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Fitba brings it back to the old skool

Game Pitch: Fitba

Like your Xbox? Love football? Bored of the AAA competition? How about taking it old skool? Games industry veteran Jonathan 'Fritz' Ackerley (aka Triple B Games) has released his new game - Fitba - on XNA Community Games Store and for a mere pittance, you can see whether this Dundee-based indie developer has what it takes to challenge the big boys. Read on for his story, and why he left the big time for an indie future.

Explain your game to my mum in 140 words.
Fitba is a football game you play on your Xbox 360, you get to run the players about, do slide tackles, headers, overhead kicks and try to score some goals. Fitba's all about being fun to play, it's not going to take you hours to learn how to perform all the moves. You can play Fitba against the computer, but it's much more fun if you play against your friends. You can make your own teams up, design their kits and put whoever you want playing in them. You don't buy the game in the shops, you download it straight onto your Xbox 360 and it only costs 400 Microsoft Points (c.£3.50).

How do players control the game?
Fitba uses a unique and simple control system – left stick controls the players movement, right stick controls pass and shot direction, this twin stick approach enables you to be bombing down the wing and to whip in a cross without having to turn and face into the box, it means that there is real skill to shooting, it's not just a case of pressing a button, you have to aim your shots for the top corner. Slide tackles, headers, and overhead kicks are all done by pulling the right trigger. This means that you can be up and playing the game in minutes, you don't have to spend ages learning what button does what and what the game winning combos are.

What is your background?

I've been in the games industry for 14 years, I've worked on games for big publishers like EA, Vivendi, Capcom and Acclaim but now I've gone independent with Triple B Games, free to make the games that I want to make.

Name your competitors.
Fifa and Pro Evo are the two dinosaurs that dominate the football game market, each series pumping out huge selling annual updates that are barely distinguishable from the previous years offering. They aim to offer you the experience of watching the Champions League on your big screen TV. Fitba's trying to offer you the experience of sitting in the stands watching your heroes triumph over their local rivals.

We've currently got Scottish Second Division attendance levels, in 12 months time we'd like to be at SPL levels.

What's your biggest challenge?
The biggest challenge is getting people to find and try the game. You have to root about a bit in the dashboard on your Xbox 360 to get to the game. From your dash you need to select Game Marketplace, then Community Games and then you'll find Fitba to download from the Sports & Recreation tab.

What's the weirdest development experience you've had thus far?
One of the weirder things I had to do was when I was working at Gremlin on Actua Soccer 2, the marketing department had done a deal to provide footage of the game for the Super Furry Animals video "Play it Cool". I had to completely change the player rendering code as they insisted that Gruff had to be wearing his orange kagoul, so you get a team with 10 players in football kit and one bloke running about with his orange coat on.

What's your distribution/publishing plan?
Distribution and publishing for Community Games all goes through the 360 dash and since the game is digitally distributed, there's no physical product to shift, which makes life a lot easier for independent developers. Microsoft handle all the payments, via Microsoft points, they take a cut (30%) and then the rest goes directly to the developer.

Are indie games the latest killer app?
Without the innovation and experimentation that comes from indie games, mainstream games will become more and more staid. Publishers won't take risks with the huge budgets that so-called "AAA" games cost nowadays, so you'll end up with yet more licensed 3rd person adventure games, more WW2 first person shooters, and more annual iterations of the same old sports games. Indie games on smaller budgets have the freedom to take risks, to try things that haven't been done before, quality levels are admittedly more varied, but generally you're looking at spending less than a fiver rather than £40, and you can normally try out a demo before even committing to that.

Are you the next big thing?
Microsoft's opening up of the Community Games channel on Xbox 360 offers unprecedented access to console hardware and distribution for independent developers. If properly supported it can become one of the best sources for innovative, independent games. There are issues that need to be addressed in terms of the interface to allow players to find the quality content that is there without having to wade through the "My First Pong" clones to find it. I'm delighted to have got Fitba out on the 360 Community Games channel and hope that Microsoft go on and give the channel the support it needs, it has the potential to be a unique and hugely successful source for indie games, and I'm glad that Fitba and Triple B Games is a part of it.

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