From an interview to Game Designer Bryan Williams by our friends at SmackTalks.org, here's what transpired concerning the return of the Special Referee Match in WWE '13:
Bryan Williams:
"The Special Referee: when playing as him you're given a lot of opportunities to meddle in the match, so you'll be in charge of counting pinfall's, count outs and checking on submissions. The way that the match works is that the referee has a "Referee Meter" that starts out in the middle point at the start of the match, and as you officiate, depending on the route you take, it'll either accumulate or decrease. If you choose to call the match down the middle and be impartial your meter will fill, which then allows you to perform some pretty heinous actions, such as being able to perform your finisher on an opponent, or even being able to perform a screwjob finish during submission holds, which are actions you can take part in by building your referee meter to a certain point.
Conversely, if you are a bad referee and don't count pin falls or check on submissions, you'll see your meter decrease and you can even physically engage with opponents and push them around. You can't actually grapple with them, but you can grab them and push them around, which in doing these actions will put the opponent at a disadvantage and cause your referee meter to deplete. Once your meter completely depletes, John Laurinaitis will come out and kick you out of the match, replacing you with the actual AI controlled referee. It's definitely balanced, so it's not entirely biased one way or the other, you wont be in a situation were 3 minutes into a match your gonna be kicked out, we tuned it into what I think has very good balance between being good or bad, before finally getting ejected."
"The infamous screwjob, you can perform that as a Special Referee., it's one of my favourite additions to the Special Referee match and the reaction that the Superstars perform after they've been screwed over is pretty priceless also. So as the Special Referee you'll have everything at your control, whether that be counting a pinfall really fast or slow depending on who your favoring is one thing, but I think being able to actually screw over an opponent who's in a submission hold just really is the icing on the cake. I've even played matches with the Special Referee controlled by the AI during title matches and I've lost my title because the referee has screwed me over! So playing these matches while the Special Referee is being played by a player or the AI, I love having the AI as the Special Referee as it just adds that unpredictability whether it's a standard match 1 on 1, or a tag match, it just makes it that much more exciting and unpredictable, which is what wrestling is all about."
