Winning teams accumulate points and losing teams have points deducted also based on how their individual players performed. So when you have 10 players on the pitch representing your Club each individual performance contributes to the team's point total. We have a complex formula that calculates points based on each individual player's performance on the pitch. However, it is not based solely on winning games to accumulate points. The more wins you get, the better your team plays and the more games you play the faster you will climb up the ranks progressing from Division 15 to ultimately the highest Division 1. When you begin you are unranked in any of the 15 divisions. Can you explain how it will work a bit? Rutter: We expect a lot of people will want to participate in FIFA 09 Clubs so we have set up 15 divisions each comprised of 100 Clubs. IGN: I understand there's some kind of divisional promotions that clubs can earn. And we have had to do a number of technological things like re-broadcasters to enable the level of service in our mode to allow this to be a compelling experience. PlayStation 2 and Xbox weren't powerful enough and the internet didn't have sufficient bandwidth to enable this. IGN: Why has it taken FIFA (and every other sports franchise) so long to implement this mode when it seems so logical? Rutter: Many different reasons but the biggest one is that PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 have network architecture that is sufficiently mature to allow 20 individuals to play a single game of FIFA 09 at the same time. Instead of thinking as an individual you have to play and react as a team. If you are in defense and worried about not having much to do, making sure you are marking your man and not drifting away from your position to leave your side vulnerable becomes extremely important.

Every interaction takes on an exponentially greater significance. When you get your touches at left back, for example, you know you can't fail because you will be letting down nine human players on your team if you make a mistake. 10 match you might not necessarily be involved in the action all of the time but for the shorter moments that a real footballer would be in a football match it takes on a whole different level of stress and excitement. You can play that way in Be A Pro: 10 v 10 but your position on the pitch is going to potentially be exploited by a player on the pitch who knows the game. In hockey players have more divergent roles. In football, the backline is very defense oriented, midfield is about building up the play and creativity and attacking is all about finishing. Football is similar in some respects to hockey in that you try to progress up the pitch or ice to score a goal but because of the size of the pitch and the number of players there is a different dynamic at play. How does FIFA 09 provide the same experience while providing its own flair for the mode? David Rutter, Producer: For FIFA 09 there are significantly more human controlled players on the pitch with up to 10 human controlled players on each team. IGN: NHL 09 was the first game to utilize the individuality of having every player on the rink (pitch in this case) controlled by a human.

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