Interview: Assistant Producer Jazz Brousseau on EA Sports UFC

Recently we had the opportunity to check out EA Sports UFC. While there, we were also able to sit down and speak with Jazz Brousseau, assistant producer at EA Sports. Below we chat about the process of including Bruce Lee in the upcoming UFC game, whether Anderson Silva will ever return to true form in real-life and learning Brazilian jiu-jitsu.

Stevivor: We learned a few weeks ago that Bruce Lee was going to be an available fighter in this game. What was the decision to include him in the roster, and what sort of challenges did the developers face in order to use his likeness in EA Sports UFC?

Jazz: The decision to include him in the game was one that I was unfortunately not familiar with, or as to how it came about; I don’t know what the catalyst was for that happening. That being said, I do know that at some point his name was tossed around and everyone was like “yeah, we need to get Bruce Lee in this game.” We approached the UFC to include him and the UFC was on-board. So we went and spoke to Shannon Lee who is Bruce Lee’s daughter and she was very interested in preserving the legacy of Bruce Lee. They agreed to have him licensed in the game and in addition from that, I think that Bruce Lee’s philosophy is really epitomised in the state of MMA, with one of them being “absorb what is useful, discard what is not, add what is uniquely your own” — that right there is MMA. Before Anderson Silva knocked out Vitor Belfort with a front-kick, no-one was doing front-kicks. So I think that is one of the reasons Bruce Lee is in the game.

As far as challenges, certainly the most challenging part of adding him to the game was that he was not around. We did head and body scans for all the fighters, and it’s not like we could do that with Bruce and get him in. Fortunately, Shannon Lee and Bruce Lee Enterprises have a cast of his head which they sent down, so we did a 3D head-scan of his cast and that’s how we got his likeness into the game. We also had some local talent come down and do motion capture for the backhand and some other of Bruce Lee’s moves.

Stevivor: With the list of new features in this game, we’re getting a sense that UFC is going to be more realistic than ever, with smarter AI, real-time exertion, strategic submission battles and more precise movements. In what ways does this game cater for, or introduce those players who mightn’t be familiar to the UFC games or the sport itself?

Jazz: For newcomers, I think what it comes down to first and foremost is that it’s fun. Personally, one of the frustrating things about the old UFC games was that, yes they were complex in a good way in that they were layered just like the sport was, but they weren’t fun to be a newcomer in those games. If you look at the event that we had today, this was the first time anyone played the game but everyone was having fun right out of the gate, and I think that is a really strong selling point for us. Further to that, we’ve tried to focus a lot on being able to teach very specific aspects of the fight game. Yeah we have our tutorial mode that covers A-Z, but if you want to get into the details of how do I defend a takedown, how do I initiate a submission or how do I defend a particular move, you can go into the challenges and train only stand up, wresting, Brazilian jiu-jitsu (BJJ) or only muay tai, which I think is good because it allows players to practice inside a vacuum without the fear of playing against the AI or online.

Stevivor: Of all the fighters across each of the divisions, do you have a particular favourite and why? Did you also get the chance to meet him/or her during the development of the game?

Jazz: George St. Pierre has always had a soft spot in my heart because we’re both from Montreal. Unfortunately I did not have the opportunity to meet him, but I’m hoping one day. *laughs* I go down to Montreal all the time and I know Tri-Star gym is around there, so there’s always a possibility that I would knock on their door and go “hey guys I’m here to train”.

Stevivor: This marks the first licensed UFC game for Electronic Arts. In 2010 EA released EA Sports MMA. Did the team working on the new UFC game use any of the assets or work from the MMA title? If not, was it more of a challenge or was it a lot easier to start from scratch?

Jazz: It was a little bit from column A and a little bit from column B. In terms of assets, I thought that EA Sports MMA was a really strong game and we used a lot of the animations from that title. We may have worked on those animations a bit more or not, I’m not too sure, but we did motion capture ourselves for this game and we used animations from both EA Sports MMA and Fight Night.

So we harvested a lot from past games but we also built everything from scratch using the EA Sports Ignite engine. This game was announced in June 2012 along with the partnership with UFC, and it’s not even June 2014 and we’ve finished the game, so we’ve built the game from the ground-up exclusively for next generation consoles in under 23 months. I think that was the biggest challenge with this game, just the rigorous timeline that we were under to get it out there.

Stevivor: Anderson Silva has been called by some as one of the best, if not the best fighter in the UFC of all time. Do you think though, that after his two major incidents, particularly the one with his leg last year, that he’ll ever be able to return back to his true form?

Jazz: That’s a tough question. It’s hard to say, there is definitely an aspect of ring rust that can apply to fighters as they step away from the fight game. A part of it is also really contextual – when you’re a new up and comer you’re hungry, whereas when you’re a champion you can sometimes rest on your laurels. No-one but Anderson Silva knows what sort of state he is in and whether he is ready to come back. Anderson Silva will always be a champion in the hearts of fans, and when he comes back he’s still going to be a big draw, because people are going to want to know the answer to that question of whether he’s still in true form.

Stevivor: There have been a lot of different developers who have created UFC games in the past. Now without obviously naming specific titles, were there any features of past games that you noticed that you particularly wanted to improve or avoid repeating in the development of this title?

Jazz: In terms of development, we always look at the competition, not only from other publishers and developers, but also ourselves. We looked at EA Sports MMA, Fight Night, past UFC games, Street Fighter and all the other fighting games, and tried to pick and choose what do each of those franchises do well and what can we do better than that. For this game, what I really think it came down to was that we wanted to make it as realistic as possible, and make it as fun as we could. So we really focused on fighter likeness, the whole body deformation, real time exertion, veins popping when a guy is being submitted and we really wanted to make it authentic in terms of the presentation. That’s why you see guys like Greg Jackson in camp, where fighters have little nuisance details that are specific to them when they walk out to the Octagon. That’s what we really wanted to take a look at.

Stevivor: There are obviously so many things which need to be done in creating a game like this – recreating the likeness of each fighter, making it possible that each move/technique can be performed in the game, recording commentary, etc. Was there any particular process in the development you enjoyed the most?

Jazz: I wasn’t personally too involved in either commentary or gameplay, but I’d say when we announced the partnership we hired a local coach to do BJJ. So we did BJJ classes for quite some time and our gameplay team and animators are still doing this and some are even competing. I think that this was the most fun. It’s really hard to appreciate the complexity and layers of Brazilian jiu-jitsu until you actually do it, then when you actually do it, you’re like “wow, this is like human chess”. I really enjoyed learning how BJJ is a battle of questions and answers, and that was the most fun – just learning about Brazilian jiu-jitsu first-hand rather than watching it on television.

Stevivor: As far as watching real-life UFC matches go, do you prefer to watch the men’s or the women’s fights? Any particular reason why?

Jazz: *laughs* The only reason I don’t enjoy watching the women’s fights is because it’s always Rhonda Rousey. Not that I don’t like her, I do love her, but it’s kind of like no-one in the women’s division is going to beat her right now, and watching her fight is just a given that’s she’s going to win. I enjoy watching the underdog and I enjoy the possibility of being surprised, and just when I watch Ronda Rousey fight I know what’s going to happen.

Stevivor: This new UFC game includes both current and former UFC fighters (for example Royce Gracie). For those latter fighters who are no longer in the UFC, did you use the same methods to capture their likeness in the game? If not, what did you have to do to include these individuals in the roster in as much detail as the current fighters.

Jazz: So one example is Chuck Liddell. Chuck most certainly does not look like that anymore. So part of it was doing body scanning for everyone. I don’t know if Chuck was part of that, but some of the fighters get fine-tuned. Almost all of the fighters we had to take a closer look at because you know, their weight fluctuates drastically. In fight week they’re going to be dehydrated and very scrawny, outside of fight week they’re going to put on the pounds, so their walking-around weight is never what their fight weight is at. Almost all the fighters we did a body scan for, but we also did more traditional methods of making them look like how do in the octagon.

Stevivor: Is there any one feature or element of this game, that you think hasn’t been promoted as well or might be overlooked by players, that you are particularly proud of?

Jazz: I would say Fighter Net. We haven’t really talked a lot about the online features, and Fighter Net is sort of our social take on the game. It is an enhanced leaderboard featuring a lot of info-graphic heavy stats. So I’ll be able to look at my Fighter Net profile and I’ll be able to look at the profile of other players and identify holes in their game. So if I have a buddy that I play rivalries with all the time, I’ll be able to look at his profile and see, “Oh his takedown isn’t that good, that’s his weakness.” I think that’s really an aspect that we haven’t really talked about because we’ve been focusing on the fighters, the roster, the gameplay and presentation. I think there’s a lot to talk about in this game and this is one of those aspects.

Stevivor: The new UFC game is set to be released on both the Xbox One and the PS4. Are there any plans to release this game on PC too?

Jazz: Right now, I don’t know. I think that is not a decision that’s left up to the game team or the development team, but more of a business decision rather than a gameplay design one. If someone said we should make a PC game, that there’s a market for it, I don’t see why not.

Stevivor: As fights and new championships take place in real life, are there any plans to make changes to the fighter’s titles or stats within the game too?

Jazz: In terms of stats, I don’t think we’ll be changing them too much. Certainly we have the capability of doing that with our fighter updates, and I do know that we have the capability of changing the championship status of fighters in the game, but that’s something that’s not going to happen on its own. It’ll be something that we need to be proactive about.

Stevivor: I’m a massive fan of Joe Rogan, and as we know, he’s involved as one of the commentators in the game. What was it like to work with him during the development, and are you a fan of his Joe Rogan Experience podcast?

Jazz: I am a fan of the Joe Rogan Experience podcast, unfortunately though I don’t get to listen to it as much as I’d like to. Working with Joe Rogan — again, personally I didn’t work with him — but our producer Freddie who I know worked with him a lot, said he’s a pleasure and a constant professional. Obviously he is a very unique individual and I do know that he was a pleasure to work with.

Many thanks to Jazz for his time.

EA Sports UFC will launch on 17 June 2014 for Xbox One and PS4.