Speaking at last week’s FIFA 14 event in Hong Kong ran in conjunction with the Barclays Asia Trophy, Matt Bilbey said he was delighted to have the pros in town to play a 70% build of FIFA 14.

A number of players from Manchester City, Sunderland and Spurs took part in a tournament last week where the competition was as fierce as any EPL encounter.

SEE PICS FROM THE EVENT HERE

SEE STORY ON JOLEON LESCOTT FROM THE PLAYERS' TOURNAMENT

LEARN MORE ABOUT FIFA 14 FROM 442'S RECENT STORY

 “A lot of the improvements in the shooting in FIFA 14 comes from players and how they shoot, how it changes in the air and how guys like Gareth Bale purposely strike the ball on an angle to make that velocity change,” said EA Senior Vice President & GM of Football Matt Bilbey.

“There’s no better judge of whether your game is authentic and real than a professional football player.”

And he pointed to a tweet from Manchester United to highlight the game’s engagement with elite players.

“Rio tweeted last year after we’d put his pace at 75 or so. And he tweeted, ‘Are you #### kidding me? I’m at least 80!’

So when they come in and talk about how authentic it is, and their stats need to be tuned because they’re better than what we put in the game, I tell them we use a database and they are correct.

“But it helps us to continue to make it a better game. It makes us feel good that these guys and girls are endorsing the fact that it’s good to play FIFA and part of the real game.”

EA SPORTS, technology sponsor of the Barclays Premier League, put the event on to showcase FIFA 14.

City’s Dedryck Boyata won in an exciting final against Spurs player Tom Carroll.

Kaz Makita, Vice President and Executive Producer on FIFA, added that while players were key, their worldwide fan-base of users form an equally important part of the production process.

“Main thing is the passion – we need those people be it engineer, producer, director, it doesn’t matter, we want those people because we know when they work on this game they will do something you never thought of. Because of that passion,” said Makita. 

“We listen to users, it’s really how we change building FIFA,” he added. “It’s not like we don’t know how to make a football game. It’s about asking users what they want and then we can try accommodate those needs in the game. It’s not our game, it’s a users’s game.

“That’s a really important factor in making FIFA.”

For FIFA 14 EA SPORTS has secured licensing agreements with 19 of the top football clubs from Brazil, as part of over 30 leagues, more than 600 clubs, and 16,000 players.

The 19 Brazilian clubs who have been officially licensed and will be showcased in-game are: Atlético Mineiro, Atlético Paranaense, Botafogo, Coritiba, Criciúma, Cruzeiro, Flamengo, Fluminense, Goiás, Grêmio, Internacional, Náutico, Palmeiras, Ponte Preta, Portuguesa, Santos, São Paulo, Vasco da Gama, and Vitória. 

Additional new league and club licenses will be announced prior to FIFA 14’s release in Australia on September 26 and in New Zealand on September 27.