Interview with Gerald Koehler

Gerald Köhler is the executive producer of EA Sports FIFA Manager 07 at Bright Future Ltd … FIFPlay interviewed him to let you know him better:
Would you please introduce yourself? My name is Gerald Köhler, I’m born in Lauda in Germany, 30th March 1969. I’ve started at EA in April 2000 and in April 2006 we founded Bright Future to develop for EA as an external company. In all these years I worked as a Game Designer on the EA Sports Manager games.
How did you come up with management game, when was your first time you played a management video-game? I started in 1987 during a computer course at school. We were a little bit bored and started to write our own little football simulation, which became “Kicker” and finally “Anstoss”, also known as “On the Ball” in the UK.
Do you play FIFA or FIFA Manager at your free time? Hey, I’m busy with the game for 10-12 hours a day and it won’t lie and tell you that I’m of course playing these games also at home. Actually I’m currently just playing some little Nintendo DS games. My favourite is Dr Kawashima, I’m addicted to the calculating game. I’m down to 59 seconds for 100 questions :)
What is your favourite club, and who is you favourite footballer and coach? My favourite club is VfB Stuttgart, my favourite footballer is Fernando Meira and my favourite coach is Christoph Daum.
Last summer, at FIFA World Cup 2006 Germany we have seen brand new management systems almost by all teams; some young managers like Jürgen Klinsmann have shown the beginning of a new coaching era, could this event impress the FIFA Manager game? I wouldn’t call it brand new. There were some interesting new aspects but the basics for a successful team are always the same. Klinsmann simply made sure that he had team with a good fitness and a great team spirit. The film about it is fun to watch (“Deutschland – Ein Sommermärchenâ€?) and gives great insights.
Apart from that the World Cup was just an incredibly great time, Cologne was one of the host cities and we were close to the events and even watched some matches. The most impressive moments were the 1-0 last minute goal against Poland, the loudest moment I’ve ever experienced in a stadium, and the final party in Berlin with 1 million people. Just awesome stuff I’ll never forget.
At FIFPlay there is a thread in which everyone can post his ideas regarding the next version of FM, FIFA Manager 08. There are currently some ideas like youth markets, Women’s football, data exchange between FM and other management games etc., what do you think about them? Youth market is important. This is something we will consider. Women’s football is not on our list at the moment. And data exchange between the management games is something we won’t support because this is legally very dangerous. There are competing databases and this is a good thing especially for you as the player.
Is there any plan to develop FM Next-Gen for Xbox360 and PS3? At the moment we are all happy that we have completed the PC version. Now we’ll think about future projects.