E3 2010: NCAA Football 11's New Dynasty Mode

by Nate Ahearn - IGN.com | 13 June 2010 12:00
 
A look into the next generation of everyone's favorite extracurricular activity.
 
I've talked at length about the gameplay changes coming to NCAA Football, so you won't find any analog stick mechanics or notes about art style changes below. Instead, this preview is going to provide details on the new, more connected Dynasty Mode that EA Sports is bringing to NCAA Football 11, and why all those iPhones and iPads are going to come in quite handy once July 8 rolls around.
 
In speaking with EA Sports about this year's Dynasty Mode, it's clear that they understand that hardcore college fans want to have the ability to make critical decisions in their dynasty at any moment of any day. What that means for you, the user, is that they're designing custom interfaces for your PC, Mac, iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad that allow you to do things like recruit and sign college-bound prospects as well as upload photos and videos to brag to other players if you happen to be playing in an Online Dynasty (or want to gloat to the CPU). You'll also be able set your dynasty to public or private, so players can elect to give random gamers the ability to hop in their league if they want. Just be mindful of the annoyance of having someone jump into your dynasty and then never play a game (don't worry, you can kick them if needed).
 

This is the page that will suck your life away.

I think hardcore fans are really going to enjoy the ability to start recruiting a player on their Xbox or PlayStation and then transitioning to their iPhone to pick up right where they left off. The freedom of not being forced to keep your actions contained to a single game console is great and an idea that I hope other EA Sports licenses put to good use.
 
The recruiting itself has also seen a bit of fine tuning. Players will now have to budget their coach's time across ten in-game hours. Talking to a prospect about one topic takes 10 minutes and different topics will have different impacts on the player's desire to come play for your squad. You can do things like promise them playing time, compare your hopefully prestigious institution against another of the prospect's top schools, and tout the successes of your head coach to name just a few. Regardless of how you decide to recruit, you'll be able to make pitches, rearrange the priority of prospects and sign up for email alerts (more on these later) about our dynasty, all from any of the many iDevices in the world.
 
Not only that, but EA Sports is also turning Dynasty Mode into a social network of sorts. Players can build their own stories (kind of) by inserting photos and video highlight clips into NCAA Football 11's Storybuilder feature. They'll assign a headline and arrange their different pieces of media and after the process is done other members of the dynasty will be able to comment on the story. Of course, if you're too lazy for any of that, the game will spit out a story of its own every so often. And yes, you'll be able to check these out from your iPhone or iPad as well.
 

Owned.

All of this is in an effort to make gamers feel constantly connected to their dynasty, much like any real sports fan is able to check news on their favorite sports at any minute of the day. I'm sure girlfriends of the world will be saddened to hear that this year's game also allows players to setup email updates for their dynasty. That means that you can choose to be notified whenever big events happen in your dynasty. I was, however, a little disappointed that there are no plans to allow for alerts to be sent out when one of your prospects signs with another school, or yours for that matter. It seems to me that those in charge of a prestigious college institution would want to know when one of their targeted athletes decided to go to the competition, but I could be wrong.
 
The features of NCAA Football retooled Dynasty Mode are far too extensive to be adequately broken down in my quick, 20-minute demo at EA's pre-E3 event, but there should be a lot to enjoy. Things like the Dynasty Wire, which is a constantly updating feed of news from around your league, is something that is best enjoyed in a fully developed dynasty with lots of players, rather than a quick sit down meeting with a developer. Thankfully that doesn't stop the idea from sounding pretty darn cool. This is also true for things like stat checking, top 25 polls, and the ability for a commissioner to whack a lagging player in the head if they're taking their sweet time completing their game.
 
Still, the changes to Dynasty Mode have me extremely excited to get my hands on a final version sometime before the launch on July 8 for Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, iPhone (a standalone game) and PlayStation 2.
 
Supplied by IGN.com