FIFA 11 chief David Rutter…“We want to exceed expectations of what we can do!”

This week, Darren Cross speaks to Line Producer David Rutter about FIFA 10, World Cup and some of the plans for FIFA 11…

 

First off, congratulations on the success of FIFA 10, Dave. You must be chuffed with how well it’s done?

“Yeah! I’m pleased, intimidated, lots of different things really. Critically and commercially FIFA 10 has been a big success, but as I’m sure Gary (Paterson, Creative Director), Aaron (McHardy, Lead Gameplay Producer) and any of the team will tell you, we are not the kind of people to sit back and say ‘Right, job done!’ so we’re keen to continue to push things as hard as we can and we always will be.”

 

When you were putting the game together, there must have been a feeling among the team that FIFA 10 was going to be very good. Did you ever imagine it going on to become the best-selling sports game of all time?

“To be quite honest, we don’t really think about things like that. Myself, Gary and the team are all gamers at heart, and football gamers more than anything, so we’re just interested in making the best football game that we can in the amount of time that we’ve got. Did we imagine it was going to do well? Yeah. Did we imagine all the other stuff? No. Was I running around the office when we got a BAFTA? Yes! We were chuffed, but at the same time I think we’re grounded enough that our heads aren’t in the clouds.”

 

It seemed like a much bigger margin of victory over PES this time. What do you put that down to?

“I think they’re a very good team and, arguably, their game is good as well. If you look at their review scores there’s nothing terrible and the game is okay – it’s just not brilliant, brilliant. I’ve been a long-term PES fan myself, so I avidly downloaded the demo the day it came out and we checked it out. There’s some good stuff in it, and some not-so-good stuff, and we kind of feel the same way about our own game, so…”

 

Peter Moore challenged you to deliver a Metacritic rating of 90 for FIFA 10, and you delivered 91. Is there even more expectation for 11 now? 

“I said FIFA 09 was the best FIFA we’d done, then FIFA 10 was the best we’d done and hopefully everyone will love 11 as much as we do. There’s a lot of pressure, but as I say we’re all big footy fans and we’re all big gamers. When you combine the two things in this kind of environment then you end up with super-competitive people who are always putting a lot of pressure on themselves. But we work in a brilliant place and we get the opportunity to do something we love, much like you do as a football journalist?”

 

Agreed. Have you started to get that good feeling about 11 yet?

“I think we hit the nail on the head when we decided to do Personality+. That was something we knew we wanted to do. Even as we were finishing FIFA 10 we said ‘Next year it’s got to be about personality.’ We’ve spent a lot of time trying to make sure it’s a circle around the whole game, which is why we’ve called it Personality+; to make sure you know it’s as much about the look and the build of players as it is about the way they move and this, that and the other. To put all of that together as a whole package is the one thing that I think will really resonate with football fans and fans of the game. Historically that’s always been something Konami have been able to pin their hat on and say ‘We’ve got more of that than them,’ but I think this is something where we’re going to really exceed people’s expectations of what we can do.”

 

Having just played FIFA 11 for a few hours, it feels like Personality+ is central to all the other improvements you’re making, because if you can identify a player quickly then you can make a decision on what he’s capable of. Would you agree?

“Exactly, that’s why the plus is there see!”

 

When we spoke about 10 last year you mentioned that there were some things you didn’t have time to include, and I’m guessing Personality+ is one of them. Have you managed to get most or all of them in 11?

“One of the key things that we’ve not really talked about that much – actually, I don’t know if I’m allowed to but I will anyway – is locally saved replays. That’s one of the big requests we’ve had from the Community since I’ve been working on the game and we almost did it for 9 and 10. I promised last year that we would do it this time and we have. That’s done! We had a bit of downtime – not much – just before Christmas when we basically got everyone to do all of the little things we wanted to do to tidy up a bit. We got a lot of those done, and that was one of them.”

 

I’m playing a lot of the World Cup game at the mo. I know two separate teams work on the game, but I’m guessing you still share bits and bobs?

“For the gameplay part, the World Cup team took FIFA 10 – Santi (Santiago Jaramillo – Gameplay Producer) was actually the guy who did most of the gameplay. He took certain elements that we knew we wanted to improve on in 10, fixed them up and put them in World Cup. In the meantime we were already working on 11, and we took some of those things in but not all of them. For example, the improvements to passing from FIFA 10 to World Cup… we ditched all of our passing stuff because of the new Pro Passing in 11.”

 

Talking of the World Cup, the team here all love their football so I’m guessing you’ll all be really into the real tournament?

“Very much so. We’re quite lucky in that most of the England games are convenient for being eight hours behind us here in Vancouver, so it’s not too bad. We did get some tickets for doing the World Cup game, so a bunch of the team are there.”

 

You’re a massive Leicester fan – are you a big England fan too?

“Absolutely. We can watch the games over here – I’ve got a TV in my room and fortunately I can watch pretty much any match on it, so I still get to follow them.”