Gary Paterson
Associate Producer
Electronic Arts
When we first sat down to talk about what it was we wanted to achieve on UEFA Euro 2008 it was clear that we wanted our focus to be on quality and emotion. Quality in that we wanted to continue to enhance the football engine that we had been developing for the previous 3 years, and emotion in that we wanted to capture the feeling and passion of the Euro tournament. In addition to this we wanted to create a gameplay feeling that was clearly different to what had already been released on Xbox 360 & PS3.
To achieve this we looked at what it was about the Euro finals and qualifying games that made them so dramatic. What we found was that a team’s tactics often set the tone for the match. Smaller nations often played defensively against the larger nations, getting men behind the ball, trying to stifle their superior opponents. This in itself creates an emotion and a tension throughout the game – will the ‘big’ team be able to break them down, or can they hold out. So this is one aspect that we have carried through into our game. Each team will alter their tactics pre-game and during game depending on their status and the tournament and match context. The effect is dramatic, emotional and very rewarding. Seeing teams go 5-4-1 when defending a lead or pushing forward in a 4-3-3 to try and get a vital equalizer creates a very fulfilling, unique gameplay experience.
In addition to this tactical intelligence, international tournaments are known for the spectacular. In order to recreate these moments of magic we spent time enhancing our shooting, dribbling and passing systems. Star players now have more weapons in their arsenal in order to break down those dogged defenses. Shooting was enhanced, making it possible to score those spectacular long range efforts but not to the extent that they happen too frequently. Additional skill moves were added for skillful players and skill moves as a whole were made more accessible for gamers who had difficulty with the system. Through passes have been made more intelligent, making it possible to pick apart tight defenses, but again they are not over done so that they are too powerful.
Outside of the emotion and atmosphere of the Euro tournament, we also made numerous other improvements to the engine. We gathered feedback from the community and combined this with our own plans for the engine and came up with a feature set that we felt would make a significant step forward in the evolution of our engine. The vision that we had for Euro was that it would be a faster, more immediate version of our engine with some new features that complemented what was already there and lots of refining of what we already had.
One of the first and most significant changes that we wanted to make was around responsiveness and game pace. To do this we refined our dribble, passing, trapping and player acceleration systems. Dribbling now has slightly less momentum and reacts slightly faster to user input, passes are crisper, players show more effort - stretching or sliding to get the ball if necessary - and player acceleration has been increased in order to give the players a more immediate feel and also to further differentiate players of differing abilities. This results in a faster, more responsive gameplay experience which can lead to some shout out loud moments of frantic edge of the seat excitement, especially in the knockout rounds of the tournament.
Another area we chose to develop was that of in-air gameplay, by that I mean jostling and fighting for position while the ball is in the air. We overhauled this system giving the user more control and thus introducing more gameplay into those situations. Users now have control of their player when the ball is in the air and have to fight for position before launching a header.
Of course we worked on lots of other areas of the game. Penalty Kicks play a more significant role in tournament play so of course we refined the shooting model and the goalkeeper being able to move and gesture before the kick is taken. Difficulty levels were adjusted so the game is easier at the lowest levels but still a challenge at the highest. CPU AI, trapping and GK all saw improvements and of course the ball physics were adjusted for the new weather effects. The result is a game that we feel re-creates the drama and emotion of the Euro tournament but is also a significant step forward for our football engine. Oh and we have pad rumble now for when the ball hits the frame of the goal or at a crucial penalty.
We’ve had a lot of fun developing and playing Euro, so I hope you like it too.
- Gary
Also FIFA 98 Road to the World Cup was one of the first games I ever played on the PC. Fantastic games.