NHL 09: Community Event Recap
Last week, I had the opportunity to visit Vancouver, British Columbia to attend a most unique community event for NHL 09.
EA Canada has been a surprisingly nimble studio in the last few years, especially in contract with sister studio EA Tiburon in Florida, as the Burnaby-based developer has been able to make momentous strides from year to year with its products rather than incremental ones. This flies in the face of EA Sports’ reputation, where the ponderous nature of incremental development often seems intended to maintain, rather than grow, a consumer base.
Such is not the case in oft-overcast-but-spectacular Vancouver, as last year’s NBA Live 08, FIFA Soccer 08 and NHL 08’s forward leaps can attest. Driven by passionate developers who love their chosen sports, the EA Canada teams seek recognition of their products that only Madden enjoys today. Whether that’s realistic or not remains to be seen, but the effort’s undoubtedly there.
I’m a veteran of EA’s “Community Days”, which are usually an opportunity to tip the developers’ caps to the people who support their product in exchange for a little online buzz. Everybody knows what they’re there for and what will be coming out of it, but in last week’s case, things were different - this Community Day mattered.
Bringing together some of the most eager minds, players and all-around hockey nuts available, the NHL 09 design team sat down with this group, not to pitch their game - but to ask about it. Why did it work? What didn’t? How can it be better - and what can the team do between now and the game’s release to make it the best title it can possibly be?
For the first time, an EA Sports development team was looking to members of its audience to help them create the very game they’d play this fall; a seismic shift from the way EA has traditionally handled these events; which are sometimes little more than alt-marketing efforts.
Needless to say, I can’t discuss specifics at the event, as the iron-clad embargo I signed at the event will hold sway for months, but I can say that I left the event more impressed than I already was by the NHL 09 team; a group of inventive hockey fans and gifted designers (in that order!) who won’t be satisfied until they make the make the game that they want to play… and ensure that it’s the game that their fans do, too.
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As more content from the other attendees makes its way onto the Internet, I’ll add links to it here. If you find something before I do, please feel free to let me know…
on April 7th, 2008 at 4:25 pm
Thanks Shawn! I know you can’t give info, but you’ve given me hope that the direction I’ve seen this studio go is indicative of the future. It’s so easy to be negative and pessimistic, but it really looks like these games are getting better. Maybe this one EA studio is “getting it” and that’s a start.
on April 8th, 2008 at 7:22 am
It is refreshing to read that the development team is open to feedback from you guys. I know people often get critical of EA and you can count me in as one of those people. I always try to add in a solution for what I am critical about though. I only wish the Madden team had listened to the community and they would have a much better product by now. Sounds to me that the Vancouver team has the right mindset to creating a excellent game (setting the bar high and getting feedback from the community).