"It is a fast-paced hard-hitting game that translates into very compelling game play"

You wear pads when you fly through the air and tackle people? A helmet to protect your head? And the ball carrier wears pads as well? What’s the fun of that?

While there is denying that the hits in the American sport called football are indeed huge, and can cause shudders of sympathetic agony from even the toughest of viewers, there is another game the bears some semblance to this sport, though it predates the American game.

The origins of the game are a little murky, and shrouded in the mythos attributed to most sports. What is known is that in the 1830s a school in England, aptly named Rugby School was playing a markedly different brand of football (known in the U.S. as soccer) than other schools of the time. At Rugby, players actually were carrying the ball and the field was adjusted to issue a greater challenge in lieu of this style of play.

Other teams gradually gravitated to the game and in 1871, 21 clubs formed the Rugby Football Union. The rules of the time were haphazard and it wasn’t until 1898 that the rules and regulations, which govern the sport today, were put in place.

American football grew out of the sport of rugby, though it appeared not long afterwards and evolved a little quicker. The first-ever game of college soccer football was played in 1869 between Rutgers and Princeton using modified London Football Association rules. The rules were formalized in 1876 and American football was well on its way to becoming a national institution.

While the games do bear some similarities, they are, quite different in strategy and overall structure.

Ok, ok, this isn’t a history lesson or analytical comparison of the two games - this is the preamble to an interview on the latest Electronic Arts installment of EA Sports Rugby 2004.

Much like American football, rugby is a violent struggle for real estate, with bodies slamming viciously into each other. Unlike American football, rugby players disdain the use of pads and that makes for a much more intense experience.

EA’s Rugby 2004 Development Manager Andrew Wilson took time to talk with GameZone.com about the title.

Question: What do you think makes the sport of rugby such a viable target for a video game?

Andrew: It is a fast-paced hard-hitting game that translates into very compelling game play. The other factor is that the Rugby World Cup is the third biggest sporting television event, (the Olympics and FIFA World Cup are one and two), with nearly 4 billion people watching, so the worldwide following is huge.

Q: While the game may have a large fan base throughout the world, it almost falls into the clique circle of sports in North America. It is not as widely known or understood as some of the more tradition sports such as football, baseball, basketball and hockey. Does this game have a big learning/educational curve? What did you have to do to make this game accessible to gamers who may have little understanding of the game?

Andrew: Yes, to really get into the game the learning curve is quite steep. However, we have included an ‘easy’ mode along with a great training level that will have people all over the world rucking, mauling and kicking for touch like champions in no time.

Q: While the game does bear some characteristics to American football, it is a much more fluid game. There are no time outs, no playcalling per se, or other halts in the action. How difficult was it to actualize the persistent action inherent in the sport?

Andrew: Rugby is a very difficult sport to replicate. There are 30 guys in the pitch running at each other constantly for 80 minutes. However, we took the lead from Madden and broke the game up into the key components and ran them together. The result is the most compelling rugby sim to hit the market to date.

Q: On a related note, but in the graphical department, rugby players do not wear the pads of football players and thus are more individualistic looking. How were you able to create the broad base of player models something like this would use? Did you use motion-capture for the animation and, if so, what were your models?

Andrew: Motion capture played a huge part in the development process. Rugby players vary dramatically in size depending on the position and as such we had to mo-cap a wide variety of players. Watching them run head on into each other in the name of game development was one of the highlights of the whole cycle.

Q: Because of the lack of pads, and yet still ferocious hitting, there is a real chance for injury. I know of players who suffered broken necks in scrums. Does the game take that aspect of the sport into account?

Andrew: Absolutely!! Protecting your players against injuries or in turn inflicting bone-breaking tackles on the opposition is often the only way to get through a game.

Q: What was your source for the sound track of this game?

Andrew: Rugby crowds are very different the world over, so we had to record different sounds in all regions of the world. With regard to music, INXS, a great Australian band, have launched a brand new song, "I Get Up," in EA Sports Rugby 2004.

Q: In developing a game on this sport, what do you think were the key elements that had to be dead-on to make this game realistic and entertaining? What were the hardest elements to realize and render?

Andrew: There are a few key elements that no matter where you are from you would say are directly related to rugby:

• Scrums

• Lineouts

• Huge hits

• Lightning-fast passing

Scrums were possibly the hardest to realize as they are made of a bunch of 300+ pound guys pushing/applying force from a variety of different directions. With that said, it is one of my favorite parts of the game.

Q: What do you think will be the draw of this game?

Andrew: That everyone everywhere in the world can pick this game up, put in some big hits, and experience the body-ramming, bullet-passing try-scoring best-of-the-world rugby!!

EA Sports Rugby 2004 is scheduled for release September 23 on both the PC and PlayStation2 platforms.