EA SPORTS Football Club: More Details

Matt Lafreniere

2011-07-19

The all-new EA SPORTS Football Club is the heartbeat of FIFA 12. Producer Matt Lafreniere lets us in on what makes it tick.

I’m Matt Lafreniere, one of the producers on FIFA 12. Specifically, I’ve been working EA SPORTS Football Club – something totally new for our fans, and something we’re hoping will make playing FIFA 12 an altogether more rewarding experience for both you AND your friends.

EAS FC, as we have come to call it here, is a big idea. But what exactly is that big idea? Put simply, we want to take the many millions of people that are playing FIFA and connect them together with the EA SPORTS FIFA game, the real-world sport of football, and with each other. Our vision is to create a truly engaging social experience in FIFA - one that never stops growing and changing, that connects with your passion for the team you support, and that stays fresh and relevant to you, no matter when or how you choose to play.

So it’s not a typical new stand-alone game mode. It’s a new philosophy, and everything you do in the game affects it. What’s more, there’ll be a whole new team of people here at the studio supporting it, working all year round to make sure whenever you turn on your games machine there’ll be new things to see and cool new things to do.
Here are a few things you can look forward to with EA SPORTS Football Club in FIFA 12, just for starters:

XP/Leveling & Support Your Club

Throughout FIFA 12 you’ll have lots of ways to earn experience points, or XP. Whether it’s playing a Kick-Off match, signing a new player in Career Mode or creating a new player in Creation Center, you’ll get XP rewards that contribute to your overall FIFA level.
The higher your level, the more passionate you are.

That XP will not only determine your own personal level, though. It will also help the club you support. We’re calling this Support Your Club, and it’s set to be the world’s largest and most exciting interactive league.

Let’s say you’re an Arsenal fan. Every time you earn XP from playing FIFA – playing any mode, playing as any team - you’ll be contributing both to yourself and to Arsenal. And so will all the other Arsenal fans around the world. Man City fans will be doing the same, too. Real Madrid, Lille, St. Pauli and Southampton fans - they’ll all be at it as well. No matter the size of the team you support relative to other teams in the game, and no matter how many supporters the big teams may have, your team has just as good a chance of rising to top as any other.

Clubs are placed in their appropriate leagues around the world and will be ranked based on their fans’ XP contributions. However, it’s not just about who contributes the most total XP. So you don’t have to worry about Barcelona or Manchester United being at the top of their tables every day because they have the most supporters. It’s all about which club has the highest Average XP per supporter. This will ensure that smaller clubs can contribute on an equal footing with the giants of world football. And we get to find out which club’s fans have the most passionate FIFA players of all.

Support Your Club allows your passion for FIFA 12 to determine who succeeds in the tables and who achieves glory.

Always Connected, Always Fresh: Challenges

FIFA 12 will dance to the beat of world football’s drum with our all new EA SPORTS Football Club Challenges.

If you recall the hugely popular scenarios in 2010 FIFA World Cup South Africa, you’ll have an idea what we’re doing with Challenges. It’s a similar idea but on a much, much bigger scale. In fact, there’ll be a dedicated team at the heart of the development studio dedicated to making sure FIFA 12 is constantly updated with cool new things to do all year round.

We’ll create playable scenarios based on the most exciting matches and storylines as they occur in real life. You’ll be dropped into a game with pre-defined teams, players, scores and more, and your objective will be to complete the challenge we give you. Whether it’s to recreate history or rewrite it, you’ll get to relive all the great storylines in the world of football, earning valuable XP for yourself and your club as you do.

With these new Challenges we’ll ensure FIFA 12 is always fresh and relevant.

Community & Sharing

Features like Support Your Club allow you to be connected to the rest of the football world in a new and exciting way; everyone will be contributing and competing against each other.

We’ll also be connecting players together like never before with a News Feed system that will share your FIFA news and accomplishments with your friends on the fly, so they can see what you’ve been up to and you can see what they’ve been doing.

One of your mates just bagged a skill move accomplishment in the Arena? Go and show him who’s boss. Scored a win that raises you to the top of your friends leaderboard? We’ll make sure your friends know about it the moment it happens.

And while you’ll be kept informed of all this activity in the game, you’ll also be able to share the news outside the game, whether on our website – easportsfootball.com – or on social networking sites.

So, whether it’s real-world football, your own achievements in the game, the club you support or the activities of your friends, EA SPORTS Football Club is all about stories – and it will be creating millions of them every day.

EA SPORTS Football Club: More Details

Related News