Seeing the FIFA franchise dominate the charts it's easy to forget that just a few years ago it was the underdog in the soccer game market. But, says EA Sports president Andrew Wilson, the team refused to take the easy option.
"The easiest thing that could have been done and certainly what a lot of people were telling us was 'Pro Evolution Soccer is a great game, just copy them and then you'll win on marketing! It's a sure fire way to win.' That just wasn't that interesting to us."
"I can remember at that time when I got offered the job I asked some friend of mine 'should I take this job?' Because FIFA wasn't liked outside the company, and wasn't liked inside the company. Because we weren't, as a company, building a great game."
He mentioned sitting with the FIFA team at 2am, looking at a broken build of the game and wondering if the series would ever be successful. The defining moments came when they set an ambitious goal for the future and an extensive recruitment overhaul of EA Canada, the FIFA studio at the time, that led to an international team with 19 nationalities.
"We were like the UN of game development teams, but we were all unified around a passion for football. And I think that was the first step."
"We had this dream of wouldn't it be amazing if by the time we got to the 2010 World Cup, we could have 11 on 11 online play with 22 real humans around the globe? Wouldn't that be amazing?"
"And I remember the first time we stood up and gave that presentation the company thought we had rocks in our head."
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