10 Mind-Blowing Facts About The Making Of FIFA

7. EA Measured Success By Metacritic Scores

It may be difficult for younger gamers to imagine now, but there was a time, around a decade ago, when FIFA wasn't top dog in the football video game market. Instead, it was Konami's Pro Evolution Soccer that was the darling of players, renowned for having a better feel to the gameplay. People were even willing to overlook the lack of licensing in Konami's product compared to EA's. For that very reason, several on the FIFA team became infatuated with the idea of review scores. Seemingly desperate to claw back their dominance, EA Sports talked at length with people reviewing the game to find out what they did or didn't like about the experience. As an extension of this market research, the team also used the website Metacritic extensively to see what the general public thought about each release. Remarkably, Metacritic scores let FIFA's developers know they were moving in the right direction. When FIFA 10 hit a rating of 90 on the website, workers at EA Sports rejoiced, because that had been one of their goals in development. It's fascinating to picture game developers looking at things this way, because most would likely lead gamers to believe they know what's best to begin with.