It also meant that top-quality data could finally be captured in FUT 22 Coins a real-life football game. "We decided to select the two teams in Spain's third-tier league due to their long-standing clash," Eaves says. "They're professionally-coached teams with amazing techniques. They play possession-based football and play with control and aplomb - ideal for a video game as we need it to be quick and exciting."
EA's direction was minimal beyond instructing players and the coaching personnel that this was an "must-win match." However, the game required any extra edge. "Just as in a live sport, our players had to be subbed on and off, and we were able to be able to capture tired defenders and young forwards as the game opened up," recalls Eaves. "You felt the animosity. There were a lot of fouls to be committed in the first five minutes that it was exactly what we needed."
Those off-the-ball movements - shouting, pointing, or even pointing that were so valuable to EA in creating the action and intensity of a real-life game. "If an action-sports stuntman slides over one in a motion capture environment and then they pop back up, it isn't as intense as an actual challenge," explains Eaves. "In this game, the physicality is real. The player gets up and is furious. We take the intensity and use it in play."
It was only by capturing 22 players for 90 minutes that EA could produce enough animated, 8.75 million frames, to fuel its 'HyperMotion technology. Machine learning is then activated. "Previously, when a player approaches the ball to perform the next action , such as an attempt to pass, shoot or dribble - we've picked some animations in our database" Eaves explains. "But it doesn't know the context. All this data trains the network and helps blend animations."
How can the search for realism impact a game which, at the end of the day, compresses ninety minutes of top-quality football to ten minutes or less of play? "It's an advantage," says FIFA YouTuber and streamer Chris Wood, aka Chesnoid Gaming. "The main purpose behind sports video games is that they replicate the way you experience everyday life on a weekend. It brings the sport to cheap FIFA 22 Coins life even more. Instead of five minutes of a video game it's more like five-minute portions of a real football match."