“FIFA is now one of EA Sports most profitable annual franchises, the company in the early days predicted that the game would be a complete flop.”

In the early stages of planning and development for the game, EA’s UK based team went looking to recruit some locally based developers to help them build out some prototypes. A pair of developers from Cheshire, Jules Burt and Jon Law had been working on a football game prototype experimenting with various camera angles. Most other football games at the time such as Sensible Soccer or Kick Off! featured a top down view. The developers of the then titled EA Soccer wanted to create a game that would stand out from the rest. Despite the promising start the executives at EA stateside, were less convinced and didn’t put much faith into the success of the project. The development was shifted to EA Canada who took the early prototypes and built upon them implementing an isometric view for the game. A key selling point for the game was to rest on the realism that they could build into the gameplay and graphics. However just like previous EA Sports titles it also relied on the licensing deals that could be negotiated for teams and player names. This proved to be a problem as unlike the NFL, FIFA didn’t hold the licences for individual players and teams or the various domestic leagues. EA had secured a licencing deal with FIFA but it was all but the name included. Resulting in no real player names featuring in the game, instead the developers used their names to fill out the team roosters.

“The licensing deal with FIFA didn’t give the developers any of the rights for the teams and players but it did give it the brand recognition which it has maintained over the last two decades.”

Just as the development started the US EA executives had tried to shutter development over fears of potential loses in revenue, this trend continued throughout the development process. Both the Canadian and UK based developers had to continually convince their bosses that the game would sell well, as there was a large European market that had yet to be capitalized on. They argued that with the FIFA name behind them that there would be instant brand recognition, which would help boost sales. The game managed to get to market despite the best efforts of the EA executives and would end up proving them wrong for having their initial misgivings about sales figures. The game sold nearly half a million copies within its first month of launch and blew all expectations away. Becoming the bestselling game of 1993 despite the fact it was only launched in December of that year. The studio was soon back to work on the next title and over the last twenty years has managed to build up one of the most successful video game franchises. The FIFA series selling more than 100 million copies combined, earning it the title of best-selling sports video game.

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“Tennis is definitely one of the earliest sports to be featured in a video game with Tennis for Two acting as the origin point for the modern genre.”

The first of these genre defining games was EA’s 1983 title One on One: Dr. J vs. Larry Bird, which was the first sports game to feature the likeness of real sports personalities. The basketball game set a standard that remains to this day, with many sports game relying on the endorsement by star athletes to sell their game. The game also featured unique gameplay mechanics with the players needing to take periodic rests and time outs to rebuild their stamina, another feature common to modern games. The game proved to be a huge success and was subsequently ported to a number of different platforms from its original Apple II release. The game demonstrated the demand by the gaming public for video games based on popular sports. In the ensuing years a host of new sports titles hit the market, from the more mainstream sports such as Baseball and Football to the more obscure Bullfighting and Roller Derby. Developers of sports games had the advantage that the sports that they were digitizing into video games already had a fan base and a market audience to sell too. Although for some it was their personal interest in the sport that lead them to develop their own video game version.

“The game marked the start of EA’s dominance of the sporting game genre and was one of the companies’ early successes.”

Don Daglow was video game developer and a baseball fanatic. One of his early video game efforts was a text based baseball game, programmed on a PDP-10 mainframe computer while studying at university. It was one of the first attempts at a baseball video game, with the baseball hall of fame even recognising his game as the first of its kind. He was hired by Mattel to create a similar baseball type game for the companies Intellivision console, Intellivision World Series Baseball was released in 1983. Although the game implemented many ground-breaking features such as multiple camera angles and a 3D perspective. Its creators Daglow and Eddie Dombrower weren’t happy about the limitations of the game imposed by their employers. The pair left Mattel and went to work for EA, with the company looking to continue its success in the sports game genre.

“Although baseball games have struggled to find ground in the modern industry, the sports game genre owes a lot the games like Earl Weaver Baseball.”

They again returned to baseball and wanted to create the most realistic representation of the sport that was deemed possible at the time. Again taking its cue from their earlier sports title the company wanted to have a face to go with the game. Hall of Famer Earl Weaver who at the time was the manager of the Baltimore Orioles was the man chosen as the game mascot. The games stand out feature was the high level of control the player had over the outcome of the games, with a mammoth database of player stats heighten its realism. A feature that has remained a key component of modern sports games that often spend as much of the development process on scouting player stats as they do designing gameplay. The extensive amount of customization and realistic gameplay made Earl Weaver Baseball a critical success, it was polled at one time by Computer Gaming World as the 25^th best game of all time. It would once again be EA that would help popularize the sporting game genre with John Madden Football raising them to a position of dominance in that sector of the industry.

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