New EA SPORTS Interactive Training Features EA SPORTS Technology and Advice from U.S. Soccer Development Academy Technical Director and U.S. Men's National Team Assistant Coach John Hackworth to Help Youth Players Perfect Skills

EA SPORTS and U.S. Soccer have teamed up to introduce EA SPORTS Interactive Training, a free, online tutorial that uses EA SPORTS technology to help train the soccer stars of the future.  This interactive resource, available at www.EASPORTSinteractivetraining.com employs the EA SPORTS soccer game engine to illustrate U.S. Soccer's coaching book "Best Practices for Coaching Soccer in the United States" which serves as the sport's definitive new player development guidelines. John Hackworth, U.S. Soccer Development Academy Technical Director and U.S. Men's National Team Assistant Coach introduces each video segment with expert coaching advice for players ages 8-12 and their coaches to help them improve real-world technique.

The U.S. Soccer "Best Practices for Coaching Soccer in the United States" manual is an invaluable training guide created by U.S. Soccer's Coaching Education Department to give youth and junior level soccer coaches in the United States a set of fundamental tools to help open up the game of soccer to young players in ways that celebrate the sport's spontaneous qualities.  The Best Practices Manual is available for free download at www.ussoccer.com.  EA SPORTS uses sophisticated physics and its animation engine to bring the resource to life by helping players and coaches visualize the professional benefits of drills and convert that to precision on the field.  

Specific features of EA SPORTS Interactive Training include:

• Six videos focused on drills - Passing, Dribbling, Heading, Shooting, Receiving and Defending
• Three levels of complexity for each video module
• Expert advice by John Hackworth, U.S. Soccer Development Academy Technical Director and U.S. Men's National Team Assistant Coach

Given the insatiable appetite EA SPORTS is seeing for digital content among youth demographics globally, this online resource is likely to resonate with young players and help U.S. Soccer in its mission to help continue the development of soccer at all recreational and competitive levels. Since last June, more than 500 million online game sessions of EA SPORTS games have been played, and more than 2 million game highlight videos have been uploaded to EA SPORTS websites.

To experience EA SPORTS Interactive Training, log on to www.EASPORTSinteractivetraining.com.

Christophe Labrune here with an update on the FIFA 10 Online game.  FIFA 09 was the year of Online for the FIFA series. Usage more than tripled over FIFA 08 and each day since launch has seen more than 1 million matches completed. We even broke the 2 million-match-per-day bar in March.

Let’s step back for a bit, and see where this all came from…

FIFA console and online - the early days

I was brought on to the FIFA 2004 team as the PC and Online producer. Only PC had online play at the time, and the idea was to follow the early online success of console games like Madden. Internally, we wanted to focus on gameplay and Manager Mode, and we didn’t know what to expect of online on a non-PC platform. It was up to me to find that out!

We implemented 1-vs-1 gameplay on PS2 and focused on making the experience stable and fun. While testing and tuning, we started realizing how much potential Online had for FIFA.

For the complete entry, go to the Off the Bench blog:  FIFA 10: The Online Game

So far we have covered the Skills and Strategy elements of Season Showdown. This week we will focus on the third major component, Sportsmanship. Before I go into the details for what's considered good and/or poor sportsmanship I'd like to go into why we chose sportsmanship as a component for Season Showdown.

For the most part, the last remaining barrier preventing people from enjoying online games vs. someone they don't already know is the quality of play by your opponent. Everyone has been matched up in a game where the fun is completely lost because your opponent has never seen a 4th down they won't go for, and the only chance their kicker has of seeing the field is on a kickoff. Even worse, you sometimes find yourself baited by this behavior and the next thing you know your rationalizing your poor play as "well they did it first, I'm justified", or "everyone random online person is a cheeser, so I'm gonna cheese them before they have a chance to cheese me". It's a vicious cycle.

One thing we learned last year with Online Dynasty was the multi-game restart warning proved to be a very good cheat preventer. The simple act of calling someone out for restarting their game was often enough to prevent someone from quitting a game vs. the CPU if their star player went down with an injury. We applied that same concept when coming up with Sportsmanship. Let's call people out when they are acting like jerks, and reward them when they do the right thing. Now when you choose to go for that onside kick when you are up by 28 just to annoy your opponent, not only will it hurt your school, but it will also tarnish your image in the eyes of the online community as the more you do these things the more of a "bad sport" you will be considered.

Sportsmanship is the only category that you can gain and lose credits during a game. If you earned 400 credits in all of the other categories, but finished with -200 in Sportsmanship, you are going home with 200 credits for that game. Before you start to think that I've just shown you the way to tank a school just by signing up for them and losing as many credits as possible, we cap the number of credits lost at zero for the school, so you can never remove credits from a school. You will, however, go into the negative for your own personal sportsmanship rating. And then everyone will know what type of player you really are.

Before heading into a game with someone make sure to check out their Season Showdown ID card, here you will be able to see the school they are representing, how many total credits they have earned, and their Skills, Strategy, and Sportsmanship levels. These levels will let you get a good indication as to what type of player your opponent is, and what type of experience you can be prepared for if you play them.

Alright, enough about why Sportsmanship is in, now let's talk about how you can display good and bad Sportsmanship. First I'll start with the positives:

Punting on 4th down
I know, this is a foreign concept to some, but it is true, punting is a part of football. This is the single biggest gripe among gamers, you hold  your opponent to a 4th down, and they go for it, regardless of distance, score, location on the field, etc. So this one is pretty simple, if it's a situation where you should punt it, do so.

QB Kneel
Pop quiz, outside of a Punt, what's the least used play during an online game in NCAA Football 09? If you said QB Kneel I'd venture to say you are correct. Even with a 1-point lead I've seen countless number of people risk a turnover to keep running the ball, or worse, passing the ball, when all they need to do is knee out the clock. Do this and you will get some easy Sportsmanship credits.

Chewing the Clock
One of the new additions this year is the ability to "chew the clock". This feature allows you to speed up the game and play clock to 12 seconds left on the play clock. This means when you are trying to preserve a win, instead of just sitting in the play call screen waiting for the time to tick down, you can call your play and have the time tick off automatically. Since the point of doing this is to run out the clock, you will need to wait until there are 5 seconds or less on the play clock before snapping the ball if you want credit. Also, if you are on the losing end of a contest and just want to get it over with you can turn on Chew Clock to help speed up the end of the game, you will get credits for doing this too. Remember, Chew Clock only works when the game clock is running, so if you turn it on before the start of a drive, it won't work on 1st down since the clock is stopped.

Concede Defeat
This one couldn't be simpler. If you just want to end the game cause you are getting waxed, waive the white flag and concede defeat, you will get credits just for doing that. If your opponent accepts they too will get some credits for being a good sport.

Now let's talk about the negatives. One thing to remember is that these are all situational based, so just because you can lose credits for going for it on 4th down doesn't mean that every situation would be considered poor sportsmanship. If you are losing in the 4th quarter, go for it as much as you want.

Going for it on 4th down
I guarantee that if you are reading this, you would score at least a 9/10 on a quiz called "Should I go for it on this 4th down". So you know what you should do any given situation. For the borderline cases, we will only hit you with a warning that lets you know when you are cutting it close.

Unnecessary 2-point conversions
Every coach has that little card that tells them when they should go for 1 or 2 based on the score. If you are up by 5, what's one point going to get you? You want to go for 2 to get your lead to 7. If you are up by 34, does going up by 36 really put you in a better position to win? No? Then kick the extra point.

Onside Kicking
Simple, if you have the lead, kick it off.

Calling a timeout just to get one more play
As the game is winding down and your win is secure, if you call a time out on defense just to try and get the ball back to pad some stats, or if you are already on offense and call a timeout with 2 seconds left just for one more stab at the end zone get ready to lose some credits.

Continuing to Pass late in the 4th quarter with a comfortable lead
This one is not an affront on the Texas Tech's of the world, but if you are passing on 1st or 2nd down in the 4th quarter with a 3 score lead, then you are going to lose some credits. Even Mike Leach would be fine with you running the clock out here.

Well there you have it. That's what Sportsmanship is all about. One last note, the situations and scores are all tunable after the game launches. So if we missed a situation, or need to make an adjustment to the scoring we will be able to do that automatically and not through a patch, which will allow for very quick turnaround if an issue comes up. And if one does, I have no doubt you will let me know.

- Ben Haumiller

Hey Everyone, by now most of you have started to hear some details about Season Showdown, and some of you got uncomfortably close with me as I talked with Pasta Padre and cdj about Season Showdown couple of weeks ago. This week’s blog will focus on the format of Season Showdown, and in the coming weeks we will go in-depth on the Skills, Strategy, and Sportsmanship components that make up a lot of what Season Showdown is all about.

Before I dig into the feature I wanted to mention that the seasonshowdown.easports.com site will not go live until we launch on July 14th.  If you try to access the site before then you will just get redirected until the site is live.

Selecting your school

First let’s layout what Season Showdown is all about. This is a competition combining all Xbox 360, PS3, and EA Sports World members to put their school pride on the line to try and prove their school is the best. All you need to do is select the school you want to represent, and from that point forward every game you play will help your school’s cause. Your school selection is permanent, so make sure you’re picking the right school or else you might find yourself repping Miami of Ohio instead of “Da U”.

Schedule Format and Phases

Since there is a little over a month between NCAA Football 10 hitting the shelves and the start of the college football season we will treat that time as the Season Showdown pre-season. During this time you will be able to earn credits for your school by playing any game vs. the CPU or vs. an online opponent. We will track the number of credits each person has earned individually as well as how many credits each school has earned. Your goal is to try and get your school at the top of the leaderboard by August 31st, which is the start of our regular season. In addition to playing the game, you will also be able to earn credits by logging into seasonshowdown.easports.com and playing the NCAA Trivia Challenge. The credits you earn for showing off your college football knowledge will be added to your school’s total as well as your own personal credit count. Since the trivia game is completely handled on the web, you don’t even need to own the game to play trivia and help your school.

The reason you want to get your school at the top of the leaderboard is so you can make your school’s path to the championship as easy as possible. Since Season Showdown replicates the real world season, we will have our own weekly polls based on the outcome of the Season Showdown games. The initial poll rankings for week 1 of the regular season will be where each school finished on the leaderboard at the end of the pre-season.

Once the regular season begins, each matchup will last the entire week, and your school’s opponent will be the same as their real world opponent. So in week one Bama fans will be squaring off with Virginia Tech fans and Cal fans won’t have to wait all week for their chance to get some revenge over Maryland.  Every week of the season you will have a new opponent, and a new poll will be released every Monday letting you know where your school stands in the overall competition. Once we hit the first week in December its conference championship time. This is the first time we will part ways from the real life season. The schools that will be battling it out for their conference titles are the schools that win their divisions in the Season Showdown regular season. So while the real world SEC championship game might be UF vs. LSU, if Ole Miss fans and Kentucky fans fight hard enough, they will be playing for the SEC title in Season Showdown. And if you didn’t finish #1 or #2 in the final rankings of the season don’t sweat it, cause the top 32 schools will be placed into a single elimination tournament to crown the Season Showdown champion. Each round of the tournament will last one week, just like the match-ups during the regular season, and the Season Showdown Championship week will be played out the same week as the real world National Championship game.

Once the champion has been declared, we return to the pre-season format where you will battle for leaderboard positioning.

How does a school win their match-up?

Since the Season Showdown isn’t about the school with the most members or earns the most total credits for the week automatically wins, you will need to divide your credit earning into five categories. You can view the progress of each matchup by selecting the game from the schedules screen. Here you will see the match in progress screen, that shows each of the 5 categories, and who is leading. For the vs. Showdown Opponent category, we don’t show who is leading until the week is over, since this is the one instance where if you know you are in the lead for the category, you can guarantee your  school wins the category by no longer playing any Showdown games for that week. The school that takes three of those categories gets the win for the week. These categories are:

Games vs. CPU – anytime you play a CPU opponent the credits earned from that game will count towards this category.

Games vs. your Showdown Opponent – This category is all about taking on someone that represents your school’s opponent for that week. So if it’s week 1 of the season, LSU and Washington fans will play against each other in an online game; and the credits won during those games count towards this category. There are a few ways to find a Showdown Opponent, you can search for one from the schedules screen, head to your match-ups lobby room, or take a look at someone’s Season Showdown ID card which is displayed in the top right corner of the screen whenever a player’s online info is displayed on the screen. Here you will be able to see which school they represent, how long they have been a member, their total credits earned, and their skills, sportsmanship, and strategy levels. By taking a look at these levels you can get an indication as to what type of player the opponent is before heading into a game with them. If their Skills level is off the charts, then expect that person to be a gameplay master, if they have a lot of total credits but their Sportsmanship level is low you can probably figure that their punter hasn’t seen much action. 

Games Online vs. the Nation – These are games played online against anyone that is not representing your current showdown opponent school. So using the example above, if an LSU fan takes on someone representing Ohio State in week 1 of the season, the credits earned will be awarded to this category.

NCAA Trivia Challenge – Just like the pre-season you will be able to earn credits for your school by showing your college football knowledge. In addition to historical questions, we will also be adding questions during the year about the current college football season. Only your top score for the week will count, and your goal will be to finish in the top 50 for your school that week. At the end of the week we add up all of the credits earned and declare the winner for the category. If you are outside of the top 50 your credits will still count for your individual score, they just won’t be added to the team score for the week. The trivia challenge will be accessible from seasonshowdown.easports.com, and as stated above, can be played even if you don’t own the game.

Allies & Rivals – this category is 100% decided by your votes. Every day of the week everyone that logs into Allies & Rivals will have 5 votes to use however they want. At the end of the week the votes are tallied and whichever school in the match-up has the most votes takes the category. We track and display which school are your allies (who’s been voting for you to win) and your rivals (who always wants to see you lose). It’s up to you how you spend your votes each day, If you are an FSU fan it’s a pretty safe bet that one vote will go to FSU (you want to win right?), and one vote will go towards whoever is playing Miami and Florida that week, and with the other two votes, you can either try to help take down the top ranked school, or help an ally defeat their opponent. Once we hit tournament time, even if your school is out of it, you will still be able to have a say in who wins, as your votes will count towards who wins this category. Just like the Trivia Challenge, Allies & Rivals is accessible from seasonshowdown.easports.com and can be played even if you don’t own the game.

How do I earn credits during a game?

There are a number of ways you can earn credits by playing the game. With Season Showdown, how you play the game is as important as winning the game. No matter if you win or lose, you will still earn credits just for participating, however you will be able to earn extra credits in a number of categories (Skills, Strategy, Sportsmanship, Loyalty, Underdog, and ESPN Instant Classics).

We will go into great detail in the coming weeks about Skills, Strategy, and Sportsmanship, so for this blog I’ll focus more on the other extra credit categories.

Loyalty – When you are choosing a school to represent, all credits you earn go towards that school, but that doesn’t mean you have to use that school in every game you play, you will still earn credits for Notre Dame even if you wanted to start a dynasty with Kent State. However, when you do play with the school you represent, you will earn an additional loyalty bonus.

Underdog – Without fail, whenever you go online you find that a majority of the people use the same top ranked teams whenever they play, instead of sinking to their level, take a lower ranked team and beat them to earn Underdog credits. The larger the gap between schools the more credits you will earn.

ESPN Instant Classics – If the game you have just completed is considered an ESPN Instant Classic you will receive credits for playing a thrilling game.
Quit Penalty – one of the goals with Season Showdown is to improve the quality of play online, and there are few things worse than an opponent that quits on you. With Season Showdown, you will actually earn credits for ending a game early the right way (by granting mercy, conceding defeat, etc.) that you don’t need to just pull your connection anymore. If you do, you will get docked 50% of your total credits earned the next time you play an online game.

Following along with Season Showdown

On the console as well as on the web you will be able to follow all of the Season Showdown action. There will be daily audio podcasts hosted by the Thompson Brothers that fire off automatically when you enter the Season Showdown feature in-game as well as weekly video podcasts that will wrap up the last week’s action and get you ready for the big match-ups ahead. Every Monday the latest polls will be released that ranks all 120 schools based on their season showdown performance, conference standings, credit history for that tracks the credits earned in each category for each player as well as each school, and leaderboards that allow you to see which player and which school are the best at any category.

There’s a lot that went into the creation of Season Showdown, and a lot to discuss here. Please feel free to post your questions about the feature in the comments.

-Ben Haumiller

By Thomas Singleton

With less than four weeks until Grand Slam Tennis hits store shelves, I’m excited to tell you about one of the great social features of the game.

Tennis Party mode was created primarily because Wii platform is the social platform of all platforms.  So we wanted to create the experience of tennis experiences where people would get together and play simultaneously.  The concept was taking tennis academy type of games that exist within the real world that are authentic to the game of tennis and providing that same experience within our gaming environment.  Games like Aussie doubles or tag team doubles, where you not only have a great time socially interacting with others, but you’re also increasing your tennis abilities along the way.

People will love the Tennis Party mode for its social aspect.  It’s great to play on your own but it’s more fun to experience Grand Slam Tennis with others and tennis party is the best location to get that experience.  At any one time, up to four players can play.  You could have an infinite number of people rotating because it’s fun to watch as well. 

There are three different party types: “Own the Party” where players who win a party game own that game on the party circuit of games, “Random Games” where the games you play are selected at random and “Double Up” where select games certain games are worth double points for the winner.  Among those party types, there are seven core unique rule twist games that deliver rewarding ways to experience the Total Racket Control system, with each bringing a new and unique dynamic to the game. 

Those rule twists include:

-       Tag Team: 2 on 2 with players rotating and taking turns hitting the ball
-       Aussie Doubles: 2 on 1 and the players rotate after each set
-       Stop, Drop and Lob: use the drop shot and lob winners for double points
-       Champs vs Chumps: time based game, take turns swinging, win the rally to become a champ
-       King of the Court: beat the king to become king, only the king earns points
-       Netmasters: Net shots are worth double points
-       Triplets: Similar to Aussie doubles where (2 on 1) but the players do not rotate around

To come up with these various party games, our team consulted with people who run tennis venues.  To keep with the authenticity to the sport, we employed people in tennis schools and tennis academies to come up with various games.  We wanted deliver games that are authentic to tennis; games you would play on the actual tennis court, but are fun and social.

Hope you enjoy the social aspect of Grand Slam Tennis!

Check out the Tennis Party video on IGN - Tennis Party

For more information on Grand Slam Tennis, go to the official website:  Grand Slam Tennis