Biography | Andrew Wilson — FIFA 10 Took Two BAFTAs in This Park Lane Hotel

By March 2010 the man hired to explain rugby to Gold Coast programmers had his name on two British Academy awards.

On Friday 19 March 2010 the GAME British Academy Video Games Awards were held at the London Hilton on Park Lane, 22 Park Lane, Mayfair.

Dara Ó Briain hosted. FIFA 10, credited to Electronic Arts and EA Canada, won Sports and Use of Online.

The official lists name three people on both wins: Andrew Wilson, David Rutter, and Gary Paterson.

Wilson was by then the executive producer on the FIFA series, the job EA had given him after the Gold Coast studio closed and after years in Asia and Europe.

The night was not a sweep. Batman: Arkham Asylum took Best Game. Uncharted 2: Among Thieves took four awards. FIFA 10 was a sports title that the academy also scored for how it used the network.

That second prize matters for the later career. Use of Online is the line that points toward Ultimate Team, subscriptions, and the digital business Wilson would later run as chief executive.

The hotel is still a hotel. A visitor standing on Park Lane sees a tower over Hyde Park, not a games studio.

The date and the two category wins are on BAFTA's own 2010 lists and on contemporaneous reports of the same ceremony.

Seventeen months later, in August 2011, EA made him executive vice president of EA Sports. The awards night is the public marker that the FIFA work had already been noticed outside the company.

Photo: Sabrina756, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons. London Hilton on Park Lane, December 2011.