Back Nine Blog

Below is an entry from EA’s Peter Moore regarding some follow-up questions that were asked toward him after the first details of Tiger Woods PGA Tour 09 came out last week.

Last week we unveiled some of the new features in Tiger Woods PGA TOUR 09. A few of you had questions about the new game, so I caught up with Executive Producer Mike Taramykin to get the scoop on what we can expect to see this August.

Q: Sounds like an interesting concept with Tiger’s coach, Hank Haney, playing a big role in this year’s game. Can you tell me a little more about what role he plays?

MT: A big part of this year’s game is that the experience changes based on an individual player’s performance. We have added a new dynamic attribute system that adjusts based on how you play, a club tuner feature that allows players to customize every club in their bag, and custom training drills are based on actual shots that players made on the course. All of these features are tied together and presented to you by Tiger’s own coach, Hank Haney.
So after every round of golf Hank will create personalized training drills based on how you just played, similar to how he works with Tiger in real life. And when players go into the Club Tuner, Hank will help identify club settings that will maximize your personal performance.
What we tried to do was closely mimic the real life relationship that Tiger and Hank share, and bring that directly to players of our game.

Q: I know a lot of people were fans of GamerNet last year. What are you doing to enhance it this year?

MT: We’ve done a lot of great things to evolve the GamerNet experience.
First, we’ve brought GamerNet challenges into every mode of the game. So if you happen to be playing PGA TOUR mode and find yourself at the tee of a hole that has a long drive challenge posted on GamerNet, then we’ll bring that challenge right to you and give you a chance to earn GamerNet points while you play your TOUR event. We do the same for closest to the pin, and long putt challenges. The idea is to surface GamerNet content throughout the other modes and give players the ability to build up points without the need to specifically go into the GamerNet mode. It’s also worth mentioning that GamerNet will always favor challenges posted by your friends when choosing which random challenges to give you.
Another thing that we’ve added to GamerNet is that we’ve created a “Daily Winner” contest to keep track of who has won the most points on any given day. We then track overall winners based on number of days that they have won, rather than just a total number of points.
We also made saving GamerNet challenges much easier. Players can now post challenges directly from the golf course without the need to first save local clips. It really improves the overall experience.

Q: I know you guys have been working on a new online engine. What is Simultaneous Play going to mean to the online experience?

MT: Simultaneous Play allows up to 4 players to play a round of golf without having to watch each of their opponents take their shots. Instead, everybody sees a colored ball trail that represents each of their opponents along with onscreen information that tells you what shot each of them is on.
If someone finishes a hole early, then they switch to a spectator mode and can watch any of their opponents play via an interactive camera system.
The biggest impact that Simultaneous Play will have on the online experience is that you can now play MORE games, because 4 player rounds will take the same amount of time as playing by yourself. This is something we consistently have heard that we needed to streamline the length of play and this is another thing that will really improve the overall experience.

Thanks Mike and look forward to hearing more about Tiger in the months to come.

Cheers,

Peter