GameSpot AU: How many Olympic sports will be playable in the final game?

Warren Leigh: Thirty-eight events in total. All the classic track and field events are all still in there--the 100m, 200m, long jump, high jump, and throwing events. We've then got the swimming events, like the 50m freestyle, 100m butterfly, and backstroke. There's diving as well. There are also gym events such as rings, floor exercises, the vault, and more. Then we have some unique events which require their own different mechanics, such as judo, cycling, and table tennis.

GS AU: What can you tell us about the control schemes being used in the different events? In what ways are you trying to innovate?

WL: I played a lot of the track and field games in the past, and we never really wanted to go too far away from that, mainly because we loved it so much. But we also knew we had to do something different because people are calling for a revolution. So with the 100m, for example, there's not only the button mashing, but also the stick wagging. So first of all there we give people two options on how to play the game. We then looked at the 100m and saw the fact that the launch has never really been included. We prototyped a few launch mechanics, some of which were timed button presses, but the thing that really hit us was we call the rev mechanic. It's like trying to keep a car under the red line and not wheel spinning at the start. It's really come well together in focus testing. What we're finding in QA at the moment is when you've got an eight-player online match ready to go, there are usually three or four false starts in the game, but that just adds to the tension, because you can see everyone trying to get the best start.

GS AU: What about online for this game? How difficult has that been implementing it for so many events?

WL: It's been tough. Having 38 events is effectively building 38 online games, it really is. When you consider we have turn-based events, like the high jump, then there are competitive events, like the 100m, and then we have tournament-based events like table tennis and judo--you've got three quite different ways of playing the game. But they all work fantastically well. Online has added quite a lot to it--as I said with the 100m online before, there's a real feeling now that the other athletes aren't just robots, they're not just AI--it's a fantastically different experience that's a lot more competitive.