Games
For these people, FIFA Ultimate Team isn’t just a passion: it’s a job.
Imagine you wake up one day, and realise you’re part of one of the biggest FIFA sites out there. That hundreds of thousands of people read your thoughts on Ultimate Team, and what you do for the community actually matters to such a degree that EA take on board the feedback you collect, and actually invest ideas into the game.
Why this strangely specific and appealing thought exercise? Because, well, that’s how we imagine Tom Mills, editor and one of the talented people behind Futhead’s news site, must feel. Oh, and in case you weren’t aware, Futhead has had over 80 million unique views, with a million registered users, all since launching in February 2012.
But Mills doesn’t really pay too much attention to stats, and is more interested in putting together content that he’d like to read himself, but the Team of the Week predictions always do well. As he reminds us, he’s a FIFA fan, after all. “You've made me realise I should probably look at that stuff more,” he tells Red Bull Games. Which is ironic, given that UT is nothing if stats-focused, but there you go.
“I don't really check them, it's not a driving factor for us, genuinely,” Mills admits. “I know that our FIFA 16 ratings predictions posts did crazy numbers. One of those posts wasn't far off a million views, which is madness for what's basically a bunch of educated guesses; but people love ratings. They love them.”
The important question to Mills has to be the obvious one, really, though: how on earth do you get involved in something like this? “It's been an odd journey. Around FIFA 08 or FIFA 09 I found myself on the official forum for one reason or another and there was a really good group of guys in there so I stayed. The forum was a bit smaller than it is now, and we used to just chat about FIFA every day, with the odd bit of interaction from the mods. Then in the run up to FIFA 10 they held an event at Arsenal’s Emirates Stadium to show the game off early and invited a bunch of people from the forum. There I met some people which led to writing for a fan site and it kind of sprung from there. I worked on that site for a couple of years and then Dave Bryant [close friend, senior Editor at Futhead, and the man Mills started up a previous site with] and I decided to see if we could put our own site together.”
That led to the eventual move to join Futhead, a site all about the phenomenon that is Ultimate Team. “By that point we had contacts at EA for events and had built up a decent relationship with the producers, so we spent ages creating a site, logos, social accounts, sorting hosting, putting loads of posts together so that there was something to actually look at when it went live; it was a lot of work, and then a couple of months after it went live, one of the co-founders from Futhead got in touch and said ‘yeah that site's cute but put it in the bin and come and write for us’, so we did.”
A rags to riches story, then, in FIFA. So with the main part of Futhead taking care of the database of players and cards, what does Mills do in the news department, exactly? “Pretty much just posting newsworthy things about the game, the odd competition, I also make the awful videos that are on the YouTube channel. I have nothing to do with the database side of things sadly, I just look after the news side of things. I've always loved FIFA, so being able to take another step closer to the game has been great.”
Mills is modest of course: he’s looking after a community that has 197,000 followers on Twitter alone. Moreover, there’s something about his permanently angry sounding voice that makes the videos incredibly watchable, and despite some colourful language, many kids watch his work: after all, FIFA has an incredible sized audience, of which many are under 18. That varied community offers challenges itself, though: “you think you've written something a bit thoughtful or witty and the first comment is abuse”, and then Mills turns the air blue himself before reflecting that “people love those Team of the Week predictions!“
Like all of us, Mills plays FIFA non-stop; he has to, and so we wanted to know what his all time favourite FUT card is. “FIFA 15 Bruma. No question. At some point I ended up with it printed out and mounted on card in my office. I have an unhealthy obsession with that one.” And how about the worst one he’s ever seen? “Worst for me was from FIFA 15 too. Man of the Match Olivier Giroud. I could not score a goal with him for love nor money. Scored bucketloads with his regular item, but the upgraded MOTM one? No chance.” Bear in mind that Mills is an Arsenal fan; that Giroud card must have been abysmal.
Of course, being part of such a prominent FUT site means that EA help them out now and then. “To my side of things, mostly through providing access, inviting us to pre-release events, early access to the game and making sure we see new features early, they're really approachable with that stuff, thankfully. They also help us run giveaways when a change to the game meant we couldn't do it the old way and would need their involvement which was massively appreciated.”
We wondered, then, given such a close relationship with EA, have Mills and co ever had direct involvement with shaping the game? “Probably the proudest thing I've personally been involved in that affected people widely was back around FIFA 11 or 12 when I was talking to the late Simon Humber…” Mills pauses there, to reflect on the Creative Director for FIFA who tragically lost a battle with cancer. “He was an absolutely wonderful man and someone who could be credited with bringing many firsts to FIFA; he said he wanted to do a push on the virtual pro mode within the game, and get a bunch more commentary into the game, so I said I'd do it, and he said agreed. So we put an article out there and I collated a huge list of surnames for them that were recorded by the commentators and added to the game for people to use with their virtual pros.”
So, that means that, perhaps, when we play the game as our pro and the commentary team says the name, it’s in part thanks to Mills? “We had a hand in them getting there, and looking back, although he was clearly just shifting some donkey work into my lap, I was happy to do it, and hopefully a bunch of people put the game in their consoles that year and thought it was cool that the commentators said their name now".
Given that FIFA has such a wide ranging audience, from kids to grown men and women, how on earth does a site like Futhead strike a balance between content that’s friendly for all ages? “We don't try to strike a balance really! I just write whatever feels right at the time. I'm a bit narrow minded in that regard, I write in the way that I would want to read, impartial, the odd bad joke, that's about it. Some posts lend themselves to a bit of personal interjection and some are just factual. We've always tried to get the fact that we're all FIFA players too.”
It’s easy to forget that the editors running these sites are fans too, when all’s said and done. In that respect, do EA Sports do enough to release a game every year? At some point, surely, there will come a day when the game becomes a subscription service, rather than a new disc every year? Mills thinks so.
“It's so odd because the game is huge, I mean in terms of player base and sales, right, but because we're mostly talking to people that play every single day, they're the one's that hate it the most and find the most flaws and experience the most frustration and shout about the millions it makes and want it to be better because they absolutely adore it and want to be able to enjoy it more than they do. But really, we're a small subset when you look at the sales. It's bizarre.”
It truly is one of the biggest games released every year, last year selling one million units in the UK alone. “For me they do enough to release a new disc, but I'm in a position where I'm hoovering up every change that's made, and I’m sitting with producers during their press tours and making a point of noticing every single thing. Some people will look at it and say it’s the same as FIFA 12 and I'm thinking ‘No way!, they've brought in new systems for player intelligence and movement and plenty more.’ Whether those systems work as you want is an aside there, but there's progression in each game. But you'll also get people that genuinely think it’s just new kits every year.”
So what are the best and worst things about being involved with FIFA, then? “Well, it allows me to justify spending fortunes on FIFA points to my wife, because it's for ‘work’, kind of, leaving my club looking pretty healthy.” Regardless of it not being his real job, and instead something he does for love, not money, he’s done alright when it comes to his Ultimate Team, and we never want to face off against it, ever, as it contains team of the year players, and generally has the best player cards in the game. He loves it, though: “The worst is ungrateful competition winners. That's the best I can do, honestly it's all awesome, it's really fun to be a part of.”
What’s the one area he’d like EA to work on, though? “I think I'd like some emphasis put on Career Mode again. FIFA online is always a dice roll because as much as I love it, FUT is honestly my favourite thing ever for better or worse, the online community is like a box of chocolates, so having a really solid offline mode that you could relax with would be welcome. I like what's there, but it tires pretty quickly.” But what would he really want to change about the game?
“My pack luck.”
Ain’t that the truth, Tom… ain’t that the truth.
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