NCAA Football 10 Community Day: A new approach

[Solidice]

a new blog on the EA Sports site was posted.

http://insideblog.easports.com/archi...-approach.aspx

Quote:

If you've been following the online community for EA SPORTS titles over the last few years, you're probably familiar with the concept of a community event. Recently on the Inside Blog we've featured coverage of both a Wii community event at our EA SPORTS Season Opener and our Fight NIght Round 4 Community Day. This Friday, March 20th, we'll be hosting our NCAA Football 10 community day here at the Tiburon studio where the game is currently in development. I'd like to share with you some of the history of community days and why this event will be different, and why it will be a great improvement over what we've done in the past. A brief history of EA SPORTS community events Before coming to work for EA SPORTS I worked on a Madden NFL and NCAA Football fan site called Madden Nation. I was fortunate enough to be one of the first community leaders to attend the early EA SPORTS events which started back with the '05 football products. Back then a community day meant coming out to the studio and playing the finished product a couple of weeks before the game shipped. This served a couple of different purposes. It was a reward for some of the biggest community contributors but was also a way for us to get some information about the games to people who visited our sites. We all felt like this was a great step by EA SPORTS to reach out to fans and for a couple of years this was the model for these kinds of events. I came to EA Tiburon in the fall of 2006 and was fortunate enough a few months later to organize the first ever community event for NCAA Football. The big feedback coming out of that event was that our attendees loved the opportunity to check out the game, but that they'd love to visit us earlier in the year when they could give us some feedback while the title was still in development. Since then it's been our priority to move community day events earlier in the year. This product cycle I'm happy to report that all of our community events are at a point in development where our attendees' feedback can help make sure our games are tuned to the liking of the community. What's on tap for NCAA Football 10 community day? On Friday when our community day attendees come to the Tiburon studio, they'll spend the day going through the features of NCAA Football 10 and giving the development team direct feedback on the game. In fact, we're so early in the year that our attendees won't be able to talk about most of what they will see and won't have detailed previews of the game immediately after community day wraps up. Instead of using the community day as a means of getting news out about the game, we've shifted 100% of the focus toward making sure our attendees can help impact the quality of the product. Why tell you about the event if you won't hear a lot about the game features? Good question. Even though we're not quite ready to open the floodgates of information and tell you everything about NCAA Football 10, we do want you to know that we're taking a lot of care in developing the game. We are taking the quality of our games to new heights by involving the community early on. You've seen some examples of this with our producer involvement on the forums and here on the Inside EA SPORTS Blog and this Friday's NCAA Football 10 Community Day is another step towards making sure we involve the community every step of the way. And while you may not learn all of the NCAA 10 features this Friday, you will get an inside look at the community day. What kind of coverage can you expect to see on the Inside EA SPORTS Blog? We're going to keep you up to date through the week and during the event on Friday. Here's what you will find this week on the Inside Blog: Wednesday Bios of our community day attendees and their backgrounds with the NCAA Football series. Thursday A video sharing our vision for NCAA Football 10 community day and what we hope to accomplish. Friday - Pictures and video on the blog, live from the community day event - Live community day coverage on my Twitter feed. I hope you'll follow the event here on the blog as well as our official event discussion thread on the EA SPORTS NCAA Football 10 forums. -raczilla

[J-Unit40]

Solid. I like it. The early feedback will help a lot in tweaking the game. Last year's CD was way too late for any type of impact.

[Hellisan]

Great stuff...

I can't think of a better guy for the community leader role (and hopefully eventually, president of EA ) than Will.

Looking forward to the information as it is able to be released!

[travis a.d.]

awesome. i look forward to reading more as this week progresses.

[miami01]

Can't wait!

[RynoAid]

Sounds good from a gameplay testing standpoint, but how does this address Online Dynasty bugs and functionality issues that don't pop up until you've delved into the game deep with 11 other guys for a couple seasons?

I think you need to have a some heavy QA on that portion of the game too.. It's easily the most used game mode throughout the entire calender year and people are getting 10-15 seasons in during the year... how do you go about testing under those type of utilization standards?

[thudias]

I hope all the community learders get a chance to play vs CPU. In the past this has been one of the biggest areas of concern.

[OMT]

Quote: Originally Posted by thudias

I hope all the community learders get a chance to play vs CPU. In the past this has been one of the biggest areas of concern.

It shouldn't be a problem. I guess it depends on how many were invited. We have a new playtest lab here that has over 10 consoles in it.