FIFA 09

FIFA 09 was the title where I really wanted to see what the gameplay team could do. We had several risky initiatives underway, so we developed a way of tracking progress, plus a system for detecting issues early in case we needed to cut our losses. (We never did, but it gave the team confidence and improved productivity.) We beefed up our automated testing and found most of our issues before QA did. We also created a process for safely making late changes, allowing us to fix major bugs (and tweak more than a few major features) long after we would have had to shut down development.

This year was a blast for me, and it was my last year as TD for FIFA Gameplay.