Jeff Luhr is a great example of how to get into the gaming world. He started as a Q&A tester at Electronic Arts and a year later he joined Tiburon and has worked on every NCAA Football game since. We recently got a moment of Jeff's time to ask some detailed questions about NCAA Football's latest incarnation. We cover the effectiveness of the "out" route, CPU run/race ratio, and changes to the recruiting system among other topics. Thanks for your time, Jeff!

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NCAA Football Q&A with Jeff Luhr

Conducted by Tim Martin

Tell us who you are, how long you’ve been involved in the gaming industry, and how you became involved with EA.

Jeff Luhr, I started as a game tester for EA in 1997 and joined the EA-Tiburon team full-time in 1998.

Have you always worked on sports titles?

Yes, I’ve worked on every NCAA Football title since NCAA ’98. I also worked on Madden NFL 2001, the first edition for PS2.

Do you think you have to be a fan of real sports to appreciate videogame sports?

No, I don’t think you do. For example, I’m not a soccer fan at all. In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever watched more than 2 minutes of a game. But that doesn’t mean I can’t appreciate certain elements from a soccer videogame. Games are very similar in that they all have the same basic elements: gameplay, graphics, animation, sound, user interface, etc… These elements can be appreciated when they are done well, no matter what genre you’re talking about.

Many reports from E3 have said that the effectiveness of the “out” route has been significantly decreased. Could you go into some detail on what you did exactly?

We increased the awareness of our defensive backs in zone and man coverage so they will break on the ball more quickly. With the addition of new swat animations, defenders are now “smarter” about how they want to play the ball. If they’re in a situation with no immediate help (very common on the out routes) they will be more likely to try and swat the ball away instead of going for an interception. The user will also have this ability because we added the swat ball functionality to the L1 button.

Last season there were many gripes about a questionable sim engine. It seemed that too many of the “mid-majors” shot up to national prominence within two or three years. Will we be seeing UTEP, Ball State, Rice, and UCF replace Miami, Nebraska, and Florida State?

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This has been a problem ever since NCAA ’98 when Dynasty mode was first introduced. This year we made significant changes to the sim engine, team prestige growth AI, as well as Top 25 poll AI. This has greatly reduced the number of “pretenders” from winning national titles within 2 or 3 years.

Can we safely say we won’t have the freeze-ups and extremely long (60 secs+) load times for this year’s game?

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Yes. This problem with NCAA 2002 was due to defective CDs and it had nothing to do with the game itself.

Have you adjusted the CPU run/pass ratio? Even when playing a traditionally strong running team, such as Nebraska, as soon as you got even a 3-0 lead the CPU would abandon the run and throw 85-90% of the time.

Yes, this problem has been fixed.

Could you go into some detail about what you did to change the recruiting system? It has been reported that recruits will now tend to sign with teams that favor to their style (WR’s going to Florida, HB’s going to Nebraska, etc, etc) unlike last year. What other changes can we look forward to (such as the change from the five star classification system to the six star one)?

The change that will have the most impact is the addition of regional recruiting. Basically, this just means that it will cost more points to recruit players that live further away. In addition, the entire recruiting interface has been given a facelift. Very pleasant to look at and quite user-friendly.

Will there be side-arm throws this year?

Sorry, Madden only.

What is the one new feature that gamers will enjoy the most?

I think this is a toss up between Create-a-School and Trophy Room. I love them both.

Are there going to be any new hot routes such as the fade or the slant?

Sorry, Madden only.

Will we be able to see where our college players were drafted without importing out class to Madden?

No, you will have to import them into Madden to see their pro future!

(June 17, 2002)

Our Preview of NCAA Football 2003