FIFA 08 360/PS3 developer blog #5

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David Beckham's hair, how you can become an EA talent scout, and more

The database also sets the customized formation of each team and determines the role of every single player, his exact position on the pitch, the defensive effort and the attacking movement. Furthermore, the playing style of the team is driven from the attack and defense tactics and the build-up play options that are edited in the database.

We currently use 35 attributes, 70 traits and more than 65 additional data fields to describe the characteristics and the abilities of every single player. For the teams it is between 60 and 90, depending on the size of the team. We are constantly evolving our database and game engine to provide our fans with the most realistic playing football experience in the world and I would expect that the way we evaluate players will continue to be refined in the future.

One of the most important aspects of creating an authentic football gameplay experience is to create players that look, move and play like their real-life counterparts. That’s why the database and the overall ability or rating of each player is so important. We use 35 attributes to calculate the overall ability of a player and every position has its own formula. Each attribute is weighted and its importance is based on the player’s position. For example, attributes like Marking, Tackling and Heading are more important to the overall make up of a centre back than a winger.