EA Sports has shed more light on its new online in-game service Football Club, claiming it "is the heartbeat of FIFA from now on." Talking exclusively to IGN at a behind-closed-doors demonstration of FIFA 12 at E3, Line Producer David Rutter added, "This is not just for FIFA 12 , it's for all FIFA games moving forward."

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Rutter then went on to explain how Football Club will revolutionise FIFA's online play by adding a new layer of social depth to the game: "Everything you do in the game will accumulate XP and you can track your progress in FIFA 12 and other FIFA games in the future with your friends. You can compare yourself against your friends but also see how you're doing in the bigger global leaderboard."In many respects it appears Football Club is FIFA's equivalent of Need for Speed's innovative Autolog, which enabled you to keep track of how your friends were doing and issued challenges in-game.However, Rutter believes it will make the FIFA experience even more authentic because it'll take in even more aspects of the real game. "We're going to rip stuff from real life and put it into the game as part of the challenge system, which is a free live service that gives you different challenges throughout the year." One example given at the EA press conference was playing as Spurs in the FA Cup semi-final, tasked with changing history and overcoming Manchester City.Interestingly there's much more to it than that though and Rutter confirms "It's not about the club you play as in the game, it's about the club you support. So as a Manchester United fan, as part of the challenge service, you might be asked to play as Blackpool and survive the Man United onslaught on the last day of the Premier League season."Importantly, everything you do in the game contributes to your overall ranking, but performing well has a much bigger impact: "You'll be able pledge your allegiance to a club in the 'support your club' feature", says Rutter. "This is where you can say to everyone 'I support this club'. But when you accumulate XP for yourself you also do the same for your club, which goes into a pot. This amount is averaged out depending on the number of fans each club has and clubs will move up and down the league based on how good they are."So if you're an Arsenal fan, you can help shift the Gunners to the top of the game's global leaderboard, although fellow fans need to be sticking in the goals in order for your club to enjoy success.Rutter promises it won't just be the top flight clubs that are the focus for challenges either, stating "We have a lot of teams in the game and we'll be operating it as a live service, so we'll have people back in the office who are prepped to get everything ready. The scale of it at the moment is undefined so the plan is to run and see what people like but continue to make changes and deliver the best we can based on players' feedback."IGN also spoke to Rutter about the player injury system shown off in an early demo of the game, and while he was hesitant to reveal too much, he did offer this: "True injuries are part and parcel of the new Player Impact Engine. We harvest information about the player so we know exactly where they've been hit and how hard. Self injuries happen rarely and it's based on fatigue, but if you're playing career mode and you're caning a player every single game he will come to you and ask for a rest. If you ignore that multiple times then there is a chance he will injure himself."Clearly it's an ongoing development cycle in which the team behind FIFA is continually looking for new ways to innovate, something FIFA 12 promises to do when it launches later this year. "The Player Impact Engine has taken two years to get right in the game. Football Club will add a different type of authenticity and realism to the game based on real life. There are huge opportunities for the future but this is by far the biggest step in quality we've done in years."