Fight Night Champions Mysterious Single Player Mode is Groundbreaking, Apparently

Fight Night Champions producer Brian Hayes is really excited about the new single player mode in fight Night champions, EA’s latest boxing sim.

It’s pretty easy to tell, what with all the hyperbolic rhetoric he’s been throwing around. Seems exciting, but what is it?

"How groundbreaking is it in relation to Fight Night? It’s certainly the most innovative, groundbreaking thing that any Fight Night game or any Knock Out game has done," Hayes said to Eurogamer. "Even more so, in terms of EA Sports, this approach to a single-player experience is just something that no other EA Sports game has done."

"It’s something that could work in a lot of other sports areas," he added. "It works particularly well for us because of the nature of boxing, but it’s definitely something you could see other games doing down the road. If that happened that would be a pretty cool thing."

What he won’t let slip though, is what this new single player mode actually is.

"All I can say to that effect is everybody here is really excited about what we’re doing," Hayes continued. "Everybody here is on the same page in terms of like, ‘Wow, we’ve never really done anything like this before.’ At the same time, as much as they’re excited about it, there’s a wee bit of nerves. Everybody’s working really hard to make sure we’re knocking it out of the park.

"I’m sure there’s going to be some cynics out there that when the game drops someone will say, ‘This is not a big deal.’," he sighed. "But I can tell you that everyone here – everyone we’ve shown the contents to – thinks it’s a pretty big deal and is genuinely excited and jazzed to see it."

It’s unlikely to be Move or Kinect support, as that’s been ruled out already. What feature could potentially revolutionise sports games? Many sports games already feature RPG-lite elements, could EA be expanding upon that by setting their boxing game in an open, sandbox world? One thing I hope that gets reworked is the training minigames; I’ve always hated them. Pointless, and not fun at all – and usually end up being of detriment to my trained fighter.

Read the full interview with Hayes here.

Last Updated: September 7, 2010