14 DAY TRIAL // Electronic Arts’ FIFA director, David Rutter, has talked about the success of the soccer simulator series and how its largely due to his team's constant strive for improvement and to the permanent rivalry with Konami’s Pro Evolution Soccer franchise.
EA’s FIFA series has become extremely successful in recent times, with last year’s FIFA 12 dominating the competition and setting new sales records all over the world.
Now, after the release of the standalone FIFA Street and the downloadable UEFA Euro 2012 expansion for FIFA 12, but before the release of this year’s FIFA 13, David Rutter talked with CVG about the success of the series.
According to him, the team is its own harshest critic and this results in a constant strive for improvement every year.
"We are hugely critical of ourselves to the extent where we get in trouble for it when we're doing presentations," he admitted. "It's just the way we are. We don't have a great deal of time in the year to make the game and we don't have a great deal of time in the year either to celebrate what we just did."
The fact that the FIFA team is based in Canada also helps keep the developers with their feet planted firmly on the ground, according to Rutter.
"I think actually being in Canada is a bit of an advantage as well because we're away from all the, 'woohoo! Look how amazing we are!' We don't see the shops with tons of FIFA copies in them, or see the launch or hear about it on the news. We're far enough away that we're this little isolated pod of negative nerds all working on FIFA."
Of course, the success of FIFA is also owed to the tense rivalry with Konami’s PES series, as the team always tries to stay a step ahead of its competition.
"We're still worried about what Konami is going to do with Pro Evolution Soccer and naturally they're our closest sports competitor," Rutter added.
FIFA 13 has received a lot of details in recent weeks and you can expect to hear more about the game ahead of its launch this fall.