EA Sports Fine Tuning Design Based on User Data

This story originally appeared at Industrygamers.com and was written by James Brightman.  We thank him and EA Sports for allowing us to share it with you here.  Brightman's the man!

We attended a special EA Sports “Season Opener” during the Game Developers conference, where the publisher showed off games like Tiger Woods PGA Tour 11, EA Sports MMA, EA Sports Active 2.0, EA Sports Active More Workouts, 2010 FIFA World Cup South Africa, and more. While we enjoyed checking out the games, the most interesting part of the evening came during a presentation by EA Tiburon GM Philip Holt who outlined the massive amounts of online data that EA actually analyzes to fine tune its games, like the next NCAA Football orMadden.

Holt noted that people are so consumed with all sorts of media, especially the “millenials” generation on the web, that it can be hard to ask them to carve out a whole hour of time to play an EA Sports video game, which is about how long it takes to complete a game in Madden NFL 10. “One of the key things we've been driving to is creating shorter consumable experiences in the world of Madden, NCAA and other titles,” he said.

Holt also stressed how EA Sports is engaging the hardcore on the web, particularly by paying attention to user feedback on forums. He cited the example of how pass rush in Madden NFL 10last year in the lead-up to the game wasn't working properly and there were complaints across a number of forums. EA Sports isolated the problem, posted a detailed explanation (and a video) on forums like Operation Sports, and quickly fixed the issue in the game.

Responding quickly to fans on message boards and fixing problems in games is one thing, but the real advantage of the connected gaming era is that EA Sports has access to an absolutely huge amount of user data, which it can then examine to fine tune game design elements for the next iteration. EA Sports found that 82% of the NCAA audience and 76% of the Madden audience connect to the web with the games. “We have this ability now to really understand what they're doing with our products in a way that's unlike any time in the history of our franchises and that's led to some interesting insights,” Holt said.

Roy Harvey, executive producer on NCAA Football, who's been with EA since 2003, then took the stage to elaborate on Holt's point and cite some specific examples. Harvey said 30 million games have been played in NCAA already this year – 80% have been in dynasty mode and a good portion have been in online dynasty mode. He said that most of these folks are also connected online through social media, and that's going to be a “big part” of what EA Sports does going forward.

Next up, to talk specifically about how crucial feedback and online user data is to the Maddenfranchise, Jeremy Strauser, executive producer for Madden, grabbed the mic. While input from licensors, John Madden himself and EA Sports president Peter Moore is all quite helpful to theMadden team, the best feedback comes from real-world data from the gamers; after all, these are the folks buying and playing the game, so catering to the consumers buying the product is obviously a smart move. Strauser noted that the system to track real-time data usage from players was put in place back in 2004 in Madden, and since that time players have become much more web connected, so EA Sports has already benefited from the online system to analyze gamers' habits and address design issues over the years in the franchise. In fact, Strauser said they get over 173 million data instances every day on Madden, so the company has a dedicated team to aggregate and make sense of all that data.

For example, one fun fact, which makes light of Brett Favre's infamous playoff interception pass, is that among Madden users he's thrown over 7.5 million interceptions. More meaningful than that, however, is data on gameplay elements, like stiff arming, for instance. EA Sports wanted to make sure that using a stiff arm in Madden was not “too effective,” and the data showed that the design played out among users just how the developers had wanted. Over 300 million stiff arms were attempted, but just 23% of them were successful, which is in line with the team's goal of around 25%. On the other hand, looking at another game mechanic, the hit stick (flipping the right analog stick to cause a big hit), EA Sports found the gameplay wasn't quite tuned right. It's supposed to be a high risk, high reward element, but the data showed a 46% success rate among users, which was just not risky enough. So the gameplay team was able to go back and re-tune and test that and deploy it (via downloadable update) a month after release. 

These are just a couple examples of how tracking usage data can be extremely helpful to EA Sports when looking to improve the experience for players right after launch or to make bigger adjustments for the next release a year later. Thanks to the online, connected era developers can get instant feedback, and it's a method that any design team ought to leverage. EA Sports is already analyzing tons of user data to make sure the next NCAA and Madden titles outperform their predecessors. And if you're a hardcore gamer, it's pretty cool to know that EA Sports is evaluating your gameplay to make design adjustments. So go ahead and fire up Madden 10, and in doing so you just might help make Madden 11 better for all of us.

Thanks again to Industrygamers.com!