Making the perfect football game, does it exist, and is it even possible? That has been my ultimate goal for the past 12 years, or at least it was to begin with.
You see as time went by, perfection was the last thing on my mind. The problems facing football games were unlike any other major game titles: delay, lack of meaningful updates throughout the years, and above all complete monopolization. How come the virtual side of the biggest sport in the world is in the state it’s in despite the major advancement in technology and gaming? What was a dream quickly became an obsession. All hope was lost…that is until GOALS came along.
What I quickly understood throughout the years is that football fans have different interpretations of the perfect football game. Unfortunately, we cannot please everybody but our mission is to create the highest possible skill gap while keeping the game fun and engaging for all types of players. In order to fit a 90 minute football game into a 12 minute one, the general pace of the game has to be fast. As much as we will do our utmost to stay true to the sport of football, we have to remember that GOALS is a video game and our priority is to make your experience as enjoyable as we can.
In a football game, it is not possible to control all 11 players at the same time, which means some form of assistance from the AI has to be in place. Our priority is to increase the AI’s off-the-ball activity while making sure that it provides the player with as little assistance as possible. This means that the AI will help in making runs, tracking runs, pressing, and getting into the best positions, but will never directly assist the player in direct actions such as tackling, shooting, or passing. When it comes to defending we want it to be as manual and always force the user to select the defender closest to the ball in order to try to win the ball off the opposition. In order to achieve this, we are going to focus mostly on player switching and making sure that more often than not you will win the ball and emerge with it when completing a successful tackle.
On the ball, we want to focus on giving you the freedom to express yourself. Prioritizing left stick dribbling to ensure that you can turn in whichever direction you want is crucial in achieving this as well as giving you the ability to take players on at speed, and drive your team forward. The “darker” side of football such as diving, time-wasting, “parking the bus” will be insignificant or limited as much as possible.
With regards to the direct gameplay features such as shooting, passing, crossing, and heading we aim to find the perfect balance between assisted, semi-assisted, and manual. Shooting inside the box will be fully assisted as the skill gap would come in creating the opportunity, as well as choosing what type of shot to go with. Heading and short passes will most likely be assisted whereas long shots, crossing, and long passing will be more manual. Of course, we will always listen to feedback so please feel free to let us know your thoughts and preferences.
When it comes to game modes our mission is to ensure that all modes will have the perfect balance of fun, engaging, competitive, and rewarding. In order to enhance the social aspect of the game, we will also provide you with the ability to play across a variety of options ranging from solo 1v1 to co-op 2v2/3v3 to even controlling only one player and diving into our 5-a-side and 11v11 modes.
My dream of finding the perfect football game may always have been an unrealistic pipe dream but with a game that is being built from scratch together with the community, this is the best chance we’re ever gonna get. Thanks to GOALS, football fans may once again begin to dream.