Data released earlier this year, by the Entertainment Retailers Association, revealed that EA’s FIFA 15’s total units’ shifted of 2.66 million placed it at the top of the 2014 sales chart. One person who definitely won’t be celebrating this achievement is game-designer Dino Dini. Dini, who is widely regarded as the godfather of the football simulation genre, got the ball rolling – literally – in 1989 with Atari ST and Amiga title Kick Off, a whole seven years before EA introduced its FIFA series into the videogame landscape. However, despite the developers of FIFA going from strength-to-strength over the last decade, Dini is now semi-retired from the industry – having seen his last few projects canned – and works as a lecturer at the Academy of Digital Entertainment.

Whilst – these days – football fans can place themselves in the virtual boots of a variety of superstar athletes, manage a digital plethora of the sport’s most prestigious teams and even place real money on various digital football betting platforms, in 1987 everything connected to this international sport was of a much more physical, rather than technological, nature. But, with the videogame revolution well underway, many developers began to see the potential of merging the global sport of football with the growing phenomenon of videogaming in the 1980’s. Yet, numerous companies attempted and failed to do so until Dini’s Kick Off succeeded.

What made Kick Off so revolutionary was Dini’s decision to detach the ball from the player’s feet, a standard design feature up to this point within the genre, and have it instead kicked ahead of them like in real life. This feature, along with adding some needed realism to the genre, added numerous dimensions to the gameplay. Besides this revolution of this core dynamic, Kick Off also added numerous features that became standard within the genre. These included rotating and differing tactical decisions by opponents, unique player strengths, action replays, fouls, injures and alternating referee personalities.

Dini also oversaw the development of sequel Kick Off 2 and spin-off title Player Manager in 1990. Player Manager represented yet another instance of Dini’s groundbreaking contributions to the genre with the game being the first to incorporate managerial decisions to proceedings – the title featuring transfers and league tables. These elements would eventually be adopted and adapted by Sega’s Football Manager franchise, which is currently in its 15th entry. This being another case of Dini’s contribution to the genre being utilised by another developer and transformed into a successful franchise without his involvement.

However, Dini is not blameless in this. Dini, who had released Kick Off and its sequels with publisher Anco, decided to sign a big-money contract with Virgin Games in 1992 and abandon the franchise. Consequently, both the Kick Off series – which suffered an inferior design overhaul after Dini’s departure – and Dino’s new project Goal! failed to set the charts alight. The crashing and burning off both these series not only forced Dini out of the premiership of the videogaming world but left a gap in the market that FIFA gladly filled.

Ultimately, although Kick Off served as exactly that for the football simulation genre, it was Dini’s midseason transfer to a bigger but less personable developer that ultimately sent this once premiership series to relegation zone and his own career to the minor leagues.

Related posts: