Hey FIFA fans,

We said in December that we’re aiming to give you more frequent updates about our online connectivity and responsiveness efforts, so today we’re sharing details about our live study methodology.

This Pitch Notes will focus on the deliberate and informed approach we take towards making potential connectivity or responsiveness change. This is because we have to consider real-world networking conditions which are made up of many variable factors such as packet loss, weak WiFi signal, and more.

Before we jump into our live study methodology, be sure to check out our previous Pitch Notes which looks at some of the major connectivity and responsiveness areas we’re currently focused on.

Live Study Methodology

When we make any online change or update, it affects millions of people, each with unique playing conditions. This is why we’ve started implementing live studies alongside our existing internal testing, whenever we investigate a potential change related to connectivity.

Once we identify a potential change and have tested it internally, we determine a group of volunteer players who can give us actionable feedback. These players play the game with the potential change in effect for a period of time, they let us know everything about their experience, and their matches give us valuable real-world data to analyze. Although our internal investigations are able to simulate countless networking scenarios, it’s always helpful to look at real-world data as well.

Live studies greatly assist our ability to make informed decisions regarding future connectivity and responsiveness changes. We’re very fortunate to have so many players who want to participate and share their experiences with us.

One thing that’s important to consider though, is that our live study approach has to be deliberate in order to work effectively. You can think of this like any real-world study; they take time to generate actionable results. We look to make large scale changes when we’re certain of their long term effects, and this certainty comes from internal testing, data, and player feedback.

Current Studies & Next Steps

We’re currently running a live study for small backend change related to button responsiveness which we need to measure the real-world impact of.

In the coming weeks we will be adding an in-game button overlay for a select number of players we are partnering with.