On Tuesday, June 12, 2007, I got a chance to hangout with some Xbox Community members form various websites, to take a look at NCAA Football 2008. I went there, thanks to Tony Hynes from Gamerscoreblog.com, to see how far EA has come with their involvement in the “Gaming” community”. I was impressed with the things they did, and didn’t do. Michael Johnson, EA Online Marketing Manager, was there along with his staff member’s, to greet everyone that was there.
Tiburon was nice enough to fly a bunch of people down to their office in Orlando Fl, so that they can give them an honest opinion on what they saw with the beta version of the game. I met a lot of gamers from sport-based websites. These guys were truly dedicated to the whole franchise, and didn’t lose focus on why they were there. I saw guys with pen and pads, writing every nook and cranny down. It was all business for those guys.
Tony Hynes, Vicious696 and Feelz_Good were there to play the game too. Vicious and me had a great game going. I won by the skin of my teeth, and then lost to Feelz. There was a tournament for an Xbox Elite. I lost in the first round though. During the later rounds, they approached the ‘eliminated’, and took us to pick out 2 games from the EA library, nice.
I was also there to meet new people, and to take a look at a trend I see forming. EA, and Tiburon are starting to realize that the gaming community can help them tremendously. Mike J had told me that this was by no means; Flavor of the month. The community will be a key asset when it comes to getting a good feel for how a title is doing, during its early stages of development. This strategy worked out for them during our day there, everyone left happy.
I enjoyed the fact that this wasn’t a public relations blabber fest. MJ sat us in front of some consoles, and let us play our hearts out. This allowed everyone to get deep into everything NCAA 08 had to offer, and that was a key move. Not once did anyone come to us, with restrictions in hand. In my opinion, it’s a bold move, because most of the time some developers have something to hide. I did notice that some of the “Money†plays were still in the game, but the title is still in beta form, so I’ll hold judgment until the full retail version is released.
I was satisfied with my visit there. At the end of the day, Tony took everyone out to eat. The funny thing was, the restaurant was a block away from Foo Mo Jives house. I called him to come down, and he finally got a chance to meet someone from Microsoft. I can’t wait to see how many companies jump on the “bandwagonâ€Â. As gamers, we are valuable consumers too. We know what does, and doesn’t work, and that is starting be become evident. This is a great time to be a gamer, because our words finally mean something.
