UFC video game - How EA's take on MMA can be the best yet

One of the biggest industry announcements of the year, let alone at E3, was the shocking reveal that EA had snatched the rights to the UFC away from THQ. Though EA and the UFC’s president Dana White have had their differences in the past, mixed martial art fans around the globe immediately began salivating at the concept of an EA-developed UFC video game. While EA Sports MMA never received the sequel it deserved, the publisher is being given another chance to rectify its mistake of dismissing the sport and the UFC so many years ago.

So what does that mean for the future of the franchise, and how will EA bring a more realistic and accessible MMA game to life? Take a look at our ideas for what EA must do to give their game a chance to not just blaze a new path, but to build on the strong foundation laid by THQ.

After seeing what Tiburon’s new Infinity Engine in motion, we really want to see EA make use of the great physics on display in their upcoming UFC game. If you recall, Tiburon developed EA Sports MMA, and the game featured some of the best in-ring physics of any realistic fighting game to date. Though EA hasn’t yet said who’s developing their UFC title, an engine this impressive is too good to pass up.

Fighting games live and die by their combat engine. Without a strong sense of weight, damage, and body movement, the action in the octagon just wouldn’t feel real. As good as UFC Undisputed’s engine was by the last installment, there was a very strong disconnect between the stand-up and ground games. A better physics engine would not only alleviate this issue, but it would also help make fights much more interesting and true to life.

You know what would be great? If the computer doppelgangers we were fighting in the virtual octagon fought like their real-life counterparts. Each fighter has such a distinct skill set and personality that it’s a shame when we don’t get to see it replicated in the game besides a few specialized moves. EA’s already demonstrated its ability to create competent individual AIs in many of their sport franchises, and there’s no reason we shouldn’t expect the same attention to detail in their upcoming UFC game. Getting in the ring against an extremely well-rounded opponent like Anderson Silva should feel dramatically different than getting into the ring with a knockout artist like Chuck Lidell.

Adding a feature like this would make game-planning matter. You’d have to prepare for each fight differently. While such pre-fight tactics were included in Undisputed, you never really had to adapt your playstyle to different computer fighters. We want to face the same challenges and training as our favorite fighters.

In UFC Undisputed, if you wanted to export your created fighter to the online arena, you had to complete the offline career mode in order to have a fighter with decent enough stats to handle the competition. If you exported them before that, you were left with a fighter that had almost no chance against other fighters online. All of that should change with EA’s UFC game, and they have no further to look than Madden NFL 13’s new Connect Career mode.

Not only should we be allowed to take our created fighters through any of the game’s modes, but we should be able to earn experience to make them better online as well. Even if we get steamrolled in the ring by a more experienced player, we’ll still gain valuable experience to put towards making our fighters better, just like in real life. The lessons learned in the octagon shouldn’t go to waste, and making the career connected like this not only makes players more likely to stick with one fighter, it also makes them more invested in the fighter they’ve created.

While UFC Undisputed allowed players to join online fight camps, they were basically nothing more than clans you could create for your friends and other like-minded players. To take the online to the next level, EA needs to introduce online fight leagues. Acting the same way online franchises do for several of EA’s other sports titles, the online fight leagues would allow players to match up with say 32 other people, who would then constantly battle it out on a regular basis. Your wins and losses would count towards your overall ranking with other players online (the equivalent of a pound-for-pound ranking worldwide), and you would be able to win belts or vie for the next shot at the champ.

Additionally, online fight leagues could make online fight camps matter. Now you could train with friends to better prepare for your bout against a user that has been giving other players a bit of trouble inside the octagon. Add in the connected careers experience system, and suddenly you’ve got one of the deepest online modes in any fighting game to date.

Even though UFC Undisputed 3 added in Pride mode to shake things up, 2010’s EA Sports MMA still had a larger abundance of different rule sets players could utilize. As great as the UFC’s current fight format is, being able to shake things up adds a bit of variety to an otherwise by-the-books game. Obviously the inclusion of Pride mode is a must at this point, but there are so many more rule sets and ring styles that could be included.

Strikeforce’s rules and ring won’t be difficult to implement, and Dream’s must-win, no draw rule set should be easy to include. Different types of rings and cages have already been done in EA MMA and UFC Undisputed, so including them here will help give players more options for the way they want to play. The rule sets and different rings could also impact the online leagues we proposed, and would allow players to do more than merely play out the UFC schedule.

Strikeforce is the home of some of the best female fighters in MMA, and EA owns the rights to makes games based on the UFC-owned fighting league. It’s a no-brainer that EA’s UFC game should include a mode where we can play as fighters like Ronda Rousey, Sarah Kaufman, and Miesha Tate. While it could be argued that the female fighter roster isn’t all that deep, and that there are still too many different weight classes among the women, that issue is rectified by just making it a separate mode like Pride was for UFC Undisputed 3.

The popularity and skill of these fighters deserves to be recognized, and it would be great exposure for this other side of the sport. Additionally, players should be able to create female fighters for use in the game. There are plenty of female fight fans and MMA aficionados out there, and letting them create something other than a male avatar would certainly be a welcome change.

We’ve had plenty of UFC video games over the years, however to this very day, not a single one has gotten submissions right. UFC Undisputed 3 came very close, however the chase system implemented was merely better than everything that came before instead of the best solution. The trick is finding a system that allows both the player being submitted and the person doing the submitting to have some control over the outcome. As we’ve seen in the past, spinning the analog stick wildly or button mashing isn’t a true test of one’s skill. So many submissions actually come down to not just a fighter’s will power and strength, but also his body positioning.

If you were able to control your fighter’s arms while an opponent was trying to sink in that guillotine choke, or you were able to contort your body to escape that armbar, you’d have a measure of control not yet seen in an MMA game. With the right physics engine, a system like this is possible, and would hopefully give us a much more accurate video game representation of submissions.

Let’s face it; THQ’s online servers for UFC Undisputed are nothing the company should be proud of. Frequent drops, bad connections, and even the inability to get access the online portion of the game affect Undisputed to this very day. Not only should EA’s upcoming UFC game address these issues, but EA should also include an Autolog-esque tracking feature to track player performance across all modes.

We touched on the potential pound-for-pound ranking system in the online fight league idea, but EA’s already shown with Autolog that they can find a way to track stats across all modes (online or off) between friends and the rest of the world. Imagine that same concept brought to life in an MMA game. Not only would you know how you stacked up against local competition with exhibition fights, but also how your created fighter performed, how you do in big fights, and how you rank amongst the best in the world. Of course, no amount of stat tracking means a thing if the online isn’t able to handle itself properly, but EA’s consistency with its online sports franchises gives us hope.

EA has been tinkering with social media interaction in their sports games for a little while now, but to this point not much progress has been made. Players are more connected to one another than ever now, and be it by Twitter, Facebook, or Tumblr, there’s no shortage of ways to rub victory in another player’s face. FIFA, NHL, and Madden players can already upload highlight videos to official EA websites, but we want to see that type of service taken one step further.

When we get that amazing knock-out, we want to upload it to Twitter immediately so that everyone knows what we’ve just accomplished. When the title has changed hands in our online fight league, we want to let the rest of the league know in a quick Facebook status update that’s sent automatically. EA should also work to include the ability to run official blogs or Facebook pages for our fight camps or online leagues. This way, players can constantly stay connected to their online persona and friends, even when the console is turned off.

Now that we’ve talked about our hopes and dreams for what lies in store for EA’s UFC game, it’s time you let us know what you want. Are you hoping more classic fighters get added to the mix? Do you want to see old school UFC presentation make a comeback? Let us know in the comments below.

And if you want to read about more wish lists, check out locations we want to see in ZombiU and PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale's roster.