Adam Thompson (NCAA Designer) Q&A Thread

[Adam_Thompson_EA]

Quote: Originally Posted by servo75

HI Adam, I'm real glad you and others are here to answer our questions. There has been a perception in the past that the management at EA sports really doesn't give a hoot what the gamers want, but at least your presence goes a way toward mitigating that feeling. Thanks. My question is that it sometimes seems with sports titles, that there are a lot of things that need fixing, as mentioned in this thread. Yet every year it seems as though the focus is on some "new feature of the year." I suppose from a marketing view it's better for EA to say, "Now with home field advantage" than "last year's problems fixed." But do you get the impression that sometimes the focus is more on putting in a "new feature of the year" or in patching up old issues?

First off... EA Sports didn't get to where it is today by not caring what gamers want. No company survives let alone grows by not giving the people what they want. Is it what you want? It probably won't always be. I know it isn't always what I want and I am a designer on the game!

I think you have the general idea. We don't go in with the mindset of "take last year and fix what was broke." We go in with a feature set in mind. We get enough flack about our game being a $60 roster update as it is. But we try to identify what needs to be tweaked and we put it in the design DB like any other feature. It gets estimated and is treated like any other feature. We have to cut proposed features to get to our budget. Usually when we go into the first cut session we are between 250 and 300% over budget. That's a lot of cutting to do! It is painful and I'm glad I don't have to make those decisions.

[AirLobo23]

Quote: Originally Posted by OMT

I think that is an excellent summary. One of the reasons I volunteered to do this is because I read these boards a lot and 99% of the assumptions posted about how video games are made were completely wrong. I think we got that number down to 25% now, which makes me happy to see. I used to someone post "It can't be hard to do X" and I'd look in the design DB and say "Yep.. there it is. We cut that feature because it was 2000 hours."

Adam,

Don't listen to the idiots. You could make a blonde female cheerleader from ncaa come to life in their living room and they would complain because she wasn't brunette.

Fact of the matter, I'm just happy i have a fun college football game to play every year. Some people just are never happy and will always complain. Just know that MOST of us love the game for what it is. Every game has flaws, NCAA is no different, but for some reason you guys always seem catch the most crap.

Just last night people were ready to jump off a bridge because a guy threw 4 picks in one half of one game. Haha, it's actually pretty comical although i'm sure you and your co-workers take it more personally. I know i'd be frustrated working in your field and having snot nosed little punks always complaining. I appreciate you coming on here and giving us the lowdown on the game.

Thanks Adam.

[Adam_Thompson_EA]

Quote: Originally Posted by Craigsca

The two posts before servo are case in point as to why this game will never live up to xslim502xx's standards. As he wants real features repeated from old gen, others are asking for multiple arm bands and leg bands. Good grief. Maybe EA will introduce a college football Colorforms set so everyone can play football fashion to their heart's content. Oh, and yes EA could solve all these issues if they wanted to - while others think that an engineering team is some kind of finite set of people it's not true. If you have a deadline you need to hit with a specific feature set, you need a certain amount of man-hours. There's two ways to do so - extend the deadline (not an option), or throw more engineers at it. The problem is, we (and I'm including myself because I buy the game every year) buy the game in the state it is, and therefore there's no reason to throw $$$ at a problem when the payback isn't going to pay for the initial costs.

Engineers ain't cheap. Our dev team's size is based on expected sales and projected profit margins. This isn't Soviet Russia! There is an expected profit to be made .

It is not unheard of to add engineers to the team if it is looking like we can't deliver what we need with our team size. That has happened the last two years. However, there is the law of diminishing returns coming into play. Yes, you can have TOO many engineers. Focus is lost, guys are going into code that they aren't familiar with, or they are going into areas that aren't part of their skill set and bugs get introduced.

[Teddy_Long]

Quote: Originally Posted by EsaQue

You guys really need to learn to search... It was to reduce the menu lag.

adam answered that, but i want to know why Madden has pic profiles and NCAA can't? In other words, what are they doing that u guy(s) are not doing?

[Adam_Thompson_EA]

Quote: Originally Posted by bad_philanthropy

I have a question regarding Ohio Stadium, in the demo when you play night games there the field is appropriately lit but there is no source for the lighting (there doesn't appear to be any stadium lights turned on anywhere in the stadium). Is this a problem in the retail build? In some of the screenshots I've seen posted on EASW it seems that this issue might still be present. I know the stadium doesn't actually have permanent lights and they have to set up lights for night games but it seems odd to have the field lit with no apparent light source. Here's an example of what I mean. Where is the stadium light source coming from in these pictures? Here's a shot of the stadium setup for night games.

Funny you brought this up. One of my good buddies on the team is our senior graphics engineer and he went to Ohio State and he brought this up over beers. We need to get a switch case in there so when you play at Ohio State at night, stadium lights are added. We'll need to get the art team in on it and it will cut into our stadium resources, and then he'll need to put in the code to do it. But like everything else, it comes with a price that will be judged versus other things. But yes, it IS a known issue. And you can be sure there are few graphics bugs that are Ohio Stadium specific because the graphics guy tests all his code in that stadium!

Ya know, there is a lot of smoke and mirrors in video games. It is a lot like doing a magic act. The stadium lights don't actually light the field. So if you don't put any lights in the stadium it will still behave as if there are lights in there.

[Adam_Thompson_EA]

Quote: Originally Posted by EsaQue

Okay guys, lets try to get back on topic a bit. This thing is starting to get a mind of it's own and will soon be closed, or simply won't be what people are looking for in it. Adam, I was wondering with renovations for Husky Stadium in Seattle beginning possibly in late november of this year, and the Huskies facing a season at Qwest field next year, would you take the time to put Qwest Field into the game, or just have them play at Husky Stadium in the game anyway? Not sure if it would be worth the time to put in a stadium a team would be playing in for a year, two at the most.

I have quest stadium on "the list." And it would be a "Madden conversion" which means it is only a 20 hour stadium instead of the 300 hours or whatever a new stadium costs.

Can you give me a link describing what is happening at Husky Stadium? I'm not at work so I'm not sure if I have their changes marked down.

[Adam_Thompson_EA]

Quote: Originally Posted by Antonio865

That is exactly why EA doesnt exceed expectations with NCAA football. If they wanna be greedy and own all the rights then atleast do the game right and listen to your product consumers for once. Fans tell EA one thing and its added 3 years later when nobody cares anymore. Patches are released very late the lack of added contet such as alt jerseys is BS.

This thread isn't for stuff like this. Take it elsewhere. This thread is long enough for people that want to get answers; we don't need it muddied up with the played out EA bashing. You have said nothing new or clever. You might as well have copy and pasted a post from the first message board ever dedicated to an EA game.

[Adam_Thompson_EA]

Quote: Originally Posted by Teddy_Long

hey Adam, how come Madden has pic profiles and NCAA have to settle with team helmet stat profiles?

Because we can't use pictures of players. We had the front end player model in there which is 3D and uses more system resources than a flat 2D image. This caused the UI lag on NCAA 08 and until we can get an asynchronous loading of the player model it just isn't user friendly to include it.

This is one of the first things added to the design DB because we want to use this guy in other parts of the game as well, so I think he's got a good shot of returning to 010 without hindering UI navigation.

[Adam_Thompson_EA]

Quote: Originally Posted by ODogg

I can't believe you don't work 80 hour work weeks. Slacker!!

I would, but I also moonlight as a crime fighter and I gotta sleep SOMETIMES.

[Adam_Thompson_EA]

Quote: Originally Posted by Bwnarrow3

How is the stadium sounds feature. Does it sound like it is cut and pasted when loaded onto the game, or does it sound realistic?

I'm not sure as I wasn't involved at all with that feature. I did hear that we could get the reverb effect on it, but only on PS3. Crap... now I started another console argument!