As it’s the series maiden voyage we’d really appreciate some feedback from you all on our first podcast, so get on the forums and let us know what you think. Roll tape…

But with Fifa11 looming, what can we do as a community to support EA to make their lives easier when it comes to rooting out and solving problems?

Well  new FSB Team member Tom Mills (T-Mills-85) has his own ideas on how we can help EA, to help us.

Hit “Read More” to see the article in its full glory.

Help EA, to help us.

I’ll try not to make this a rant, but one thing that really bothers me whilst making my daily rounds of Fifa related forums, is a concept that I see thrown around time and time again:

EA don’t listen to us.

Now, it’s clear to me, and any other reasonable person, that this isn’t the case. Yet I see it almost daily.

Lets look  at an example.

One of the huge problems in Fifa10, discussed to death on various forums, was ping-pong passing. Taken back to the very root, ping-pong passing became an issue because of the users. Sure, the game code allows you to play that way, but it doesn’t really encourage it, it’s just unfortunate that it’s as effective as it is and became gamebreaking for many users online.

What did encourage people to employ ping-pong passing, was the competetive nature of humans and the “win at all costs” attitude. I’m not saying I go into matches wanting to lose, but I do go into matches with the rule of playing how I play, and the outcome, is what it is. Unfortunately a large portion of the online userbase don’t see things this way. They play the game, rather than football. The most effective way to play Fifa10 is to get the ball up the pitch as quickly as possible, ping-pong passing was a way to do that.

Where am I going with this? EA could quite easily have taken the stance that it’s not a problem with the code, it’s a problem with how people play it and left it at that. However they didn’t, they went away, and came up with an answer, and a mighty fine one at that. Pro passing. A deep solution that addresses and negates the issues of ping-pong passing. It’s gone. Dead. R.I.P.

I’m not going to explore the benefits or mechanics of pro passing because I couldn’t write it any better than Dave did recently, but I wanted to use it as an example of how EA take issues raised by the community seriously and fix them.

We have a dedicated community manager, who reads the official forums and passes on GOOD feedback to the development team.

This is an area where we as a community need to improve. To me, good feedback is well thought out with as much detail as possible. If you find a bug, don’t just post it. Post how it happens, replicate it, explain how you replicated it, provide so much detail that it’s tiresome to read. This is how things get fixed.

I’m not a developer, but one of the biggest points I must stress, which can be applied to all walks of life is that the quicker you understand a problem, the quicker you can fix it. It might seem like I’m asking the community to do EAs jobs for them, and I guess in some ways I am, but with a game that’s on a tight development cycle such as Fifa, the users will always be beta testing in one way or another.

So rather than writing ranty posts (oh the irony), think about the problems you are having, try to understand them and how they happen. Then use the forums to pass that information on to the people who can, and will, do something to rectify it. Treating the forums as your own personal soapbox to complain about (and even threaten) EA, will only result in them not visiting and interacting with us in the way they currently do.

EA have already done one event this year, where community members were invited to get hands on early code and provide feedback from their play time. There is another lined up with early Fifa11 code being taken on a tour of the UK. Forum members have gone to EAC and have been face to face with the developers, who sat and listened to the issues players were facing. I can’t think of many other companies that would take this approach.

We should be grateful that we get these opportunities to have a say in how the game is built and what changes are implemented. People complained about the lack of customisation. We get creation centre. People complain about PES being miles ahead in terms of personality and individuality. We get Personality+. This has been the case in recent years, and I hope it will continue to be that way.

If you think that EA aren’t listening to you, then you aren’t doing the right things to make your voice heard.

Tom Mills

For example, take this piece of information brought to us by forum member Anthony. He grabbed this information from the official EA boards.

First of all Gary Paterson spoke about celebrations and the net editor. Community legend Glen Cooley elaborated on the celebrations, while talking about the new replay save feature.

First of all Gary on celebrations:

If you do not press any direction on the pad then the player will automatically run to the corner and play his trademark celebration, his teammates will run after him and interact.

And now on the net editor:

You can choose the tension (loose or tight) and also the shape (what it looks like when viewed from the side – square or triangle).

Its a small feature but one that was not too tricky for us to put in and one that I know some of the guys on here were interested in.

Now, Glen on the replay feature:

At the end of the match there is a screen which allows you to pick highlights throughout the game and save those highlights.

That’s how it was structured in what we saw. I would assume its the exact same for online.

And finally, his info celebrations:

And players will also be able to interact with teammates after scoring a goal. Producers told us the team is aiming to have more than 90 trademark celebrations in this year’s game.

Have to say, as someone who demands this sort of attention to detail, I’m in total awe at the prospect of what FIFA 11 will offer the entire football gaming community. This is going to be one special game.

FIFA video maestro Mr. Wepeeler has decided to come out of video hiatus in time for the new season with his final video for FIFA 09. Francesco Totti anyone?

Stevie Morgan and I will be in Manchester next week, attending the next leg of the huge FIFA 10 TV ad shoot.

However, while we’re there, we’d quite like to take on some local FIFA fans. Ideally, in fact, we’d like to hook up with one Man City fan and one Man Utd fan and record a grudge match! We’d then stick the video up on the Football World site, amongst other places.

We’ll be in town on the morning of Wednesday 8th July.

Anyone up there want in on the action?

They’re a great bunch of lads… Honestly!

No, today’s update isn’t an exclusive on Romily Broad crushing a grape (see the man in the Liverpool-red shirt in the freeze frame above). The look on his face as well, “oooh!”

Today’s FIFA 10 ad shoot tidbit comes in the form of a teaser video, along with the following confirmation via Romily on his Twitter:

So. First FIFA 10 trailer this week? Yeah, go on then.

This week? How about today? More on that later.

There’s also been a lot of talk about which footballers are involved in the ad shoots this year with some great rumours flying around – check out this topic in our forum posted by ThomasGOAL for a particularly interesting one!

There’s some serious footballing stardom in this picture somewhere. FIFA 10 ad shoot is underway…

I can’t quite spot any stars in that pic, although you would presume Rooney is hiding somewhere behind the crowd of people – more news as we have it.

Community Manager (International)
Cologne, Germany

Bright Future GmbH, located in Cologne, Germany, is an experienced team of game developers. Among other games Bright Future develops the FIFA Manager franchise for EA SPORTS.

We are looking for an extension of our FIFA Manager team for 12 months starting in July:
Community Manager (International) – 20 hours per week

Your Tasks:

• Forum management of our international FIFA Manager website (starting new threads with questions and interesting subjects, discussing features, delivering support and collecting ideas for future versions).
• Deliver a strategy that increases forum traffic and helps to build relationships with our key customers.
• Review a rewards program for key posters.
• Develop ideas to improve our international website.
• Organize online-events, competitions, polls and a yearly international fansite meeting.
• Plan and execute physical community events in appropriate countries, notably UK.
• Manage the internal presentation of materials and an in-depth effectiveness analysis.
• Manage the international forum of our Beta test group.
• Translate FIFA Manager related news, blogs and press releases from German to English.

Our Requirements:

• Excellent moderation and communication skills.
• Very good editorial skills.
• Ability to develop concepts to increase traffic on the website and interest of our consumers.
• Knowledge about football gaming emphasis on Manager Simulations.
• From the UK – Native English speaker or excellent English with good/very good German language skills.
• Deep familiarity with UK leagues/clubs/players.
• European Football fan, also familiar with top international leagues and players.
• Involved in existing online football communities.
• Team player.
• MS Office and Content Management System skills.

Goals:

• Increase the traffic of the English forum compared to the German forum (currently 20:80) to 1/3:2/3.  Long-term goal (2 years) should be to bring this to 40:60.
• Increase the daily readers of news and of the blog compared to last year by at least 200% within the first year.
• Increase daily forum visitors compared to last year by at least 200% in the first year, same with postings.
• Every user question must be answered within 24h (with support of moderators).
• Physical event with 10 leading community members, Aug 2009.

Our Offer:

Would you like to work in a creative and challenging environment? We offer you a responsible and rewarding job in one of Germany’s leading game development companies located in an up and coming location with superb views on river Rhein. We look forward to hearing from you!

Please send your written application including CV and salary expectation to:
Gerald Köhler
Bright Future GmbH, Im Zollhafen 15-17, 50678 Cologne, Germany
Tel: +49 221 78 98 21 -71
Fax: +49 221 78 98 21 -80
Email: gkoehler@brightfuture.de

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