Football Superstars is a brand new, genre breaking Sports Massively Multi-player Online Game which takes the player through the life of a footballer, from grass-root kick-abouts to the pinnacle of the premier football and international stardom. FIFPlay had a chance to interview its creative director, Steve Marshall and to ask some questions regarding the game:
Hello Steve, would you please introduce yourself for us?
Steve Marshall: Hello, My name is Steve Marshall, I am the Creative Director of Cybersports and responsible for the original design of Football Superstars. I’m 36 years young and live in Reading in England although I travel up to our Nottingham studios each week.
Can you please tell us about the new Football Superstars game?
Steve Marshall: Football superstars is the first MMO sports game (Massively Multi-player Online Game) that gives the players the opportunity to not only play the beautiful game but also interact with 1000’s of others in a fully persistent utopian world. As a player you will be able to spend the money you acquire from playing football on fashion items and other customisation options, relax in a number of social areas, visit gyms to increase your fitness or find trainers to teach you awe inspiring moves.
As well as acquiring money from matches, the better you perform as a player, the greater your celebrity profile, affording you additional privileges just like the real world.
The game is played from a variable 3rd person perspective with a visual quality unseen in a football game to date. You control a single player on the pitch where everyone else but the keeper is also a real person somewhere in the world.
There are a huge number of motion captured moves and skills players will be able to utilise by manipulating the unique high fidelity control system.
Once off the pitch you will be able to converse with friends using our integrated voice system and relax in a number of bars, clubs and cafes before buying flash designer clothing showing off your unique style whilst being interviewed by reporters about your latest big game success.
Once you have finished schmoozing with reporters you can gather your player managed club team reviewing replays from your competition before the next big game.
Because Football Superstars is a fully featured MMO we plan to update the content on a regular basis, introducing new features such as player designed housing and much more. Future updates will be driven not only by us, but our community will be helping us choose the updates we introduce.
Will be there real clubs/players names in the game?
Steve Marshall: We will not be including real world club names for our initial release, but we have design for how we intend to introduce them at a future date. We didn’t want to take the route of changing the names slightly to ensure we didn’t contravene any copyright infringement, when we introduce real world teams we will do so fully and it will be an aspirational target for the players to reach.
We will however be reserving player names just in case any of them wish to play Football Superstars for themselves 🙂
When will the game be released? Is there a demo prior to the release?
Steve Marshall: We will be releasing the game in Spring 2008, before that though we will be having a beta testing session running at least 3 months, this will begin by the end of 2007 and we are accepting beta registrations now in preparation for the demand. You can register for the beta at the football superstars website at https://www.footballsuperstars.com
How much will the game will cost?
Steve Marshall: There will be 2 methods of subscription, the first is totally free to play and you will be able to get in as much football as your heart desires, we will also have a small subscription option that will allow the more serious gamers the ability to get access to additional areas.
You are of course a football fan, what is your favourite club?
Steve Marshall: My favourite club would have to be my home team of Reading, they have performed really well over recent years and John Mageisky is doing wonderful things with the club as their owner.
Do you play FIFA or PES at home?
Steve Marshall: Certainly am 🙂 I am of course playing Football Superstars all the time, testing, refining and developing the game… it’s much more fun than anything else I’ve played 😀 But then I would say that wouldn’t I !?
If you are a FIFA fan, what feature you would add to the game if you were a producer?
Steve Marshall: I’ve never understood why the big football game producers haven’t concentrated on 11 aside internet play earlier, although I understand they are taking it more seriously now. Players of other games have been able to participate with thousands of their friends online in most other genre’s but sports games seem to have been unreachable till now, that’s why we started CyberSports and we hope our vision is one that will be enjoyed by football fans and general game players alike for years to come.
Thank you for allowing us to share our excitement for Football Superstars with you, we hope you will enjoy the game and share your thoughts with us at the Football Superstars IGN Vault forum at https://vnboards.ign.com/football_superstars/c15870
I’ll see you on the pitch !
Comments