Last week, VGC sat down with EA Sports to discuss The Grounds, the brand-new open-world mode coming to EA Sports FC 27.
Karthik Venkateshan, line producer on The Grounds, and Jean-Francois Guastalla, design director on The Grounds, spoke to VGC about the development of the new mode and how it will change across the season.
The key takeaway is that The Grounds isn’t replacing Clubs. While players will seemingly have to enter The Grounds to get to Clubs (which is in the building right next to the spawn point), the popular 11 vs 11 mode will remain.
“Clubs are one of the many ways to play together in The Grounds,” Venkateshan said.
“So when we thought about how do we enable more ways for people to play together and what reasons would they have to play together in what context they want to do so, the thing that kept coming back from all of the different voices in the community was depending on which clubmates are online.
“Different experiences matter to them at different points. So we’ve built a range of these experiences, from very competitive to very chill. It’s up to our fans to decide when they want to do what and how much of it at any given time. So on the far end, the hyper-competitive ones would be the club league and playoffs.
“Then on the other end of the spectrum we’ve got these football-adjacent experiences, party-like experiences almost where it’s like ‘dodgeball meets football’ experience or ‘basketball meets football’ experience. There’s also a bocce ball-based experience in there.”
EA has said that The Grounds was inspired by Clubs players who wanted game modes that were satisfying to play with smaller groups, as getting an entire gaming group together for a session isn’t always possible, something older players will appreciate.
Venkateshan says that watching his kids experience video games inspired the space, as EA looks to build a mode that’s more in tune with the way modern audiences engage with online spaces.
“I have young kids now and I kind of see how they experience gaming and just that genuine laughter that they have, where they’re not critiquing it, they’re not being pessimistic, they’re just letting go of everything and just being caught up in the moment as two or three young kids playing, laughing, having a blast and just being like, ‘that was a great experience and I want to do more of it’. I think we want that social kid spirit.”
While elements of The Grounds will allow players to spend real money, as is the case in the current Clubs game mode and more famously Ultimate Team, EA tells us that every clothing item that can be purchased in The Grounds can be earned via in-game currency.
VGC had the chance to go hands-on with the mode at EA’s Vancouver studio. “I’m impressed with The Grounds so far, though I’m slightly mournful of the fact that I don’t think I’ll ever get to experience it the way it’s intended,” our preview reads.
“It feels like a dream mode for the version of me that would finish school, get home, jump in a PSN party with my mates, and sit there all night chatting. It’s a social space where the football part can easily slide into the background.
“I can also see exactly where this mode could be monetised within an inch of its life. My main question for the developers of The Grounds, whom I will be chatting to in the coming days, is whether or not I can build a player that’s just as capable as someone who’s spent real money, and what kind of time investment that will require.”
During the same trip, we got the chance to go hands-on with the traditional kick-off mode to get a feel for the gameplay changes that have been made to EA Sports FC 27.
In our first impressions of EA FC 27’s gameplay, we wrote: “Truthfully, I won’t know exactly how I feel about EA Sports FC 27 until I have 100 games under my belt, but from what I’ve played so far, I can see the vision. The corner kick changes are significant, and the added attacking options are a lot of fun to experiment with.”
