Interviews// FIFA 08: Paul Hossack

SPOnG: What lengths did you go to provide AI that could make educated decisions on the pitch and be positioned accurately? Was it easier this year because you had a base to build from FIFA 07 or has it been just as tough?

Paul Hossack: We were fortunate enough to have a lot of the systems in really good states. The shooting and the passing and a lot of other things were already pretty sound, so we didn’t have to worry about those. But then it was a big challenge for us, especially positioning, because it’s hard to get it right. Positioning affects everything in the game. You change positioning and it affects defending, it affects shooting, it affects passing. You change the passing and it affects positioning.

There really had to be a perfect balance that we had to get right. But the real big win we had this year was being able to work on the defensive side so that all eleven players on your team are thinking about the threats on the pitch and the opportunities around them - whether they’re close to the ball or not, they’re making intelligent choices and putting themselves in the right position.

SPOnG: You’ve been working on the current-gen versions of FIFA 08, and working closely with the next-gen team. Was the aim between the two groups for FIFA 08 to be as similar as they can be or were you given a lot of creative freedom and autonomy?

Paul Hossack: Very much the second, I basically started the year and was given a 25-person team. My boss said “Paul, make a great game”. And that was it, so I could do whatever I wanted with the team. Obviously there’s a lot of collaboration when you’re on the same floor and the same studio as the next gen-team, so we’ll play their game and they’ll play ours and there is some co-operation on that level. We learn from each other, especially if something new comes up that’s a good design, we’ll share that. But we have a team that is focused just on PC and PS2, we have to think about how we can make those the best we can.


SPOnG: What was a good example of the two teams working together like that?

Paul Hossack: There were things that went back and forth - some things they’ve [the next-gen team] done with their AI and some other subtle things that we’ve learned from us. We talked about the right-stick player switching where you can select another player using the direction they’re in, and that was something that came up first from one of the engineers on my team. The next-gen team are using the same design for their player switch.