MiddleEasy interview with EA MMA Designer,

Good interview - Read the rest here - http://middleeasy.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=2297



M.E. - "So how are you guys coming along? All on track?"

Yeah we're definitely on track. I was with some of the community guys earlier today and they've been playing the game like crazy. They've been beating me back-to-back all over the building. Other teams as well are jumping into this build of the game and really having fun with the game. So I would definitely say development is on track and we are seeing improvements from a week-to-week basis. It's a pretty exciting time.


M.E. - "This is team Tiburon that also works on Madden, is it mostly Madden people working on EA MMA?"

E.A. - "Not necessarily. We gave a handful of people teams. Some from Madden, some from Nascar...I can think of an animator specifically from Fight Night Round 4 who was working up in the EA Canada studio who came down to help us out. The way I like to think about it is that at the beginning of the project, we knew we wanted to do something really great with it so it's like we tried to handpick the best ninjas from EA that we could, really come out strong with the first iteration of this game. It's certainly going to be a franchise and we wanted to come out strong right off the bat."


M.E. - "Have you played UFC Undisputed 2010 yet?"

E.A. - "Oh, absolutely. I was up til about 3:30 in the morning last night playing the hell out of the career mode because if you think about it, it's like a game of poker and they had to show their hand and put it all down so now we're able to see everything they did and didn't do as far as the game is concerned. It's not just me. The more other people from the team plays their game, the more confident we are that we are going to come out really, really strong."


M.E. - "Whats going on with your career mode?So as far as career mode I can tell you that we have elements that they do not."

E.A. - "There are things I can't talk about just yet, but they clearly don't have the elements we have and I can say that definitely because i was playing their game and I was like 'OK, cool...'. How do I say this, we are going with such a global emphasis on the game that we are doing things they could never do. They are restricted by the UFC license. I like creative freedom. Working on the UFC game, sure that would be great. They are a big name here in the states. But the thing, they are restricted only to the octagon. [They're] restricted to their fighters and [They're] restricted to their rule set. Whereas with us, we've been able to announce recently that the fact you can fight in Japan gives you 10 minute first rounds 5 minute second rounds. We have fighters from around the world, not just Strikeforce and in Japan we are gonna have head stomps and we are gonna have soccer kicks and you can't see that in a UFC game because that's not what a UFC game is about. So we have this awesome creative liberty to really show people what MMA is about, not just what UFC MMA is all about."


M.E. - "Touching then on the Japanese rule set, when you add in soccer kicks etc, will you be taking out elbows? Will you be able to customize and define your rule sets?"

E.A. - "We know in Strikeforce elbows are not allowed on the ground, so we are going to try to be as authentic as possible to the rule set. As we get people's hands on the game, we want to deliver the best gameplay experience possible. It might be a balancing act of 'what serves gameplay best' vs 'what serves the authenticity of that rule set best' and in Strikeforce, we are going to adhere to the rules pretty much one-to-one unless it prohibits fun gameplay, because that's what it is. Its a videogame and it's supposed to be fun ultimately.