We have a special treat for the Talkingaboutgames Community. Todd Batty, Lead Designer of EA's FaceBreaker, is going to be lerking around this thread to answer the questions of our community about the game. It's great that he has decided to pick this great community.

Please remember to keep your questions clean, intelligent, and respctable. I know our members will be all three...well maybe not intelligent Todd's forum name is tbatty.

Let the questions fly!!!

rburt wrote:

QUOTE:
We have a special treat for the Talkingaboutgames Community. Todd Batty, Lead Designer of EA's FaceBreaker, is going to be lerking around this thread to answer the questions of our community about the game. It's great that he has decided to pick this great community.

Please remember to keep your questions clean, intelligent, and respctable. I know our members will be all three...well maybe not intelligent;) Todd's forum name is tbatty.

Let the questions fly!!!

Hey everyone, thanks for having me in your community. I'm hoping that you will tell me what you know about facebreaker, ask questions, give feedback on what you've seen or tried so far, talk strategy or just talk to me about game development and design in general.

Facebreaker is a crazy, over-the-top arcade boxing game set to launch on the 360 and PS3 on Sept 3. As with any new IP, i'm trying to raise awareness about the game, spread goodwill and hopefully convince you all to give the game a try.

So let's have at it. Be direct, be blunt. I will do the same.

Cheers,

Todd

Welcome to our humble home Todd.

I have a question about Facebreakers:

How deep is the player customization going to be?

Welcome to TAG TBatty

There is a long history of boxing titles added to the annals of videogames over the generations. Which were contributing influences in the development of Facebreaker and to what degree?

JVB wrote:

QUOTE:
How deep is the player customization going to be?

Are there going to be more features,hair-styles,clothing,etc on the disc as compared to the demo; or available in future DLC?

Are there any future plans for any downloadable content? Could we see new environments and boxers?

I do like the option of mapping friend's faces onto cross-gender "athletes" and beating them to a nice shade of blue. Of course it's not so funny when the AI does the same to my own otherwise handsome mug. Is the face-mapping feature something that you see as becoming more prevalent in future EA games? How has the feature developed over past iterations from other EA titles and where do you see the technology heading in the future?

Welcome to the site!!!

Is this game easy for the casual gamer to jump into as well as the hardcore gamer?

Welcome to the Talking About Games community TBatty!
I'm not a big sports game player, what can I expect to hook me into buying the game? Also with about 22 days left untill the release, when will we see the full roster of boxers? And can we get any insider info on the female hunter boxer perhaps?

JVB wrote:

QUOTE:
Welcome to our humble home Todd.

I have a question about Facebreakers:

How deep is the player customization going to be?

Thanks for the question! Not sure if you are aware but facebreaker uses a tool called photogameface that lets you take a picture of yourself and create a 3-D version of your head to put on a character in-game. Here is a video that explains it much better than I can, and is pretty entertaining as well:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gq3SqW3zovE

Once you have created a boxer, you can then upload it to easportsworld.com and share it with the rest of the facebreaker community. Downloading anyone else's creation takes about 1.5 seconds and you can store up to 40 created boxers in your game at any given time.

Here's another vid explaining that part:
http://www.gametrailers.com/player/37873.html

You should check out some of the characters created already by our community using the downloadable demo. Check it out, there are some really good ones:
http://www.easportsworld.com/en_US/facebreaker/shareaboxer

TyGuy22 wrote:

QUOTE:
Welcome to TAG TBatty

There is a long history of boxing titles added to the annals of videogames over the generations. Which were contributing influences in the development of Facebreaker and to what degree?

There have been alot of boxing games, but it's been a long time since there was an over-the-top, super arcady boxing title. almost 7 years to be precise, that's when the last Ready2Rumble was launched for the PS2 I believe.

I would say we definitely took influence from Punch-out (the game that started it all, almost 20 years ago) and also from R2R to an extent. But we also took influence from more recent arcady sports game as well. The last game I designed was NBA Street Homecourt which was a really arcady, over-the-top take on NBA Basketball. If you have played both games you will notice a lot of similarities in the gameplay.

TyGuy22 wrote:

QUOTE:
Are there going to be more features,hair-styles,clothing,etc on the disc as compared to the demo; or available in future DLC?

Are there any future plans for any downloadable content? Could we see new environments and boxers?

Sorry, but DLC is the one thing that I can't actually talk about at this stage. We have some ideas, but it is really going to come down to how the game is received and what the community wants.

TyGuy22 wrote:

QUOTE:
I do like the option of mapping friend's faces onto cross-gender "athletes" and beating them to a nice shade of blue. Of course it's not so funny when the AI does the same to my own otherwise handsome mug. Is the face-mapping feature something that you see as becoming more prevalent in future EA games? How has the feature developed over past iterations from other EA titles and where do you see the technology heading in the future?

I definitely think this tech is something you are going to see in future ea titles (we actually harvested the tech from Tiger Woods), though to what extent I guess you never know. I think there is a long ways to go with the technology as well, we worked on the code we got from Tiger for almost the entire project to get it to where it is in facebreaker. Assuming any other team that takes it does the same I can only imagine how fast and good it might be a few years from now. I definitely think it adds a whole new element to the create player feature being able to get such a good likeness of yourself.

Phoenix410 wrote:

QUOTE:
Welcome to the site!!!

Is this game easy for the casual gamer to jump into as well as the hardcore gamer?

Definitely! As the launch title for the new EA Sports Freestyle brand we had a responsibility to try and make a game that would appeal to a broader audience than a typical ea sports game. As with any branding I think it will be the games that define the brand (rather than vice-versa), so since facebreaker is the flagship title I guess for a short period of time our game will be that defining factor.

So, we wanted to do was to create a gameplay system that was easy to pick-up-and-play. For a fighter this was pretty easy, we made our punches really fast and ridiculously responsive, threw in some funny, over-the-top animations and casual gamers and noobs instantly could pick the game up and have some fun with it.

However, that kind of fun only lasts about 20 minutes, after which people (even casual gamers) start looking for more. So, we then ripped everything out and put the pieces back together in a way that created a balanced, strategic fighter without (hopefully) losing too much of that pick-up-and-play appeal.

For the record, it is a really tough challenge as a designer. Creating new IP is tough enough - people don't know what your game is all about, how to play it, what the strategy even might be, what the controls are, etc. But trying to do that AND make it approachable AND make it deep so it has some long-term appeal? Huge challenge.

Now thankfully, I think we actually hit this mark really well and is what I think we did best to represent the freestyle label. I have focus tested facebreaker to literally hundreds of gamers, from total noobs to the hardest of hardcore fighting fans and almost everyone has really enjoyed it. There is a learning curve when you first pick it up that is not completely obvious to many people, and the danger is in dismissing the game as something that it is not (ie a brainless masher) before you figure out how to play it. But invest the time and I guarantee you will have fun with what you find. It really does capture that great, old-school arcade gaming experience, especially multi-player with your friends sitting on the couch next to you where you can punch them if they beat you.

Chaotic Shade wrote:

QUOTE:
Welcome to the Talking About Games community TBatty!
I'm not a big sports game player, what can I expect to hook me into buying the game? Also with about 22 days left untill the release, when will we see the full roster of boxers? And can we get any insider info on the female hunter boxer perhaps?

Well for starters, Facebreaker is definitely not your typical sports game. In fact, it is probably as much a fighting game as it is a boxing game, maybe even more so. Now, that too comes with a lot of baggage, many people have been turned off by fighting games in recent years due to their complexity and/or the fact that they are often perceived as button mashers.

So let's talk about fighting games in general and the whole button mashing thing. We've had some comments from other people as well that our game feels like a button masher when you first pick it up, so this is a great topic. For starters, we all have to agree on one thing - every single new game that you pick up and play for the first time is technically a button masher, meaning you hit a bunch of buttons randomly hoping for the best. The difference among games is that with some games you start to figure things out amongst your mashing and the game mechanics/system starts to take shape for you, and that understanding or learning opens the game up and starts to make the experience fun.

With many fighting games the underlying gameplay systems are very complex, which means that just learning by mashing and starting to figure things out is a very difficult task and can take hours and hours of play and/or practice until you can even start to formulate a picture of in your mind of how the game actually works. If you ever do at all. I think this is what has turned a lot of people off fighting games in general in the past. For those that take the time to learn the system the experience is for sure very rewarding, but many people just don't have that much time to invest. It also creates another very common problem in gaming - it is almost impossible to play complex games with your friends. Try having your friend over to play VF5 who has never picked it up before. They mash buttons and hope for the best while you are bored knowing that you could destroy them any time you wanted to. As an aside, I think this is why people always remember old-school games (ie like NHL 95 or Live 99) so fondly, because they were simple enough to learn that you and all of your friends could quite quickly get on equal grounds where you were all using the same controls/moves, and then the player who won on any given day was the one who used them the best. Those games were more about a battle of wits than being about who had invested the most time, practiced the most, memorized the most combinations of buttons, etc.

So this brings us to facebreaker. Out of the box you will probably have no idea how to play and will, of course, just smash some buttons and hope for the best. But, if you are willing to invest even 20-30 mins to learn the basic controls (there are not many), the rest of the strategy becomes about how to use those seemingly simple controls in better and more strategic ways. I have been playing facebreaker for months now and it is literally the only game that I am still playing this late in the project. I can't wait until the game is released so I can start fighting people online to see what other types of strategies might emerge, because I already have many.

I guess my answer is that facebreaker will keep you fighting for days, weeks, even months because it is actually more simple than traditional fighting games. This might seem backwards, but I can assure you that it is true.

So, if you are interested, i can walk you through quite simply how to learn and master the basic controls. Or, you can pick up the demo and try it out yourself and then ask me questions. we also included a simple practice mode in the demo that allows you to learn things pretty quickly, and we have 'how to play' tips available at any time in-game from the pause menu.

As for your other questions re: the fighting roster, I didn't actually realize that all the characters had not yet been revealed. If you would have just asked me to talk about each character I probably would have just told you! haha.

I will check with PR and fight out if/when I can talk about everyone and get back to you asap. As for the female hunter character, i'm not sure who you mean? There are 2 females in the game: Sparrow and Kiriko. Sparrow is a RAF fighter pilot and is loosely based on Trinity from the matrix meets Linda Hamilton from the terminator. She is a very serious, kick-ass fighter. Kiriko, in contrast, is a flirty, dancing raver with a definite dark side. A wolf in sheeps clothing if you will. I actually really like fighting with both the female characters. Sparrow has some of the coolest animations in the game and with her long range dash and signature stun dash attack you can kind of hop around the ring like a bird (hence the name Sparrow) darting in and out in a very unique style. Kiriko is really fast and has one of the most powerful stun attacks in the game once you learn it, making her one of the easiest characters to break people's faces with.

tbatty wrote:

QUOTE:
I will check with PR and fight out if/when I can talk about everyone and get back to you asap.

Freudian slip? Sounds like a tough job.

How would you rate the demo for Facebreaker? Does it give a full range of the essence of the game and all the features that are going to be available? Or are there some aspects still being kept under wraps for the disc release?

On that note, EA Sports titles have always had an awesome in game soundtrack (IMO). Are the EA Trax choosen by the game development team, a different EA department, or a strong collaboration? Has the full track list been announced yet?

TyGuy22 wrote:

QUOTE:
How would you rate the demo for Facebreaker? Does it give a full range of the essence of the game and all the features that are going to be available? Or are there some aspects still being kept under wraps for the disc release?

I think the demo is good for what it is supposed to be - a quick taste/tease of what the game is going to look and feel like. It definitely does not give the full range of all the features that are going to be available, especially the single-player experience. In the demo you can only fight by yourself in a quick match vs the AI. This is really about the least likely way we expect people to play facebreaker. In the full version I expect you will be spending the majority of your time fighting with friends in quick fights, online or in the party game mode Couch Royale. As a single player I'm sure most of your time will be playing Brawl for it All, our 1P mode, which is a ladder tournament that feels like an old-school arcade game approach in the spirit of Punch-out.

You start by selecting a character (you can use any character you have unlocked or your own custom created character) and one of 3 different skill settings: Fierce, Truculent or Impossible. I highly recommend anyone new to start out on Fierce and to pick a fairly balanced character like ICE.

From there you start out on the first 'Belt'. The mode is divided into 5 different Belts that act as save points along the way. Each character is represented in the mode, so you fight all 12 characters and then a final hidden boss at the end. Each character has a prescribed weakness/exploit that you need to figure out if you're going to have a chance to beat them. These become more obvious and necessary to solve the further up the ladder you go (on the easiest setting you can get to about the 5th fight by semi-skillfully button mashing, after which point you will definitely hit a brick wall).

Within each belt there are a set number of challengers and one champ (basically a sub-boss). When you lose any given fight you get the option to rematch up to 3 times. Lose all 3 rematches and you drop back down the ladder to your previous opponent. Before the last rematch we also pop up a 'tip' to help clue you in to what you might be doing wrong and what that character's specific achilles is.

The mode is actually really challenging and fun to play. On the easiest setting it typically took focus testers around 3-4 hours to complete with a single character, and the mode is definitely replayable with multiple characters for a new challenge. The other 2 higher skill levels are even more challenging - it took one of our best qa testers 13 hours to beat impossible the first time. For the record, now that he has figured out each character and perfected the skills to do so, he can beat it in under 20 minutes. Which is pretty satisfying. The cool thing about the Impossible setting (for the hardest of hardcore) is that we essentially negated each character's weakness that you would have discovered the first time or two playing through the mode, so you have to figure out new ways to beat everyone. There are ways, though, as there are always going to be when playing against an pattern-based ai system. They are just a bit harder to find and we don't feedback or hint anything about them along the way - it is up to you (or people in the community on boards like this) to just figure them out.

It's unfortunate, we actually wanted to include a 'demo belt' in our downloadable demo so you could get a taste of what it is like but due to size restrictions from the number of characters we would have had to include it just wasn't possible.


TyGuy22 wrote:

QUOTE:
On that note, EA Sports titles have always had an awesome in game soundtrack (IMO). Are the EA Trax choosen by the game development team, a different EA department, or a strong collaboration? Has the full track list been announced yet?

Our soundtracks are built by both the game team and our central music department. We collaborate back and forth, they send us tracks by up-and-coming artists for us to choose from and we also request for them to try and get us the rights to tracks we might have chosen ourselves that we would like to put in the game. The facebreaker soundtrack is really good with a huge mix of different tracks. I believe you can browse the entire soundtrack in the demo, let me know if you have it otherwise I can probably dig it up for you.

tbatty wrote:

QUOTE:
I believe you can browse the entire soundtrack in the demo, let me know if you have it otherwise I can probably dig it up for you.

Unfortunatly the demo (Xbox360 version) only features 4 songs on the Trax list.

Speaking of lists, have the achievements for the Xbox 360 been announced? Will the PS3 version feature trophies? Which is your favorite? Which will be the most challenging?

In the demo the main menu lists 'Upload highlights' and 'Bragging Rights'. Upload highlights sounds self-discriptive enough, what is included in 'Bragging Rights'? Leaderboard stats? How long can 'highlight' clips be?

TyGuy22 wrote:

QUOTE:
Unfortunatly the demo (Xbox360 version) only features 4 songs on the Trax list.

Ok, I have just emailed my PR dept and if they say it is cool I'm going to let you know the full soundtrack. Making you the first person on the planet outside of our team to know. Or not, if they say I can't.

TyGuy22 wrote:

QUOTE:
Speaking of lists, have the achievements for the Xbox 360 been announced? Will the PS3 version feature trophies? Which is your favorite? Which will be the most challenging?

Yup, you can see a full list of achievements here:
http://www.360sync.com/2008/08/08/first-look-facebreaker-achievements

Unfortunately we didn't synch up with Sony early enough to include Trophies or Home in this version of FaceBreaker but will definitely be looking to add that in any future versions.

My favorite achievement is probably "The Best D is a Good O" which requires you to win a ranked match or fight vs the CPU without blocking, dodging or parrying. It's tricky, but it can be done.

The most challenging will be "Mad Skillz Yo!" which requires you to beat our 1P mode on the Impossible Skill Level setting. That took our best QA tester 13 hours to do, and it only requires winning 13 fights! "Multicultural" will probably take longer (beat our 1P mode with every character), but since you can do it on any skill level I don't think it's quite as hard.

Overall, I think it's a pretty cool set of achievements.

TyGuy22 wrote:

QUOTE:
In the demo the main menu lists 'Upload highlights' and 'Bragging Rights'. Upload highlights sounds self-discriptive enough, what is included in 'Bragging Rights'? Leaderboard stats? How long can 'highlight' clips be?

Bragging rights is where we track all of your stats in the game. A pretty cool feature in facebreaker that we haven't really talked about at all is our 'Names' functionality. If you are ever going to play offline multi-player in facebreaker you are going to want to listen up: at any time from the 'Fight' set up menu you can access "Name" (it's pointed out on the bottom nav bar of the screen) and enter in your name. After you have done this once, each time you fight you can select your name and the game will track all stats of anything and everything you can imagine for your name, as well as a ton of head-to-head stats for your name vs any other names that have been entered. It also has a leaderboard for things like most facebreakers, fastest facebreaker, most wins, longest win streak, etc for any names that have been entered. It's a great way to track all of your playing records vs your friends and use them as (hence the name) bragging rights. We also do the same for character-vs-character and individual character records so if you only play the game by yourself you can see how well you perform with all the different characters.

Finally, you are correct we capture and save video highlights for you during each fight and you can then upload them to easportsworld where you can cut together cool vids and blast them out to whoever or wherever you want. Cooles part of this feature is that because we capture the highlights for you, the feature also works for online fighting.

tbatty wrote:

QUOTE:
Ok, I have just emailed my PR dept and if they say it is cool I'm going to let you know the full soundtrack. Making you the first person on the planet outside of our team to know. Or not, if they say I can't. ;-)

Sounds awesome! Oh course it's not just me getting the goods here, it's everyone that's a part of this great community. Hear that Godfree? "Exclusive!" (Sorry tbatty, inside joke I suppose)

tbatty wrote:

QUOTE:
Bragging rights is where we track all of your stats in the game. A pretty cool feature in facebreaker that we haven't really talked about at all is our 'Names' functionality. If you are ever going to play offline multi-player in facebreaker you are going to want to listen up: at any time from the 'Fight' set up menu you can access "Name" (it's pointed out on the bottom nav bar of the screen) and enter in your name. After you have done this once, each time you fight you can select your name and the game will track all stats of anything and everything you can imagine for your name, as well as a ton of head-to-head stats for your name vs any other names that have been entered. It also has a leaderboard for things like most facebreakers, fastest facebreaker, most wins, longest win streak, etc for any names that have been entered. It's a great way to track all of your playing records vs your friends and use them as (hence the name) bragging rights. We also do the same for character-vs-character and individual character records so if you only play the game by yourself you can see how well you perform with all the different characters.

Sounds like the game shows you not only how to build your virtual characters, but yourself as "the" competitor. A great benefit to those looking for ways to tone their strong points and stengthen their weaknesses.

tbatty wrote:

QUOTE:
Finally, you are correct we capture and save video highlights for you during each fight and you can then upload them to easportsworld where you can cut together cool vids and blast them out to whoever or wherever you want. Coolest part of this feature is that because we capture the highlights for you, the feature also works for online fighting.

Good to know that gamers have a way to put some weight behind those Bragging Rights. How large/long can these clips be? The entire fight? Limited to a certian number of rounds or minutes? Is the website the only way to view the fight clips, or do you tag the clips on the site to view the files on the consoles through the game interface?