Sound

Sound in sports games comprises of three main areas; commentary, menu music, and in-game sounds. Unfortunately, the trend in soccer games has been to concentrate on the two former and pay scant attention to the latter. However, anyone who’s every watched soccer on TV (let alone been to a match) know just how important the match sounds, and in particular the crowd, are.

Commentary and Menu Music – more of the same, please

Commentary and Menu Music are two areas where EA Sports have excelled in recent years. As I mentioned in my review of the game, FIFA 06 features one of the best sports game soundtracks ever, and the commentary is fantastic. For the next generation I’d like to hear not just more variety from the play-by-play the colour commentary, but also more context-specific comments. I was incredibly impressed by FIFA Soccer PSP when, the match after clinching the title I missed a sitter and the commentator said something to the effect of; “…it’s a bad miss but he won’t mind so much since they’ve already won the title.”. It really ramps up the sense of immersion when the commentators seem to acknowledge the importance of match events in the greater context of a season or tournament.

Time for a knowledgeable crowd

Crowd sounds in soccer games have basically been divided up into three categories; cheers, jeers, and random chants. That’s been about it. Crowd logic/AI in most games has followed a complex (not really) algorithm;

Constant = Quiet crowd hum/rumbling

Home Goal = Cheer

Away Goal = Jeer

Away Foul Committed = Jeer

Every Five Minutes = Random Crowd Chant

This has to change. If these new fancy consoles have the processing power to compute thousands of complex physics calculations in a second, then programmers can use some of that CPU power to handle slightly more complex crowd reactions.

Firstly, programmers need to understand that in 99% of soccer matches away fans ARE present and making noise (that missing 1% being when Inter play behind closed doors and NO fans are present, ho ho!). So, if the away team scores the go-ahead goal in the 90th minute, the stadium should go quiet - with the exception of the small contingent of away fans. And with digital surround sound supported by even this generation of consoles (Dolby Digital for the X-Box and Dolby Pro Logic II for the PS2) we should be able to hear exactly where those traveling fans are located.

Secondly, there needs to be a more dynamic flow to the crowd sounds. If the away team is winning 2-0 then the home fans shouldn’t be too loud. However, if the home side pulls a goal back it would be nice to hear the home fans make their voices heard again. This ebb and flow should also reflect the possession in the game (as well as the score), so if it’s tied but the home side has a large percentage of the possession in the attacking half, then the home support should be heard behind them. At all times the crowd sounds should be dynamic and not modulated into discrete packets of cheers and jeers.

It’d also be really neat to hear the stadium announcer come on the loudspeaker and announce goalscorers (home players cheered, favourites cheered even louder), substitutions, and the amount of injury time added to the end of a half. Programmers also need to include more team-specific and player-specific chants and understand that many chants aren’t sung at random times. I don’t recall YNWA being sung just before half-time at Anfield and I don’t recall “Glory Glory Man United” sung too loudly when United are losing.