Hello EA SPORTS fans, Greg Rinaldi here from Tiburon. Tiger Woods PGA TOUR Online was announced on May 29th and there's been very little information released since the announcement. So I thought it was time to address some questions and give you all an update on what's been happening with the project.
First of all, I'd like to address the rationale behind the decision to make Tiger Woods PGA TOUR Online a browser-based, streamed online game. A lot of you have been asking (some very passionately) why EA SPORTS didn't release a version of Tiger Woods for the PC last year. The answer is a bit complicated but it comes down to the fact that an annual, disc-based product for the PC prevents us from taking the TW experience to the next level for our fans. While we did have a loyal, core fan base supporting the product, sales for Tiger Woods PC steadily declined from 2000-2008. Peter talks about this in much greater detail in his blog "Going Online with Tiger Woods."
The decision not to release a version of TW for the PC last year was a difficult one. However, taking that time off allowed us to re-evaluate our strategy on the PC and to determine the best course of action for the franchise going forward. As Peter discusses in his blog, a packaged version of TW for the PC is just not viable in the current PC games market. So what makes an online-only browser version viable? According to IWS, over 304 million people (or 74%) of Americans are connected to the internet. And many of those internet users spend a good amount of their leisure time online. Whether that means playing games, watching videos, socializing with friends or just passing the time; the web is a major source of entertainment for many people. This is why we feel that the web is a great platform to launch a new product in the TW franchise. Additionally, server-based games give developers a lot more leverage by granting us the ability to provide unparalleled customer service, constant improvements to the game in real-time, updates to in-game content and new features which can be released as soon as they're ready. To help illustrate what that means, I've listed some of the coolest aspects of an online-streamed version of TW below. Hopefully after reading this, you'll agree that the decision to create Tiger Woods PGA TOUR Online is the right one for everyone.
New Technology - The first thing I want to mention about Tiger Woods PGA TOUR Online is that we are literally building this game from the ground up. Nothing like this has ever been done at EA before and so we had to invest in new technology and create a new infrastructure to reach our goal of an online, streamed version of Tiger. This new technology allows for fully 3D games to be played within a web browser, a host of custom backend technologies for serving up content, peer-to-peer communication, web services and game servers. All of this new technology allows us to create a version of Tiger for the web that will have the same level of quality as the console versions, while also providing us with the ability to stream the game to you instead of having to install it from a disc or download a huge file. Instead, you simply install a small web player, which takes about 30 seconds, and the rest of the game is streamed. The best analogy I can make is to compare our experience to the Netflix "Watch Instantly" feature. This feature allows Netflix subscribers to stream movies to their PCs. The beauty of this for Netflix users is that they don't need a DVD and they don't have to download a 4GB movie. It's a similar experience with Tiger Online...it literally takes under a minute to get into the game on any computer. Now, I've definitely heard some criticism from people when they discover that the game is browser-based. This is mostly due to the fact that most browser-based games are flat, 2D or very poor quality 3D. I can assure you that in spite of the fact that Tiger Online is streamed, the technology we are using allows us to deliver some very high-quality visuals. We have fully-realized 3D courses and characters with visuals that rival console games. You're not going to be playing on pictures of golf courses, your character will actually be on the course and you'll be able to see every hill, every break, tree and structure in the environment. This is a true Tiger Woods PGA TOUR experience. Just check out the screenshot below:
Anywhere/Anytime Gameplay - I know this sounds like a marketing buzz phrase, but let me explain what "anywhere/anytime" means. As I mentioned above, just about everything in Tiger Online is streamed through your browser, which means that you can literally play this game on any computer that has internet access. You can sign-in and play on your work PC, your laptop, your wife's MacBook or even a PC at your local internet café. The amazing part is that the game is always there and it's always your game. All the game information is stored on EA's servers, so you can access it from anywhere. For example; let's say you're playing Tiger Online on your work PC. You get through half a round when your boss comes by asking for the new TPS reports. In the past if you were playing the PC game and this happened, you would've had to save or lose all of your progress. With Tiger Online, you can just shut down your browser because all of your progress is already saved on the server. Even if you would've saved with the old PC game your only option would've been to continue that saved game from your work PC. With Tiger Online, you could resume that game at any time...from any computer. So you could go home and crack open your laptop to resume the game you started at the office. The best part is that this "Suspend/Resume" feature works now and most of us on the dev team use it just about every day.
Multi-Platform Support - The browser-based nature of Tiger Woods PGA TOUR Online means that it is platform agnostic. We will support Internet Explorer, Firefox and Safari...which means that you'll be able to play Tiger Online on both PC and Mac at launch. You could even play the same game on both a PC and a Mac. Meaning you could start a game on a PC and resume that same game with your same character, stats and all on a Mac. That is completely unheard of with disc-based packaged games.
Games as a Service - Speaking as a game developer and Live Producer, this is just about the coolest part of creating Tiger Online. Because its subscription based, we're treating Tiger Online as an ongoing service. As developers, we'll have a much more direct relationship with our audience than ever before. I'll personally be leading a Live Team whose main responsibility will be to keep our players happy and to customize the Tiger Online experience to the needs of our audience. To help us do this, we'll be in constant communication with our users to gather feature requests, customer support issues and general feedback our community. We're also building a detailed telemetry tracking system that will show us not only when people are playing Tiger Online but which courses/tournaments they're playing, how often they're playing, which items they're purchasing in the ProShop and what features they're using the most. All of this information will allow us to serve up content, design features and provide the fixes and gameplay improvements that are most important to our community. Also, our server-based technology and online delivery method mean that we can make changes and updates and implement them in the game immediately. It's a total shift in how we create games and in my opinion, the next big step for EA SPORTS.
New Content - Courses are king in TW and eventually Tiger Online will be the title with the most courses on any platform. This is yet another great benefit of having a server-based, streamed online game. Since the user doesn't have to install a disc, we can provide much more content than a packaged game. If we run out of space, we can simply add more servers to host our content. Another benefit is that we can update content all the time. Our plan is to introduce new tournaments weekly, new ProShop content bi-weekly and one new course every month from the day we launch. That's 12 courses over the span of one year in addition to the courses we launch with.
Feature Updates - While the Live Team handles community relations, gameplay improvements and content updates, the Tiger Online Dev Team will be working hard on our next big feature update. We plan to roll out several new features throughout the year for our subscribers. The best part is that with Tiger Online, the feature can be released as soon as it's been completed by the development team. We don't have to go through the process of shipping a packaged product. So Tiger Online subscribers won't have to wait a full year before they can try the next big feature from the Tiger franchise. Additionally, the community will have a strong voice in determining which features we release first throughout the year.
Community - The most important part of the Tiger Woods PGA TOUR Online experience is the community. This is an online game and as such it will connect Tiger fans from around the world like never before. The Tiger Online website will have many ways to communicate with your golf buddies, find challengers and make new friends. We're building a chat system in the game and on the site, friend updates, community challenges, and forums to name a few. We also plan to connect the Tiger Online community features with popular social networking tools like facebook and twitter. In the end though, it's all about the competition and community-based competition will be a focal point for Tiger Online. I can't go into too much detail right now, but I'll update you all in the near future on this and other features as they get further along in development.
Before I go, I want to take a moment to thank everyone who participated in last month's early Beta. It was a very small group of 164 people, but we were able to come away with a ton of great feedback and insights. Our next Beta starts on 7/7 and if you would like to signup please visit http://tigerwoodsonline.ea.com
I'll be back soon with another blog detailing what you can expect from the next Beta.
-Greg Rinaldi, Producer