THIS IS FOOTBALL 2

 “Team Soho” was Sony Computer Entertainment Europe’s first internal development studio -  set up in 1994.   Its first two releases Total NBA and Total NBA ’97 were both critically acclaimed.   The studio then went on to produce Porsche Challenge, Rapid Racer and Spice World and more recently This is Football which has already recorded over 500,000 units sold since its launch at he end of last year.

Key Personnel

Ben Fawcett has been working at SCEE for 5 years. Originally working in the developer support department, he moved into the development group in 1996 by taking the position of Lead Programmer on Total NBA 97.  This Is Football 2 is his third game, and as Lead Programmer, he is responsible for the in-game Artificial Intelligence, gameplay mechanics and the commentary system.

Dominic Cahalin started working for SCEE 6 years ago as a Producer on the 3D platform game Jumping Flash.    Since then he has moved into a full time design position contributing to several internally developed games.    Dominic is the Lead Designer on This Is Football 2 where he is responsible for all areas of game design as well as co-scripting the commentary.

Tony Racine started his gaming career programming on the Commodore Pet with titles published on the Atari 8 bit, QL, ST and Amiga computers.    He moved from Eidos almost four years ago and joined SCEE as the Producer on This Is Football.   His main responsibilities include project and team management and the direction of the TIF franchise from a development point of view.

Simon Fenton joined SCEE from Bits four years ago, to work on NBA 97.    This Is Football 2 is his third project.   As Lead Artist Simon is chiefly responsible for the Motion capture and hand created animations.  He has also worked extensively on updating the player models and oversees the direction of all artistic content.

Robert Swan has been with the team for almost two years.  This Is Football 2 is his second project in the video games industry. Robert came to the attention of SCEE through his Net Yaroze ‘Adventure’ game (as featured on the front of Official PlayStation Magazine). Robert has been working as a Software Engineer ever since and has recently been working on the new tournaments within TIF2.

Steve Jopling left university with a degree in software engineering, having studied many subjects to help him start a career in game development. Steve spent two and half years working for EA Sports Europe on FA Premier League Manager 99 and 2000. From here he went to work on FA Premier League Stars before leaving to join SCEE. Now working on improving the gameplay AI, This is Football 2 will be his 4th published title.

Richard Bates worked for CodeMasters on PlayStation, Dreamcast and PC products before joining SCEE to work on a number of internal projects. He joined the This is Football 2 development team working on gamplay and AI implementation and has implemented the revolutionary Icon Passing in this next generation game.

Matt Gosling also worked at Bits on a number of projects. His experience includes games on the Atari Jaguar, PC, N64 and more recently on the PlayStation and has been in the games industry for over 5 years. Matt has been working hard to squeeze the PS1 to it’s limit in order to enhance the graphical appearance of This is Football 2 and improve the games cut scenes.

Alek Kenton in keeping with most of the team, Alek is a keen games player. Inspired by computer games, this eventually led to him completing a Masters of Research at University College of London in the field of Computer Vision, Image Processing and Graphics. One intention of this was to establish a foothold in the games industry as a career.  Alek joined the This Is Football 2 team this year where he is responsible for the implementing the Language and localisation aspects of the game, and the look and feel of the in-game menus and windowing system.  

Alex Allmont first became interested in computer games at school while playing on his Commodore Vic 20. He first learned to program on this and on the BBC computers at school using BASIC and assembly code. While at college Alex misappropriated time working on 3D demos for the PC, but after college moved into banking software. 2 years later, Alex left this field and joined SCEE as a Software Engineer. He is responsible for implementing the new menu and Front-End system for This Is Football 2.

Adrian (Wes) White after going to art college for a year, moved to take an English degree and went through several jobs before joining a rock band called “Trixx”. Wes worked as a professional musician for 8 years before leaving the band to take a course at the London Cartoon centre and doing some freelance comic work. From here he joined the game developer Rebellion as a graphic artist. Working on a PC Fantasy RPG game, he worked on character design and modelling. He moved to SCEE in 1995 were his credits include Rapid Racer (where he designed and produced a number of the tracks) and Spice World. This is Football 2 is Wes’ third published title for which he produced some of the new stadium models and textures.

Jon Venables left college to run his own record label. During this period he produced the music for a Virtual Reality game and then for a number of other commercial games. Inspired by his increasing involvement in the games industry he joined the developer Charybdis working on 3D modelling and texturing for a PC game called “Machines”. Jon joined SCEE in Sept 98 working on a variety of projects before joining the This is Football 2 art team where he has produced some of the stunning new stadium models

Keith Ribbons studied graphic design at college for 5 years and became interested at the same time in Computer Animation. After college Keith specialised in Animation for TV programmes working for a natural history TV production company where he chalked up over 30 TV program credits for BBC, Channel 4 and the Discovery Channel. Keith joined SCEE in early 2000 when the opportunity arose to indulge his interest in character animation. As a result he has worked on storyboarding and generating FMV sequences as well as editing the animations and cut scene sequences for This is Football 2, which is his first published game.

Sayo Arae first started playing games on her SNES where she soon became a Mario addict! During her degree course, Sayo decided that she would like to work within the games Industry and so her degree in Computer Visualisation and Animation won her a job at SCEE. Sayo worked on the player animations and cut sequence choreography for This is Football 2, and thrashes everybody at Unreal Tournament!

Andrew Hamilton has been a computer game fan since the tender age of 6, playing on an Atari VCS 2600. He left college after completing a course in Visual Communication and went on to work on a number of Web and CD Multi Media projects in the Charity and IT fields. He joined SCEE in early 2000 and developed the new menu and front-end designs, Fonts, game packaging and general artwork concepts. His living room is now a shrine to computer games – apparently!

Kevin Mason joined the SCEE internal QA team based in Liverpool nearly four years ago. As a football enthusiast (and Hammers supporter) Kev worked very closely with the team developing This Is Football from it’s early days. He eventually formed the small group of researchers collating the accurate team and player statistics which under-pinned the innovative AI of the first title. When starting the daunting task of developing the follow up, Kev was a natural choice to join the team as the assistant game designer.

Jason Page  Before joining SCE, Jason was working for GraftGold, where amongst other titles he did the Music and Sound Effects for Rainbow Islands and Uridium. He joined SCE in 1996 and has written music for many games including Gran Turismo, Cool Boarders 2, Porsche challenge and This is Football.

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Developer: Sony Computer Entertainment Europe Genre: Football Simulation
No. of Players:  1-8   Peripherals:  Multi Tap, Analog Controller (DUAL SHOCK), Memory Card