EA Sports MMA Q & A — The Final Fighter Tally and When We Can Expect More Updates » 30ninjas

EA Sports MMA Q & A — The Final Fighter Tally and When We Can Expect More Updates

Share on Facebook posted 04-26-10 by Max Tedaldi

Here is the continuation of the EA Sports MMA Gameplay Presentation from this past weekend. Answering questions on behalf of EA were Executive Producer Dale Jackson and Product Marketing Manager Randy Chase. If you missed the first part of our coverage click here.

Q & A

When is the release date for the game?
Late this year.

So maybe October or November?
Late this year.

Is there a reason that you decided to show it to us on Xbox and not Playstation?
Nope! That’s what I had in my office so that’s what I brought with me. I could have brought either one.

Are you still scouting talent for the actual game?
We pretty much locked our roster. The list that we have on the site is an incomplete roster, but we’ve pretty much locked who is going to be in the game.

What’s the final tally?
Around 60 fighters.

How many Japanese fighters are there?
That would be 7. But we also have fighters who fight in the Japanese leagues who are not Japanese.

30ninjas: Can you switch weight classes for fighters?
Yes, you can fight at any weight class that a fighter has a fought at. We’re not making any choice for a fighter to say, for example, he could be a welterweight if he tried. If they made that choice in their career, whether they’ve moved up or down, they can fight at that class.

30ninjas: So then their weight changes accordingly to whatever class they are going to be in?
Exactly.

Is there a cap on career mode in terms of making a fighter retire after a certain number of fights or can they just keep going?
We’ll be going into more detail about career mode in the future. Right now we’re just talking about gameplay, but we’ll go into more detail about online career mode in the coming months.

If there is another game out there do you study it and find things that you would like to improve on or change?
Absolutely, whether it’s a fighting game or a sports game, we play them and read message boards and blogs to see what fans are saying and what they want.

Q & A with Randy Chase, Product Marketing Manager EA Sports

30ninjas: I noticed in the demo that you guys did that you were playing mainly in the center of the ring, are there any gameplay changes in close proximity to the cage?
RANDY: Yes, we had one quick scene in the video where Jake does a throw off the cage, so you can press up against the cage and do clench work up against the cage as well as do throws off the cage, so the game does change. You can flip positions, and with big names like Randy Couture, that’s part of his game.

30ninjas: So the fighting around the cage, is that reflected in a the fighter’s stats?
RANDY: Yeah, so if you’ve got good clench work that kind of stuff will play into that. Also, when you’re in a boxing ring we’ve got rope physics working on that so you can use that.

30ninjas: The control scheme and physics behind the game seem very complicated. What did you guys do to make the game accessible to the recreational gamer or someone who is maybe not hardcore MMA?
RANDY: We wanted to make the game so that the difficulty wasn’t in the controls. The challenge came in the strategy of the fight, and how you’re approaching it and the timing of it. So the way our controls work is that they are consistent throughout. You don’t have to say “okay I’m standing up now. I went to the ground, okay now what do I do now”. You don’t have to think that because you just do the same thing that you were doing when you were standing up. You still use the same buttons to escape, you still use the right stick to punch, it’s the same psychology throughout so that when you get in the clinch you don’t have to think, “okay, now I’m in the clinch what do I have to do”. You just continually do what you always did, so once you learn the base controls you’re all set. We’re also going to have on-boarding in the game, where you can bring people in and have them fight and learn the controls. We don’t just throw them into a fight and say, “Hey, figure it out!” but we’ll teach people how to use our controls and things like that. We think it’s really intuitive. Some people really favor the buttons instead of the sticks for punching; we found that out with Fight Night. So with Fight Night controls you can do all of your punching with the sticks and some people find that really intuitive because if you want to roundhouse you can swing the stick. Some people don’t like that though, so with our game you can go either way; you can use the buttons or use the stick for grappling and vice-versa?

30ninjas: So tying into that, have you guys released any details about the tutorial system in the game?
RANDY: Not really, were going to do a hands-on soon and that’s when were really going to break down the controls, and what buttons do what and modifiers and that kind of stuff?

30ninjas: Cool, thank you very much.
RANDY: No Problem

Q & A with Dale Jackson, Executive Producer EA Sports MMA

30ninjas: Are you guys keeping create-a-player under wraps for now?
DALE: We haven’t talked about it much, but it’s going to be a pretty full-feature create a fighter system, where the emphasis is going to be molding yourself into the kind of fighter you want to be

30ninjas: Are you guys going to continue to add fighters?
DALE: You know as soon as we locked fighters it’s like I’ve got like six more fighters who want to be on the game and it just keeps coming. The minute i say I’m done there will be six more guys who are really important to me, and for one reason or another I wasn’t able to get a hold of them before or they weren’t available and now they are. I’m sure they’ll just keep coming. I don’t want to release a DC where someone fights just like everyone else in the game, where it’s just a head swap.

30ninjas: Were you directly involved in getting fighters for the game?
DALE: Yes.

30ninjas: What was that process like? How much of that is a legal battle and how much of that is just approaching a fighter and asking him if he wants to be in the game?
DALE: A lot of it is talking to the managers and the agents, and then just explaining what the game is going to be like. A lot of the time you tell them what you’re going do and they’ll say, “hell yeah i wanna be involved in that.” and its a great opportunity. There are people that we’ve picked who we feel are up and coming fighters…and are going be something big in a year or two. They are going to get more exposure through this than being in undercards.