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'It's a football MMO.'

These four words, uttered by my interviewer, and future boss Luke Smith, made my eyes widen.

I’d taken the train up from London to Nottingham for a job interview at Monumental Games. The company was looking for a designer on a new MMO under development.

I was nervous, obviously, and worried that I’d be working on yet another wannabe World of Warcraft clone that was more than likely doomed to failure.

Let’s get something straight here. I love MMOs. I’ve spent countless hours playing them, with Ultima Online offering me a first taste of this huge genre and Pirates of the Burning Sea being the most recent played. In between, games like Star Wars Galaxies, Anarchy Online, Eve Online and City of Heroes/Villains have given me fun alternatives to the traditional and ubiquitous Orc and Elf inhabited virtual worlds.

There’s so much scope to make a game outside of the usual fantasy based setting and I knew that if this new game by Monumental was based in some made up land full of rainbow coloured unicorns and wizards I personally wouldn’t have been too interested.

But this was different. I couldn’t help but smile like a child at the idea of a football MMO. It was, like most great concepts, a deceptively simple idea. One so obvious that you struggled to grasp how no-one had thought of it before.

It helps that I also love playing football games. I’ve played most of the iterations of FIFA through the years, starting with the original tiny pixel people of the Sega MegaDrive incarnation. I’ve also enjoyed Konami’s Pro Evolution series since the Super Nintendo days (although back then it was still called International Superstar Soccer). The thought of adding a unique twist to these much loved games by pushing them in an MMO direction set my mind racing with a thousand and one questions.

The next hour or so was therefore spent enthusiastically discussing with Luke how such a venture would work. What if people dropped out of games? How would skills work? Would players be able to level up? What kind of camera system would give the best view of the action? What about lag? Griefers? AI?

We talked about all these issues and more, and found that we seemed to have a common vision for the game and its almost limitless potential. Interviews are a two way process. Just as the interviewer is assessing how well you’d fit into a role, the interviewee should be assessing what it would be like to work at the company. I truly believe that if you’re going to spend nine or more hours of your life, every day, doing a job, then you should enjoy the work and like the people you’re working with!

Needless to say, I left the interview buzzing. I felt as though we’d only scratched the surface in terms of ideas and that this was a huge opportunity. I had a very good feeling about the company, the people and the game concept.

A few days later, I got a call from Luke offering me the job. A couple of weeks after that I’d moved to Nottingham and had started working on Football Superstars.

The rest, I’m sure, will be history.