How did EA Sports College Football 25 create its players and stadiums? CEO Andrew Wilson weighs in on the process

EA Sports College Football 25 has received mostly positive reviews since its worldwide release on July 19—or three days earlier for those who opted to pre-order the Deluxe Edition. It was the franchise's first release since NCAA Football 14, which came out all the way back in 2013.

Andrew Wilson, who serves as the CEO of the video game developer, revealed in the "Electronic Arts Q1 2025 Earnings Conference Call" on Tuesday how they created players and stadiums.

"This new college football experience is an impressive creative and technological achievement. Creating 150 unique stadiums and over 11,000 player likenesses couldn't be done without EA's deep history of being a technology leader and by our incredibly passionate and talented teams harnessing the power of AI and machine learning to deliver truly amazing entertainment," said Wilson.

EA Sports has received plenty of criticism in recent years for the gameplay in their Madden franchise, with many claiming that it has become stagnant; but their latest release has drawn praise. While there are some issues that they are working to correct, such as bugs and in-game animations, there are no complaints about the stadiums or players, which were created by artificial intelligence (AI).

Check out Wilson's comments below (starting at the 8:55 mark):

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Andrew Wilson elaborates on AI's role in EA Sports College Football 25

Later in the company's earnings call, Wilson shared more information on the role that AI played in the creation of EA Sports College Football 25. The CEO said:

"We had to get 11,000 new star player heads into the game. For those that don't track our industry or track our sports games in particular, we typically, in any given year, will develop about 500 to 1,000 star heads inside of one of our games. And over the course of a platform generation, through the hand tooling of that, we ultimately fill out the full roster of star heads in our games. And of course, there were ebbs and flows in that."

He noted that getting the player's heads into the game was a top priority and that AI and machine learning amplified and accelerated the process.

Wilson added, "In the absence of AI we simply would not have been able to deliver College Football at the level we did, even though we've given the team many, many years in development."

The return of the college football franchise has largely been considered a success. EA Sports College Football 25 reportedly surpassed $500 million in sales, according to a report from Mike Straw of Insider Gaming on Tuesday.