FIFA 09 Ultimate Team, Football Academy

I used to work on a manager game a while ago, and I would say that probably the biggest problem with DS is just the size. Manager games are huge, they take up a vast amount of data. Also, the trouble with DS users in the past is that it has predominantly been younger users. I know there's older users now with games like Brain Age, but also a lot of figures coming out show a lot of them are women.

I'd assume that [developers/publishers] probably felt that the core audience wasn't there, and that the actual technology probably wasn't good enough to make a really good football management sim, in terms of the number of players and data.

It is pretty deep. When the idea was first touted around it was literally going to be a football knowledge game. I looked at this, and I looked at a lot of other DS games, and soon came to the conclusion that that was going to get pretty dull, pretty quickly, so we needed something else. The card thing worked because, in a lot of DS games - like your Pokémons, your Nintendogs - there's a lot of collecting, nurturing and trading in there. They're very popular mechanics. And then games like Brain Training are popular as well, so we thought, 'Well let's see if we can mix these together.'

As you're starting the game you'll get a starter pack that has one player from your favourite team and other not-so-good players. You'll then go through a series of mini-tests or IQ games. As you go through each test you'll get a score, and the card pack you get will depend on how well you did. Your knowledge really will help you build a better team.

You can trade like in Ultimate Team via local Wi-Fi, which gives the playground feel of 'swapsies' and collecting Panini stickers back in the day. We did this quite a lot whilst we were in meetings, but, er, obviously nobody knew about that.

You can play other teams as well. We've got five of the top leagues - UK, Italy, France, Germany, Spain - and the way it works is that you have a collector's album for your cards, but you need to fill in a certain amount of that page to unlock the team to play against. The idea is to get good scores to get better packs and unlock better cards to collect, and go from bronze to silver to gold. You can move between the leagues as well; it's a good idea sometimes to play some of the lower teams to get more points. As you beat those teams you'll earn badges to chart your progress. Once you beat all the teams you'll get a trophy.

So you can imagine you're playing an IQ test, you can practice those; you're collecting cards, you're trading; you're playing matches against every team in the league or against your friend - you're talking at least 80 hours of gameplay, maybe even way more than that if you really go into that, because the game doesn't really end as such.

Originally we had this comic-book interaction idea, but it turned out that mechanic - as cool as sounded and looked - wasn't actually that dynamic or interesting. But at that point we'd already created a load of comic book images for the players. So we crossed it: imagine a cross between Pokéemon/RPG-style battles and Football Manager.

And the great thing about it, as with the rest of the game, is that it's all totally designed for DS: we don't use the d-pad or buttons at any point, it's all using the stylus. One game even uses the microphone where you play as the referee.

But going back to the match itself: you'll go in, pick your team, have all the chemistry stuff and then the match starts like an old-school Football Manager game with a left position bar and a clock ticking down. And then you'll go into a highlight, where we've used the comic-book idea, and at this point you'll have to make a decision, which is where the Pokémon bit comes in. You'll have to chose either a high-risk or a low-risk option, depending on the players you've got.

It'll fly-in the stats of the two players and put them side-by-side in a battle, which might be tackling, passing or shooting depending on how high you are up the pitch. You'll see the chemistry stats fly in, you'll see energy stats fly in, and then you pick your choice. As well as this, and while the match is on-going, you can pick which side of the pitch to play the ball down, increasing the likelihood of your star winger picking up the ball. But to stop you from routinely picking your tricky winger, his energy will go down each time he gets the ball. You can also choose to push up or sit back or play balanced. If you're on the attack and you push up you'll get bonus points, but if you end up defending you're going to lose points.

By picking a high-risk action during a battle you'll be less likely to win but, if you do, you'll have more success. Take a dribble, for example, a high risk will go past a player and move further up the pitch. It's a series of battles.

We've been playing this in meetings, because another great thing is that you can carry on a game whenever you want, such as on a train. I struggle playing FIFA or PES on the train because I'm always looking up to see if I've missed my stop, whereas with this you can shut the lid and carry on where you left off. Multiplayer is over local Wi-Fi.

[Laughs] It all depends when we get the stats. DS titles actually take longer to manufacture than 360 and PS3 titles, because of the cartridge and so on and so forth, so the data will be based on when Arsenal were actually above Villa in the league. And I would still argue that Arsenal are a better side than Villa, having seen the Chelsea vs Villa game at the weekend.