While Irish eyes were turned to the big match in Brussels at the weekend, professional soccer has never been big in Canada. In a country where ice hockey is king, it receives scant media coverage - only the diehards find ways of following it.
Robert Caill (26), soccer guru at the Vancouver office of Electronic Arts, where they produce the world-leading Fifa Soccer series of computer games, has always been one of those few. "I fell in love with it as an eight-year-old playing in Ontario," he explains. By the time Caill joined the US company's Canadian arm two years ago as a games tester, he was compiling sports stats for various betting pools in his spare time.
"We had another gentleman doing the stats and basically Rob knew more than he did, so we hired him," says Fifa Soccer producer Marc Aubanel.
Only days before the code freeze, Caill is making final adjustments to his teams for the forthcoming Fifa: Road to the World Cup '98, due out this week. He has the last say on the choice of squads, team formations and individual ratings for each player from the 172 competing nations in the virtual re-run of the recently finished qualifying stage of the World Cup. Road to the World Cup uses a points model where each player gets marks out of 99 for a set of attributes. "So Paul Gascoigne, as we know, is a great creator in midfield. So, his passing number is very good. He's lost some speed, so his speed rating is down a little. But on his acceleration I've given him a good rating because I feel he sells a good first step to beat a defender," explains Caill, as he cycles through the player attributes on the office Sony PlayStation.
Teams will also be set up to reflect a nation's style of play. So Scots will be strong in the air, while Italians will be good at ball control.
Noting soccer players' tendency to change coiffure for the big occasion, EA has introduced a feature where players can choose 10 different hairstyles, from skinhead to what they are calling the "Europoof": shaved sides with a bouffant on top.
There is good reason why the mood is cocky and confident in the FIFA Soccer camp. With more than five million sales of the FIFA Soccer series under its belt, EA is set to exploit its position at the top of the soccer sim league. The holder of the sole franchise to France '98 also has the follow-up game World Cup '98 due out in spring, with the final 32 nations and a new game engine ("we've been working on it for about six or seven months with a separate team," says Aubanel). They've even got Britpoppers Blur to provide a raucous theme tune for the game.
However, there has been some negative feedback. More experienced players felt that the gameplay in Fifa Soccer '97 was not responsive enough. Aubanel says the criticisms have been taken on board for the two new games. "There's more of an emphasis on twitchy gameplay," he stresses, twiddling crazily at the controls so that a player moves in a sliding lateral movement across the pitch before making a Maradona-style rainbow kick.
Nick Malaperaman, who was brought over to Vancouver from EA UK in March, is also excited about the changes in the gameplay: "Basically you'll see a lot more overhead kicks, bicycle kicks and headers that you are really in control of."
The arrival of 3-D graphics cards on PCs has meant dramatically improved image quality. Players may still look like chisel heads, but expressions are more defined and less blocky than they have been before and the players are beginning to take on more personality.
You can even slide a player's aggression state from "nutter" down towards "calm" after he is awarded a yellow card near the beginning of a game.
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