It may not seem like much at a first glance. But it’s history in the making.
Inside one of the world’s most popular video games, one mode stands above the others as the most popular for football fans – Ultimate Team.
Since its introduction in FIFA 09, the mode – which sees players collect cards representing former and current pro players, melding them into a team and playing opponents – has become a staggering force.
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Immensely popular, Ultimate Team has effectively changed the entire video game industry. It has turned EA’s football franchise into a ‘live service’ game; updated weekly, fans need to keep up with the latest and greatest player options to have the best side. And, most importantly for EA, that means they need to spend money.
To get players, gamers can unlock cards via gameplay… or they can buy packs of random cards. And to ensure you get the players you want, you’ll probably need to spend plenty. So much so that in 2020, EA earned a remarkable $2.37 billion from Ultimate Team modes across its sports franchises, according for almost 30 per cent of the company’s total income.
Plenty of analysts have been critical of this live service model and the ‘loot box’ system – the Australian government said in March it wanted mandatory classifications of M for any games containing paid loot boxes, and R 18+ for games containing simulated gambling. But it’s immensely popular, and the primary way millions and millions of football fans interact with the sport virtually.
So what’s this historic change? Put simply: women.
In EA Sports FC 24’s edition of Ultimate Team, for the first time players can play with men and women together – for example, placing Sam Kerr next to Erling Haaland as a devastating striker pairing.
It’s a big step forward from previous years, where women were in the game but siloed separately; top women’s teams or national sides could play against each other, of course, but not against men and not in any of the major single-player modes.
Now, by necessity, a huge portion of the FC fanbase will consider the top women’s players – many would have just ignored them and played other modes in previous years – because they’re going to want to play the best players they have available. And if that happens to be Alexia Putellas, so be it.
Yes, this is all about a mode in a video game. But so much of the difficulty with women’s sport is getting the same level of attention as men’s sport does – with the latter having a head-start lasting centuries, and an enormous in-built audience, some of which does not care for attempts at equality.
So this sort of promotion on a major platform is critical, especially for younger generations, who are the primary audience for video games like this; and for the female players, will now get to see a virtual reflection of themselves growing up. That matters.
As John Shepherd, vice president and executive producer at EA Sports explained, it’s part of the game’s growing women’s expansion – with multiple extra leagues added to this year’s game (though not the women’s A-League).
“We’re on this kind of roadmap of really trying to deliver this game that includes women across the entire game,” Shepherd told Foxsports.com.au.
“We actually got volumetric capture (creating animations from real-life footage) for UEFA Women’s Champions League matches, which is phenomenal, so we can actually take that data and integrate that into the game.
“Sometimes the coverage is a little bit different. But we’ve hired people in our team in Germany, that’s like covering each of those (women’s) leagues. So we’ve had to build expertise in those areas.
“But it’s been super exciting for our team, and just there’s so much more to kind of learn about the sport and how we can really bring things together.”
The key to the decision actually working is another nod towards equality.
Women are rated against women, and men are rated against men – so superstars like Kerr and Putellas may rank in the 90s overall, like Haaland and Lionel Messi – but those ratings then carry over, rather than being scaled in any way.
Unsurprisingly some football fans have reacted poorly to this. While it’s fair to suggest a top men’s team would beat a top women’s team, it would’ve been entirely impractical (and somewhat impossible) to try and balance out how good a female player would be in a men’s competition. It would’ve also ensured the women would never be used by Ultimate Team players.
So, instead, EA has used the fact the mode is a fantasy in the first place to place both men and women on a level playing field.
“The ratings are all the same across the game, so we look at it by competition. And now you can have these mixed gender teams and really kind of build out what you want that team to be,” Shepherd said.
“So we’re really trying to kind of unite the world around football. And I think there’s just there’s power in that.
“Obviously, we have, you know, the clubs and the authenticity of who they are. And in Kick Off and those modes, you’ll play with those clubs, right?
“But Ultimate Team is a squad-building fantasy-based mode. And so it seems like a great opportunity for players to kind of connect with whoever they like, wherever they want, and have a team. So we’re really excited about that.”
EA Sports’ senior vice president of brand Andrea Hopelain is “proud” of where the team has gotten to – and the growing presence of women’s footballers in FC.
“We’re on a journey. We’re on a journey with women’s football – we’ve been on the journey for a lot longer than we’ve been talking about that journey,” she told Foxsports.com.au.
“It took us a while to get to the right skeleton and right rigs (for player models) … multiple years of technology development to get to, what I call the beauty of the women’s game, which has such a different finesse and play style than the men’s game does.
“And this year, bringing women into Ultimate Team – what I would say is we’re going to continue to be on that journey; the depth to the men’s game is significant, and it’s because we’ve been able to build it for so long. So we’re on track. I’m really proud of where we are today and I see a really bold future for us.”
The negativity around the equal ratings was only equalled by the reaction to EA’s reveal of the cover of the pricier Ultimate Edition.
Featuring superstar players, past and present, male and female, the quality of the actual player designs varied – especially for those who are no longer active.
“It’s easy to live in an echo chamber, and just listen to the backlash on some of the social media platforms out there,” Hopelain said.
“But there’s quite a lot of positives; there’s no one other than EA Sports that can bring all of those players together on one cover. If you go out there (at the event), I’m sure you’ve seen all the trophies; there’s no one that can bring all of that together like EA Sports can.
“And so I think it’s our job to continue to bring the world together around football, this is the world’s game.
“And, yes, we may have some (players) that don’t want that. They can play the game how they choose to play it; we have the data that would show that plenty of people are very excited and are playing in new ways and mixed ways that that show the diversity.
“And so it’s our obligation and our commitment to keep giving players that choice.”
Max Laughton travelled to Amsterdam for the launch of EA Sports FC 24 courtesy of EA.
