THE BIG GAME FIFA ULTIMATE TEAM
“We have different players; even
in our team, our creative director Adam Shaik doesn’t even play games, all he does is transfer market stuff: buy low, sell high. That’s what gives him the kick. “That’s the beauty of FUT:
there’s more meta-games than just playing the mode. Obviously most people just play normally, but Adam’s a case where he just pays the transfer market, and deals up to millions of coins within a couple of weeks. We were all really jealous of him, but he spends a lot of time doing that, and it’s just what makes him happy. So there’s a lot of guys that do that as well, that don’t really play but just do the transfer market, so that’s really cool to see.” But with more and more titles offering a base game for free, then supporting it with micro- transactions, did the FUT team ever consider giving away a standalone version of the mode for free? “As of right now for the console product, we get so many benefits from working with the main gameplay guys and the great things that they do that automatically fall into FUT. It would be quite hard to keep in sync with them if we weren’t part of that team,” responds Kuhn. “But as other avenues come up – for example, portable devices – those will have games that have the more free-to-play kind of flavour to them. So for the foreseeable future we’re going to stay with the core product because of the benefits we and you get from it. But for other platforms, yeah there’s totally forays into free-to-play.”
RULE THE WORLD (CUP) FUT’s success was replicated in a special spin-off version of the mode centred around the 2014 FIFA World Cup in Brazil. Over 53 million matches were played during the six weeks of the event, with Kuhn saying that the mode helped to re-engage FIFA players. “During the World Cup a lot
of people took advantage of the World Cup mode we added,” he recalls. “We saw a huge shift of people playing FUT for those six weeks move into the World Cup
August 29th 2014
mode and max out their squads. Now we’re seeing them trickling back into normal FUT.” The World Cup mode was
offered for free, but arguably would’ve been a big money maker had EA decided to charge a few pounds for it during the tournament zeitgeist. So why give it away?
HIT SQUAD
Time is limited; FIFA comes out every year, so you can’t do everything.
Marcel Kuhn, EA “We absolutely wanted to
make it a gift to our fans,” says Kuhn. “We looked at it and said: ‘We want this to be something that people enjoy, that they think is cool, so why put a barrier of having to pay for it?’ “It was an experiment. We’ll
have to see how it works out and if we’re going to do the same in the future, or if it goes back to charging some money to get the mode.”
THE FUT-URE This year’s FUT adds several big new features to the mode, including concept squads, which allow players to see how a proposed transfer will affect their squad’s performance; loan players, which like real- world loans will give players the chance to rent a squad member temporarily; and friendly seasons, meaning friends can challenge each other without the risk of falling in the ranks. But Kuhn says
the team is still full of ideas for the future of the mode. “You always have a long list of features you want to do, but time is limited; FIFA comes out every year, so you can’t do
ARGUABLY the people working to create Ultimate Team are the best people to ask for advice on what makes a top FUT squad – so who does the producer of FUT 15 keep in his starting XI, and what are his tips for building a winning side? “I’m from Austria, so the first
thing I try to do every year is build a gold Austrian team,” says Kuhn. “But I always fail, because there’s not enough good world-class Austrian players who are actually gold. “My battle team, my first team, is actually built from the German Bundesliga, which I know the most about. It’s mainly Dortmund, Munich and then a couple of Stuttgart players, because I grew up there. For example, I have Sven
Ulreich. Aside from him being the best goalie in the German league, I still have a personal flavouring there so I added him to my squad.” He advises: “It’s very important
in FUT that you actually know about the guys as well. We get a lot of people that say: ‘Hey, I didn’t know a lot about football or about the Norwegian league, but because of FUT I actually started doing some research and found this one guy in the Norwegian league; he’s a right winger and super pacey, and you can actually score great goals with him.’ “It’s finding those hidden gems in the leagues we support in FIFA and FUT that drives a lot of people to build squads around them.”
everything,” he muses. “A little bit before we go and actually do things, the team gets together and looks at what we did last year, what went well with people, what didn’t go so well, what we want to do, what users want to see... then we come up with more items to put on a ginormous list and rank them based on priority: what people want to see and what we think is really important for the upcoming year. “There’s always something to
do – we never run out of things, that’s for sure. We don’t know exactly what’s going to come in the future for the next iteration – or even if there’s going to be a next iteration [He laughs] – but we definitely have a list of things we’d like to get to.”
www.mcvuk.com
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