s a fan of the NHL series from EA Sports, I was thrilled to have the chance to talk with Jason Rupert, gameplay director for Electronic Arts Canada, based out of Vancouver. Here are his thoughts on where the game stands today, and where it just might be headed in the future.
Thanks for doing this, Jason. How did you get your start in the industry, and how long have you been working with EA Sports?
Hi! I'm glad to have the opportunity to discuss the NHL series with you. I've been at EA in Vancouver for 14 years. It was my first job out of university. My degree is in cognitive science and I have always been a pretty big video game fan, mostly sports and strategy games. I did some game programming as a hobbyist prior to getting into the industry, so EA Sports has been a pretty good fit for me.
As a software engineer on NHL series, what does a typical day at the office look like for you?
The sort of work we are doing varies a lot depending on what phase of the project we are in, but typical activities are things like assessing priorities and deciding what our goals are for a project, The EASHL broke open a whole new way to play the game. NHL 09 only scratched the surface here.working in small groups to design parts of the game and come up with technical solutions, programming new features or improvements to features (based on planned features and bug lists), and playing the game to assess changes.
We are always bouncing back and forth between these things, with the emphasis shifting from the first ones on the list to the latter ones as we move through the project. We manage to take some breaks away from working the game — most of the gameplay team and a few other guys from NHL have a floor hockey team in the intramural league at work (we are defending champions).
With the release of NHL 09, as with anything, there were successes and failures. What do you think were some of the strengths of that release, as well as some possible misses?
I think the biggest success was probably EASHL (EA Sports Hockey League). We thought it was going to be popular, but I think it turned out to be even more successful than any of us imagined. That popularity also made it a miss in some ways, since it ended up having some flaws that turned out to be very exploitable and put the competitive integrity of the league in question.
I'm also happy with a lot of the improvements in the game that have made the gameplay experience richer and more interesting. I'm thinking of things like the new defensive controls (stick-lift and improved poke-checking), offensive weapons like push-puck, protect-puck, and a lot of other refinements to the game. I've got a very gameplay-centric bias, so I realize that I'm completely neglecting all of the improvements that went into other areas of the game — I only tend to notice those when I see NHL 08 and then those improvements jump out at me.
There are plenty of misses (there always are), but just to generalize them I'll say that I think the tuning and balance of the game wasn't as good as I would have liked it to be. I think the patches have made some big strides towards addressing some weaknesses that hurt the gameplay balance.
Without question, the introduction of the EASHL revolutionized the NHL online experience, but it also must place some added pressure on people like yourself to make things as air tight as possible in terms of balance — what's that like?
Yes, the increasing emphasis of online play is definitely changing the demands of tuning the game. When people are playing predominantly in single-player modes, exploits are annoying, but most players will only find a few at most and they can always choose not to use them. The computer never learns them. When the games are against (more or less) anonymous opponents online it is a certainty that weaknesses in the balance will be widely exploited. Also, as soon as one person figures out how to abuse an imbalance and starts using it then others will see it, copy it and it will spread and the technique for abusing it will get refined to a precise science.
The goalies are a central part of the game so you can be sure they will be getting some attention.As a game designer the challenge of dealing with this is actually pretty exciting, in a way it is like a game being fought against the potential exploiters. Starcraft is one of my favorite games, and it is a great example of a game that really got the balance right through persistent patch refinements (it had more than a dozen if I remember right). For a console game the realities are a bit different, we cannot patch as easily or as frequently as a PC game like Starcraft, so we that means we need to find other ways of getting to that level of quality.
I know you've been heavily involved in patching many of the gameplay issues users have reported over the months. What's the general process for developing, testing, and releasing patches for the series?
Going into NHL 09 we had no specific plans for patching. Both patches were done in reaction to problems that surfaced over time. As we watched the community and played the game ourselves it eventually became evident that the issues were serious enough that we needed to make a patch.
Once that decision was made the process was a lot like a miniature development cycle, though one where the fixes needed to be somewhat cautious since the timeframe involved does not allow for nearly as much development or testing as a full game release.
Since a lot of the changes were for balance, the developers had to do a lot of their own testing so we would make changes each day and then spend a lot of time testing them and then repeating that process until we were happy with the result. Our internal testing group was part of that process, and they were also responsible for verifying the less subjective fixes to make sure no new problems were introduced as side effects. After EA's testing team was done with a patch it was sent to Sony and Microsoft for approval and then release.
The most recent patch (1.02) for NHL 09 on Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 seems to have had a mixed reception, with some in favor of the more simulation style game being presented, and others not. What direction (simulation versus arcade) is the team at EA aiming for, and is anything being considered to satisfy both groups (such as independent game modes)?
I think that the NHL series has traditionally been pretty close to the middle of the arcade/simulation spectrum. In recent years we have been drifting a bit towards the simulation side. Going forward we are looking at ways to allow people to customize the game more, in both directions, but there are limitations to that when it comes to online because offering alternate modes comes with the cost of splitting the community, as well as the focus of the effort to balance the game (since there would be several versions to balance). Of course for the group who are after the extreme arcade style there is the 3-on-3 NHL Arcade game.
A few highly requested features are being worked on and we're playing around with a few interesting new ideas.Regarding the reaction to the patches, it seems almost any change that isn't a fix to an outright bug is going to receive a bit of a mixed reaction. Some people are used to and like the way it is, and don't see the need for a change. For the first patch we toned down the effectiveness of the toe-drag shot that was unrealistic and unbalanced. There were people who didn't like that initially, though in the longer term I think the overwhelming majority of players liked the change. The fix was a reduction in shot accuracy — even though this could be seen as a shift towards more of a simulation game, the motivation was purely gameplay balance and it just happened to push things that way.
For the second patch the number of penalties was the main area of controversy. Here the story is a bit different. I think there was a bit of a miss here because we alienated a category of player much more than we needed to in order to address the problem. Calling interference properly was necessary, but some of the other situations that lead to penalties should have been toned down, especially those that are random or accidental. There are enough penalties for the game to be authentic and balanced without some of these; and if they weren't there increasing the frustration of those having trouble adapting to the interference calls, I think it would have gone over much more smoothly, and would have been just as good for everyone else. That said, it does seem like most players have made this adjustment, too.
Will Patch 1.02 be the final major patch before NHL 10's release?
It is not my call to make, but I think so. The patches take a lot of resources. Even a small patch has most of the overhead costs that come from the testing and approval process. I was thrilled to have the opportunity to get a lot of fixes into the second patch, but we are now entering the home stretch for NHL 10 and I'm eager to be able to apply my full attention to it.
We were introduced to the offensive skill stick not long ago, and the defensive skill stick with NHL 09. Any chance the aspiring virtual goaltenders will get some love in the future?
I can't really get into specific feature plans for NHL 10, so I'll just have to go with the stock answer here: We are always looking to make the improvements to the game that will have the biggest impact on its overall quality. The goalies are a central part of the game, so you can be sure they will be getting some attention.
Now, I know things are still pretty tightly sealed regarding the development of NHL 10, but is there anything you're able to discuss, generally, that should get fans excited come this fall?
It is a bit early for us to be revealing any of the features. I've already mentioned that we've been improving the ability to customize the game. Beyond that I can say that a few highly requested features are being worked on, we're playing around with a few interesting new ideas, and we're also fixing a lot of the little annoyances in the game.
Finally, where do you see the NHL series five years from now?
The easy thing to predict is that we will keep increasing the authenticity of the game. If you compare the game to a real hockey game there are still quite a few things that are missing. My own approach is to prioritize them in the order of their importance to the hockey experience, as always applying a "gameplay first" bias. In five years I think what you'll see and control when you are playing will be much more like real hockey. That's the easy prediction.
No doubt more thoughts will come up as we go.The harder things to guess at are what deeper innovations will be made. Looking back I don't think it was obvious that the right stick controls were the future, but it looks like they are here to stay because these is just no way for button controls to offer anywhere need the same degree of expressive control. A lot of pieces needed to fall into place for them to work.
We have a few ideas that might be the next big change, and no doubt more thoughts will come up as we go; it is impossible to predict which of these will pan out. Looking at broad areas where improvements might come, I think the computer AI took a fairly sizable leap forward in NHL 08, and there is still a lot more mileage for us to gain from that system. Another safe bet is that online will continue to be a catalyst for big changes. The EASHL broke open a whole new way to play the game that opens up a lot of possibilities, NHL 09 only scratched the surface here.
Thanks again, Jason, for your participation, and for your outstanding involvement within the NHL 09 community.
Thanks, it's been a pleasure.
