assumption that the game's players will be experienced gamers.
The game uses a scrolling collection of icons, which relate to individual highlighted words within the lyrics to the current song, which are displayed above. If the word 'I' is highlighted, the player might have to tap on an eye icon, for example, while 'down' might be the cue to tap on a downward-facing arrow.
At higher difficulty levels, the clues get more cryptic. "There will be puns left, right and centre that take you a good five seconds to crack what the icon is representing," explains Yuli Levtov, the game's designer, and founder of the third partner in the joint venture: generative music studio Reactify Music.
"It's almost a Generation Game mechanic: a simple layer that lives over the music," says Lee. "We're not trying to be cleverer than that. This is about something that appeals in its simplicity, and we're trying not to niche it. It should appeal as much to 8-13 year-old girls as it does to 30-40 year-old males."
Lee adds that Say What?! was inspired by iOS games like Cut the Rope and Trainyard. "They're cute, you're allowed to fail and it doesn't matter," he says. "Far too many games can fall into the trap of having a game mechanic based on failure, and the fear of failure driving you to do stuff. We don't think that's what the mobile audience wants."
Say What?! will be free to download with four included tracks: one from a big Sony Music artist, and three from emerging acts signed to Music In Colour. Tracks from Sony – and ultimately other labels too – will be sold via in-app payments of £1.19 per song.
It's the second example this month of a major label selling music within this kind of game, following EMI's deal with Facebook games publisher MXP4. Downloads within Say What will be chart-eligible too.
"It will be a great story if you can take a catalogue title – a single that was released 20 or 30 years ago – and see it get into the top 10 with 100,000 downloads because it's in a game," says Ian Brenchley, joint managing director of 8linQ and managing director at Metropolis Group. "This is the merging of music and software in a really nice evolutionary form, that monetises music in a different way."
Lee says that making games for iOS has been a fresh challenge for the team members who cut their teeth on DJ Hero and other console games.
"I love the immediacy of being able to create content," he says. "Development cycles are so much shorter, and you get that immediacy of feedback too, where you can watch how your consumer is playing, react and develop new features. We have designed this game so that if we get a song at 9am, we can have it for sale by 9am the next day."
Say What?! will also be the first game to be promoted using the Future Games Network, a service that is being launched by another UK developer, Future Games of London. The idea behind the network is to promote other developers' iOS games to FGOL's existing community of 18 million players.
It's a good example of the promotional networks that are springing up around apps and games, just as 8linQ is an example of the kind of partnerships that are emerging as companies from different creative industries target the apps market.
AppsiPhoneGamesMobileMobile phonesSmartphonesTechnology startupsMusic gamesSonyCalvin HarrisScouting for GirlsThe ZutonsStuart Dredgeguardian.co.ukEMI inks Facebook social games licensing deal with MXP4
Players will pay using Facebook Credits to play games including tracks from Lily Allen, Gorillaz, David Guetta and other artists
EMI has become the first major label to sign a partnership to sell music within a social game on Facebook using the social network's Facebook Credits virtual currency.
The major label has agreed a deal with social games publisher MXP4 to make a range of tracks from artists including Lily Allen, Gorillaz, the Jackson 5 and David Guetta available within MXP4's Bopler Games collection on Facebook.
Fans will be able to play a selection of rhythm games for free with 60-second clips of the songs, but will have to pay using Facebook Credits for access to the full songs. MXP4 struck separate deals with EMI's recorded music and publishing divisions.
"Games are a high-growth digital business, so we are always on the lookout for ways to license our music or have our artists involved in that area," says Cosmo Lush, EMI's vice president of digital business development.
"We are talking to lots of different potential partners across the games business, but MXP4 were very forward-looking and keen to move quickly to get some of our music licensed and get going."
"This is the first time a music label and publisher have signed such a deal using the freemium business model," says Albin Serviant, MXP4's chief executive. "We expect more signatures from other publishers and labels by the end of August for the commercial launch of Bopler Games."
The games are currently in beta, with new EMI tracks being added every week. By August, there will be 12 games to play, with social features including challenges and tournaments wrapped around them.
"We have hundreds of tracks cleared from the label, and more over time as we see how well the service is performing," says Lush. "This is about looking for innovative new digital frontiers where music can be monetised in a way that is compelling and appealing to consumers."
This is not the first crossover between music and social games. Lady Gaga's latest album was promoted in Zynga's FarmVille game earlier in 2011 with her own virtual farm, GagaVille.
Meanwhile, US publisher Booyah's Nightclub City game has run promotions for Kiss, Keith Urban and Daft Punk's soundtrack for the film TRON: Legacy. EMI and MXP4 have worked together before, too, on a promotional Facebook game for David Guetta.
What is innovative about the new partnership is the use of Facebook Credits to pay for access to songs by EMI artists within MXP4's Bopler-branded games, providing a direct revenue stream for the music group.
Facebook takes a 30% cut of all Facebook Credits transactions, but Serviant declined to say how the remaining 70% will be divided between MXP4, labels and publishers. He stresses that the deal does not involve selling music downloads, however.
"This is not a service where you use Facebook Credits to purchase music," he says. "What we are monetising here is the gaming experience including the music. It's not about selling music as virtual goods: it's about selling music games as virtual goods."
The deal is a welcome positive note for EMI after a troubled last year when control of the music group passed from private investment firm Terra Firma to bank Citigroup, after the former failed to meet the covenants of loans taken out to buy EMI in 2007.
According to music industry body the IFPI, trade revenue from recorded music sales was $15.9bn in 2010, down 8.4% year-on-year. By contrast, social games are still relatively small fry: eMarketer estimates that social games revenues in 2010 totalled $856m.
Even so, music rightsholders are intrigued by the success of social games publishers like Zynga, which generated $598 million of revenues in 2010 alone, with $575 million of those coming from virtual item sales.
Facebook is mulling its own move into music, too. In August, the social network is expected to announce partnerships with streaming music services including Spotify, Rhapsody and Rdio that will integrate them more deeply into Facebook. It is unclear at this point whether Facebook Credits will have a role to play in those partnerships.
AppsMusic industrySocial networkingGamesFacebookEMIZyngaTechnology startupsStuart Dredgeguardian.co.ukElectronic Arts buys casual gaming giant PopCap for $750m
Leading publisher EA is extending its reach into the casual and social gaming sectors with another massive takeover
Video game publisher Electronic Arts is to acquire the social and casual gaming specialist PopCap in a deal worth $750m. The move, which has been rumoured for several weeks within the games industry, will see EA paying $650m, plus $100m in stock. The deal is expected to be closed in August.
Founded in 2000, PopCap is a massively and repeatedly successful developer of online casual and social games. Its simple yet addictive range of puzzle titles, including Bejeweled, Zuma and Plants vs Zombies, have been downloaded over 1.5bn times, and appear on a diverse range of platforms from PC to smartphones and games consoles. PopCap reported revenues of $100m in 2010.
Electronic Arts is one of the largest third-party publishers in the traditional video game sector and is expecting to report Non-GAAP net revenues of approximately $3.8-$4.025bn for the fiscal year ending March 2012. However, like other console gaming giants, the company has struggled to adapt to the digital games market, which revolves around casual downloadable titles rather than major retail releases.
In 2009, EA paid almost $400m for the Facebook game developer Playfish in an effort to push its huge range of brands into the social gaming space. Since then, the publisher has made valuable headway into the lucrative Facebook gaming market, where its titles have around 32 million monthly active users. With PopCap's own Facebook titles, Bejeweled Blitz and Zuma Blitz, drawing in a total of over 16 million monthly active users, the two companies combined will become the closest challenger to the current Facebook leader Zynga, creator of Farmville.
It is expected that EA will seek to expand PopCap's roster of titles to console platforms, as well as using the developer's expertise to take EA properties such as Battlefield, Dead Space, Fifa and The Sims into the social gaming sector. PopCap also adds stability and reliability to EA's business – an attractive proposition compared to the volatile console retail sales market.
"EA and PopCap are a compelling combination," said EA CEO John Riccitiello. "PopCap's great studio talent and powerful IP add to EA's momentum and accelerate our drive towards a $1bn digital business. EA's global studio and publishing network will help PopCap rapidly expand their business to more digital devices, more countries, and more channels."
"We picked EA because they have recast their culture around making great digital games," said PopCap CEO, David Roberts. "By working with EA, we'll scale our games and services to deliver more social, mobile, casual fun to an even bigger, global audience."
The deal closely follows EA's recent purchase of San Francisco-based social games developer, Ohai for an undisclosed but certainly much lower amount.
The purchase of PopCap will make waves in the games industry, where global revenues are set to hit $74bn this year according to research firm Gartner. However, EA is certainly not the only large publisher looking to buy its way into the growing casual sector. Last year, Disney bought successful social game developer Playdom in a deal worth up to $763.2m.
GamesSocial mediaCasual gamingTechnology sectorMergers, acquisitions and fundingDigital mediaMedia businessKeith Stuartguardian.co.ukChatterbox: Wednesday
The place to talk about games and other things that matter.
Good morning and welcome to the games industry – EA has just bought Popcap for $750m! So much for austerity!
GamesKeith Stuartguardian.co.ukThe 25 best smartphone games of 2011 (so far) – part one
Almost half way through the year, here are the best iOS, Android and WP7 titles so far, handpicked with help from the team at PocketGamer
Last year was all about Angry Birds. The unlikely catapult-based physics puzzler saw 100 million downloads (now 200 million!) as well as translations to all the smartphone formats – and a movie tie-in deal. Yes, the mind really does boggle.
So what have been the smartphone gaming highlights of 2011 so far? has there been a contender to Rovio's bird-flinging masterpiece? Today and tomorrow, we'll be listing what we think are the 25 best titles of the year so far, covering the three key platforms. To help me decide, I asked for contributions from the writers of mobile gaming news site, Pocket Gamer, and they've helpfully provided a few words on their favourite releases.
So, if you have a longhaul plane flight to prepare for this summer, or just expect to be stuck on a variety of broken down trains, you might want to check this out...
Chillingo, iOS (link here), £1.19
It's about time someone took the monster-on-the-loose brilliance of classic arcade game Rampage, and brought it to smartphones. Big Boss does that – and much more. Here, players build their own monsters then roam a fantasy kingdom mauling teeny knights and smashing their castles. "At its core it's a simple iPad beat-'em-up," says Pocket Gamer's Will Wilson, "But it's in the execution that Big Boss really shines, combining a moreish RPG-lite upgrade system and a fantastic array of customisation options. The difficulty curve is just right, with the apparently very easy task (you're much bigger than the enemy) becoming a lot harder as you progress thanks to the wide range of defenders and their various anti-big boss contraptions."
Bird Zapper!Namco Bandai, iOS (link here), 59p
This fast-paced take on the standard 'match three' puzzler presents you with an array of different birds wandering along a series of power cables – your role (as a squirrel seeking vengeance on the avine community – don't ask) is to draw lines on the screen to connect targets with the same coloured plumage, thereby electrifying them. Naturally, you score more highly the more birds you connect with one swipe, while collectable power-ups give you extra abilities, like freezing the conveyor belt of feathered victims. There are three modes to try out, offering you timed or freeplay experiences, but essentially, it's just a well-constructed, nicely drawn take on an extremely familiar smartphone genre.
Bumpy RoadSimogo, iOS (link here), £1.79
It is difficult to understand exactly how Swedish indie duo Simogo has turned a score-based scrolling puzzler into a quietly moving meditation on the nature of love, but that is what they have beautifully achieved with Bumpy Road. Your job is to control a couple's car journey by prodding the road around them, creating hills that their vehicles zooms up and down. On the way, you need to avoid obstacles as well as collect objects which provide you with bonus sections. The visuals are exquisitely loveable, mirroring the cooly cute design of Bob Staake, but it is a title with its own style and its own message. A game to fall in love with.
Continuity 2: The Continuation
Ragtime Games, iOS (link here), 59p
The original Continuity was an award-winner at the annual Independant Games Festival and this sequel builds on its predecessor's mix of platforming and puzzler elements. You must get your little stickman through a variety of minimalist levels, sliding platforms around the screen to create a navigable route and solve puzzles. As Pocket Gamer writer, Mark Brown, points out, "The game introduces new concepts slowly over the 50 levels, so you never feel flummoxed or out of your depth. It's either a highly cerebral platformer or a clever twist on the sliding puzzler, depending on how you look at it."
CordySilverTree Media, Android, free (with in-game payments – link here)
Utilising the Unity3D engine to quite spectacular effect, Cordy is a whimsical platformer, filled with fiendish physics puzzles. The idea is to help a cute little robot switch the power on in each of the levels, all of which are rendered in the 2.5d-style familiar to fans of the old Crash Bandicoot and Spyro games on PlayStation. Each stage has a selection of objects to discover amid the block-pushing, wall-smashing and ball-rolling fun, and players are rewarded for finishing within a time limit. It's not a game of profound originality, but the landscapes and backdrops are gorgeous, and the design compelling enough to make it a great showcase for the Android platform.
Trailer
EA, iOS (link here), £3.99
Those expecting a horribly watered-down mini-Dead Space 2D platformer will be pleasantly surprised by this bloody 3D hack-em-up, which packs some of the best polygonal visuals on iOS devices. Taking place just before the events of Dead Space 2, the game follows an engineer on a mysterious set of missions deep down in the mines of Titan. Naturally, it's all about exploring in the dark and splattering necromorph body bits all over the place using an array of familiar weapons (the plasma cutter) and some newbies (a handy electro saw). It's a properly meaty challenge, serviced with a proper touchscreen control interface that uses swipes and touches to control the character and bring up in-game menus rather than an awkward virtual joypad. And somehow, even on a small screen, it manages to give you the odd jump.
Fable Coin GolfIdeaWorks Game Studio, WP7
Of, course, this could have been a tawdry tie-in: take an enormous free-roaming RPG and turn it into a pub game. But Fable Coin Golf is a miniature triumph, brilliantly mixing the dynamics of pinball and shove ha'penny with cunningly compelling results. On each stage you simply have to slide your puck around the cluttered 3D course, attempting to pick up as many gold coins as possible en route. The Angry Birds-like control system (pull back then release to send your disc flying) is finely implemented, which is a good job as the array of obstacles on each stage, from water hazards to patrolling monsters, demands accuracy and forethought. It looks lovely, it's challenging, and all the gold that you amass can actually be spent in the Xbox 360 version of Fable III: a fascinating hint at cross-platform connectivity to come.
Forget-Me-NotNyarlu Labs, iOS (link here), £1.19
Want a retro arcade game, but can't decide which to go for? Boy, has Nyarlu Labs got the solution for you: Forget-Me-Not is about 15 early eighties coin-ops rolled into one. Essentially, it's a Pac-Man-style maze game, but the mazes are random, and you can also shoot, so it also feels a bit like Berserk; but then you collect lots of goodies, while tactically working your way through the monsters, so it's a teeny bit Gauntlet as well. Meanwhile, the audio is all glitches, bleeps and electronic cascades, so it sounds like a whole 1982 arcade has been captured on your phone. The controls are perfect too with simple swipes handling everything, plus, there's a two player mode. A really clever and enjoyable game.
Hard LinesSpilt Milk Studios, iOS (link here), £1.19
Hard Lines is a stylised re-invention of Snake (or Tron if your cultural reference points go back even farther) with lots of added depth. Guide the increasingly long line around the neon maze, forcing the other lines to hit yours, thereby killing them. There are bonuses to collect and six modes to play through, and it's astoundingly compulsive stuff, requiring a controlled, focused gameplay style. "Hard Lines is to Snake what Pac-Man Championship Edition is to Pac-Man," says Pocket Gamer editor, Rob Hearn. "But instead of making you feel like a gawping addict with its biomechanically engineered gameplay, it makes you smile. Also, the real magic ingredient is the chirpy personality of the lines on the screen, conveyed through hundreds of phrases in multicoloured neon text."
Hot Springs StoryKairosoft, iOS (link here) Android (link here), £2.39
Last year, Japanese studio Kairosoft had gaming fanatics around the world addicted to its brilliant management title, Game Dev Studio. That neat sim put you in control of a growing development team, hiring artists and coders and attempting to create hit games out of myriad weird themes. For the follow-up, Kairosoft is seeking to do the same thing with, er, health resorts, requiring you to keep your punters happy by providing the right facilities, comfy rooms and exotic treatments. "The appeal is in the pace of progress and the sheer breadth of the game," says Pocket Gamer editor, Rob Hearn. "You have to deal with everything from plant pot-placement to advertising to structural expansion. As with Game Dev Story and other games of this kind, the drip feed of minor achievements makes it difficult to put down." It's an addictive aside until the company releases its promised Game Dev Studio sequel.
ilomiloSouthEnd Interactive, WP7
Okay, it was out last year on some networks, but what the heck, if you own a Windows 7 handset and haven't already seen this ridiculously cute puzzler, you're making a terrible mental error that needs to be immediately rectified. Imagine LittleBigPlanet crossed with Pengo and Jon Ritman's 8bit classic Head Over Heels and what you have in your head is not a million miles away from ilomilo. The idea is to unite two dinky characters, Ilo and Milo, by switching control between them and navigating the duo through a series of maze-like levels. There are switches to pull and blocks to move and it's all set in a comfy, fluffy world of handicrafted soft furnishings. Hours of thereaputic fun.
Kami RetroGamevil, iOS (link here), Android (link here), 59p
Merging the mechanics of Mario vs Donkey Kong with the visual sensibilities of an 8bit platformer, Kami Retro is a hyper-stylised treat of bleepy tunes and self-consciously blocky graphics. Your aim is to direct a collection of Lemmings-like characters safely to the exit on each of the single-screen levels, avoiding all the usual obstacles that befall platform protagonists. The game smoothly and intuitively supports touchscreen controls so simple swipes of the screen make your little sprite men jump and change direction, and you also need to pick up and move objects like fans (which increase jump distance) to help in navigation. "It's a cheerful, seizure-inducing temporal mash-up pulsating along to a bouncy chip-tune soundtrack," says Rob Hearn. "To resort to an overused drug simile, it looks like Lego on acid. And crack." Crafted by the promising Paw Print Games, this is definitely my favourite iOS game of the year so far.
Trailer
YoYo Games, Android, iOS (link here), Andoird (link here), £1.19
Originally developed by Dutch coder Jesse Venbrux as a series of Flash puzzlers, Karoshi is now on smartphone, and the excellent conversion retains the central concept: you have to kill your character. Yes, Karoshi is Japanese for 'death from overwork' and the idea is to seek out all the platforming elements you're usually meant to avoid, from rampaging enemies, to deadly spikes and traps. There are also little sequences to work out which will usually end in Mr Karoshi being crushed or electrocuted. "It's all quite breezy and tongue in cheek," says Hearn. " However, the workplace setting and the presence of Mr Karoshi's boss, whose mood determines how high Mr Karoshi can jump, invite more sinister interpretations if you're inclined to make them. The occasional appearance of Mrs Karoshi, who frustrates her husband's suicide attempts by turning spikes into flowers, is a moving touch."
Prices are a guide only and will vary between platforms and during promotional periods.
What does Hollywood want with old arcade games?
Movies based on Space Invaders and Asteroids may soon be assaulting our multiplex screens. For God's sake why?
For the past decade Hollywood has very much enjoyed raiding our eighties childhoods, scrabbling about for marketable franchises and then emerging a year or so later with some nostalgia-packed summer flick of almost morbid uselessness. They have covered TV via the risible Dukes of Hazzard, A-Team and Charlie's Angels films, and they have scorched through toys via GI Joe and Michael Bay's Transformers, not to mention the forthcoming Cabbage Patch Kids and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles re-visits. Now they are turning their jaded sadistic eyes to early eighties arcade games.
Recently, the Hollywood Reporter revealed that producers Lorenzo di Bonaventura and Gigi Pritzker have 'optioned the rights' (Hollywood parlance for, 'found some cash and proffered it at some bemused but delighted rights holders') to coin-op classic Space Invaders. Released in 1978 this early shooter pitted the player against waves of iconic alien craft; it became the most successful arcade game of the era and its huge popularity was widely credited with causing a coin shortage in Japan.
But none of this adequately explains how on Earth this simple game will inspire a 90 minute movie. Not that the producers are letting such a minor point get in the way of the idea. Indeed, it turns out this is all in a day's work for di Bonaventura. The eighties-loving exec also produced the GI Joe and Transformers movies and is overseeing the development of a film based on monochrome space shooter, Asteroids – bought by Universal way back in 2009 (after, would you believe it, a bidding war with three other studios).
"With Space Invaders, the producers are facing an interesting challenge," the Hollywood reporter tactfully puts it. "The video game doesn't have a built-in mythology, so on one hand a film won't risk offending game fans. Conversely, coming up with a captivating universe, especially for video game adaptations, is no easy task."
They're right. Translating games into movies is hard enough when the source material does come with a cogent story and recognisable characters – just look at what they did to Super Mario Bros, Street Fighter, Silent Hill and Hitman (on second thoughts – don't. Ever. Look. At. Them). Space Invaders has no plot and no lead role; the aliens are constructed out of barely animated sprites, which won't give modern special effects experts much to work with. Sure, the sound effects are iconic, but that's not going to see us much beyond the title sequence.
Apparently, the game's designer Tomohiro Nishikado was influenced by Star Wars and War of the Worlds, so that does at least provide a useful starting point for any writers unlucky enough to be placed on the project. Sadly, what we can probably expect, is another Skyline or Battlefield Los Angeles, just with blockier aliens, who slowly advance towards Earth in a predictable rectangular formation. It doesn't really matter, of course, because marketing, nostalgia and plenty of cool retro merchandise will ensure a healthy opening box-office, which should probably be enough to turn a profit and fund the next landgrab on seventies and eighties brands. Hollywood, you are mad.
Four early '80s coin-ops that would make 'great' moviesAs the movie industry is clearly struggling here, I've provided four more early eighties arcade classics ripe for movie conversion. Feel free to add your own suggestions in the comments section!
Centipede (1980, Atari)
A beleaguered smallholder finds his best efforts to cultivate an organic mushroom crop thwarted by a monstrous arthropod. Driven to the very limits of sanity, he attacks the beast with a laser gun. Possibly to be directed by Judd Apatow in the style of classic man vs nature comedy, Caddy Shack.
Frogger (Konami, 1981)
John Lasseter directs this magical story of an amphibian hero who just wants to find his way home. Thrill as he dodges busy traffic in the exciting freeway sequence; become confused as he loses a life for drowning in the river, despite belonging to a species that practises cutaneous respiration; leave the cinema when it becomes clear that the film re-starts the moment you eventually make it to the other side...
Moon Patrol (Irem, 1982)
On the dramatic lunar surface, many miles from Earth, a Nasa research team comes under attack from a deadly alien force. Their only hope of escape is an incredibly slow moon buggy, fitted with what appears to be a roof-mounted pea-shooter. Vin Diesel stars as a top science driver who has come out of retirement to pilot one last buggy mission. Can he outrun the extraterrestrial menace while also hitting the jump button to avoid deadly moon holes? Paul WS Andrerson to direct.
Paperboy (Atari, 1984)
'Delivering' fast-paced excitement and 'first class' entertainment, this nostalgic movie will remind film-goers what life was like when work meant clambering on to a BMX bike and throwing newspapers straight through the windows of badly drawn houses. And if runaway lawnmowers and savage dogs aren't enough to contend with, our novice paperboy hero (I'm thinking Justin Bieber, naturally) must prepare for a confrontation with the Grim Reaper himself! Something to do with a dead letter office? We'll patch those details in later.
Chatterbox: Tuesday
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Tuesday morning, here we come.
GamesKeith Stuartguardian.co.ukTop 10 UK games chart, week ending 8 July 2010: feeling fit?
Actually, we thought you might like to see what the top 20 look like. Though in a word, it's: not much changed. Are you all on a buyers' strike?
UKIE Games Charts
Fifa 12 hands-on preview
We spend a whole day with the latest Fifa extravaganza – and find much to enjoy in its trinity of major gameplay overhauls
The makers of football sims would like us to believe that every annual iteration is a radical improvement on the last. In a minority of cases, this is actually true.
The brief glimpse we caught of Fifa 12 during E3 suggested that this could be one of those occasions. Producer David Rutter is pushing a trinity of major changes to this year's instalment: a new player impact engine, a re-designed tactical defending system and precision dribbling. Having spent a whole day playing the game at EA's Guildford offices, it seems to me this is much more than PR bluster. This is a very different game to Fifa 11.
The player impact engine is the most immediately visible – and strikingly entertaining – of the game's new additions. An advanced procedural animation system tied with accurate collision physics, means that every encounter between players is calculated in real-time – and they all seem to look and end differently, depending on the physical forces and sheer bulk of the men involved.
In one game between Newcastle and Spurs, for example, a typically robust Barton tackle sends Bale spinning – literally spinning – across the turf like a crash test dummy. Physical altercations have real crunch to them; muscular forwards like Balotelli are able to barge through defenders, their bodies clattering and shoving, shirts tugged amid the tussle.
But the real physics seems to mean real risk. A tackle may upend the opposing player, or the tackler himself may come out badly, splaying awkwardly to upend an incoming team mate. You get these brilliant goalmouth scrambles as frantic players pile in, the ball ricocheting realistically between multiple sets of limbs.
And this physicality is not just confined to on-the-ball moments: you'll often see background crunches where players have simply run into each other, sending someone spiralling to the ground in the near distance. Everywhere, there are players scrambling, jostling and tripping. The pitch is crammed with action.
The impact engine, then, is authentic, often thoroughly amusing, but also a potential game changer. Fifa fans who have learned to predict the baked in behaviours of the ball and players will be quite literally wrong-footed again and again. Sliding tackles now often poke the ball against the oncoming attacker, rebounding it deliciously into his path; perfectly weighted through balls can clip the ankles of stranded defenders, knocking them agonisingly off course.
This sort of thing did occasionally happen in Fifa 11, but it was within a more structured, more synthetic system. Here, quirky interventions and unexpected rebounds seem to be a factor in every encounter – and it's thrilling stuff.
But it seems that there's plenty of skill and deftness to discover in the new controls, balancing out the blood and thunder. The game flow feels much more varied. The overhauled precision dribbling system puts a pace control option on the left trigger, which drops you down to a tightly controlled jog.
From here, you can easily sell the ball in one direction and accelerate off in the other. Then, the top left bumper button is for manual precision dribbling, which gives high-fidelity control over direction, allowing you to circle the ball, guard it, and hold up play. "We were umm-ing and ahh-ing about whether to keep that feature in, " says Rutter. "But I suspect it won't get cut because it's too much fun."
The result is a game that is more analogue in terms of pace; you're not just sprinting everywhere (was that just me?), you're playing around with speed, you're slowing, then accelerating, you're Lionel Messi. (And even if you're clearly not Messi, when you approach a defender with no buttons pressed, it'll drop you into precision control automatically. The system wants you to play well.)
Rutter saw this as a key aim of the design process. "Yes, there's a time for sprinting, when there's a wide open space, but there's also a time for close control when you're in congested areas – and both are important weapons when you have the ball, and allow you to express yourself with much more fidelity and imagination than previous versions of Fifa. That's not to say they're over-powered, and I think that's an important qualification."
Meanwhile in defence, the new control set-up includes jockeying options on the triggers that let you put pressure on an opposition player. But there's also a tactical defending button that's more about holding your position and gently guiding an incoming player into the sidelines where they can't do any damage.
"At a base level it's about containing, not letting that player do what he wants to do until you force him into an error," says Rutter. "One of those errors is showing the ball to you, allowing you to tackle him – at that point it becomes very much about skill, because it's a manual button press to tackle. I tend to use the jockey buttons to drop a player into a sort of free-ranging contained state and then use the top right button to bring in a second defender if necessary. He would then apply normal contained pressure and I can move my other player with full manual control to try and cut out a pass or shot and wait for my opponent to make a mistake.
"The more adept you get, the more you understand that, 'okay, what I'm doing here is not necessarily trying to tackle, what I'm doing is waiting and holding until play breaks down.' That's what real players do."
Beyond the match engine, another key aim with Fifa 12 has been to add depth to the Career mode, which was introduced last year. As a manager you'll have to cope with genuine injuries, attained through the physics-led collision system.
Putting unfit super stars into your first 11 becomes a tactical option, but also a huge gamble – not just because they could get crocked again, but because of the effect it might have on your relationship. Player psychology and media intervention are much bigger deals in this game – aping, perhaps, the changes that have revolutionised the Football Manager series over the past few years.
The newspapers will hungrily pick up on injuries, player resentment, any whiff of a potential exclusive – and if you don't deal well with your squad's problems, they'll huff off to the tabloids quicker than you can say 'transfer gossip'.
"We've put a big focus on be a manager in the sense that if it can happen in the real world, it can happen in the game," says Rutter. "Last year, the 'Play as Manager' mode was very blinkered, it was just about you. This year, curve balls will be thrown. Your players might become unhappy because they don't think they're being paid enough, because the team's not successful enough, or they're not getting enough run outs on the pitch.
"If they become unhappy, their form dips; if they come and talk to you about it and you don't do enough, they'll talk to the press. And when they talk to the press, other managers within the game might try and sign them. Basically. things unfold that are outside of your control – things come to you. It's a very different experience."
Apparently, the transfer AI is a lot more cunning too. Transfer targets will chance extravagant wage demands to test your resolve; other clubs will put in pitiful offers for your star striker. Everyone's on the make. Thankfully, though, there's also an improved youth scouting facility, so you can bypass predatory clubs and mercenary players and discover the next Jack Wilshere for yourself.
All clubs have season expectations, which the press and match commentators (Alan Smith and Martin Tyler) pick up on. There is also an extended transfer deadline day feature, which provides tons of last-minute business, a news feed of the latest in-game deals, and a ticking countdown clock to replicate the excitement of those last few hours of negotiations. In the midst of the chaos, your Chief Executive will provide helpful hints on possible buys, and you're able to stall on deals until the last few moments of the day to see how other business pans out.
Another fresh addition is the EA Sports Football club, essentially a social networking feature similar to Autolog and Battleog. Everything you do in the game, from winning tournaments to triumphing in Career mode earns you XP which filters into online leaderboards, both worldwide and friend-based.
You're constantly kept up to date with what your mates have achieved in the game, and can also spam your own successes to your Facebook account. Elsewhere, a Challenge section, which offers themed match experiences based around recent real-world football matches – so if Chelsea just beat Sunderland with a second-half hat-trick from Drogba, a challenge might be to play the last half as the Black Cats and try to prevent the assault.
As an extra motivator, participants get to align themselves with a favourite club, which then gets a share of all their XP wins – this is all averaged out to create a score and a league table reflects the weekly fortunes of all the real-world sides. I'm not sure how much all this will mean to the average Fifa player – I just want something like Autolog, that makes it easier for me to complete against friends online, either together or asynchronously.
So far then, Fifa 12 looks to be ushering in a very interesting new era for the series – one of complexity and unpredictability, both on and off the pitch. Interestingly, although it seemed to me that the player impact engine was the most obvious of the three major innovations.
Rutter – who is on a something of a global press tour with the game – told me that different aspects are noticed much more in different territories. "Precision dribbling was a very big deal to the North Americans," he says. "Tactical defending was important too because it took a lot of the pressure off them. In the UK, we're talking more about the player impact engine – I'm off to France and Italy and Spain later this week and I'm sure they've all got their own take on what's important."
I guess that's the important thing with modern football simulations. Just like current fighting games or all those military shooters with their myriad load-outs and perk options, personalisation and individual expression are the key. Plus, anything that gets us further away from pre-cooked animation cycles, unresponsive team mates and defensive options that stop at "sliding tackle or foot prod" is a triumph, really.
GamesPS3XboxPCE3 2011Sports gamesKeith Stuartguardian.co.ukChatterbox: Monday
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