Manchester City goalkeeper Joe Hart dealing with a cross. FIFA 14 not that realistic then (Picture: EA Sports FIFA 14)

‘I think I’m going to pick… Barcelona.’

It is a sentence that draws both a weary sigh and a knowing shrug from experienced players of football video games. Unlike the trophy-hungry newbies who merely want to be Lionel Messi for a few minutes, the grizzled gamers know that there is more joy in grinding your way to glory in the guise of Leyton Orient.

The statistics, however, show that success sells. Barcelona are the most popular team among players of the Fifa franchise – the latest instalment, Fifa 14, has gone on sale today. It probably makes sense. To their old-school critics, who prefer their football to be played with a bit more rough and tumble, Barcelona in reality are not unlike their Fifa counterpart, characterised by lots of short passing and a complete absence of tackling. Boring, boring Barca.



Yet EA Sports, who have been putting out Fifa games since 1993, wouldn’t have it any other way. For 20 years they have been trying to recreate what happens on an actual pitch.


Don’t you remember how real footballers in the ‘90s had a yellow star around their feet when they were in possession of the ball? Okay, so perhaps that was one area where the first Fifa game, Fifa International Soccer, didn’t quite match up to the real thing, but in two decades the franchise has gone through more changes than Manchester City have managers.

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However, not unlike the ‘noisy neighbours’ on Manchester, Fifa has upped its game in the past few years.

‘Fifa has gone beyond the borders of core gaming and is enjoyed by a huge audience,’ said Christopher Dring, associate editor of MCV magazine.

‘Despite its success, it’s not always been the best football game. Some iterations have been downright terrible. But over the last four years that has changed and it has picked up critical plaudits to go along with its big sales numbers. As a result, the game is more popular than it has ever been.’

But while Fifa is often branded the FC Barcelona of football video games – adored by many, dismissed as overrated by others – it actually started out as more of a Burnley FC.

‘The story of Fifa is astonishing, a real underdog story,’ said Dring, who pointed out that EA wanted a European title to match the success of its John Madden American football game in the US. A small team in Canada was tasked to work with British developers to come up with a ‘soccer’ game to please the top brass in the US.

‘It was almost cancelled several times by an unsure management team in America,’ said Dring. ‘It’s easy to look back on something and chastise a company for not believing in a product that turned out to be one of the most successful games in the world, but everything is clearer in retrospect.’

Fifa still divides gamers – asking someone if they prefer it or its long-standing rival, Pro Evolution Soccer (its latest edition was also launched this week), is a bit like travelling back in time to 1995 and asking some indie kids if they like Blur or Oasis.



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Dring said the big challenge for Fifa and PES would be how they handle the transition to the next generation of consoles: the Xbox One and PS4 will arrive in November.

The Fifa franchise’s use of official licences has helped it shape gaming – and football itself.

‘The influence Fifa has had on video games has been huge,’ said Dring. ‘Gameplay modes such as Ultimate Team now exist in many rival sports titles and its use of football stars and celebrities to promote the game has helped the entire video game category become a mainstream entertainment medium.

‘Perhaps what isn’t so clear is the impact Fifa has had on the real world of football. It wasn’t until EA started asking for player likenesses and stadiums and official league licences that the footballing bodies starting to get its licensing house in order and made football an even bigger business.’

Indeed, as Dring points out, mention the word ‘Fifa’ to most people and they think of misspent youths clutching a joypad, not the embarrassing collection of world football delegates headed by Sepp Blatter.

Matt Hill, deputy editor at T3 magazine, said: ‘EA Sports has turned a kickabout into a commercial phenomenon by tapping into what football fans want – not just to play a football game but pretend they actually are the footballers – and owning that space, purposefully blurring the lines between the real game and the virtual one.’

The football gaming landscape was very different in the early ‘90s. There were no issues over players’ image rights, mainly because in the games you could only see the top of their heads.


‘There were a lot more football games, many of the bird’s-eye-view variety – Kick Off, Sensible Soccer,’ said Hill.

‘Fifa was really the first one to attempt 3D realism, at first created artificially through an isometric view, but later through 360-degree motion capture. It raised the bar in terms of visuals and then the razzmatazz that surrounds it.’

But even before its footballers looked like the actual footballers, Fifa had tapped into something.

‘We used to hold tournaments regularly on the original Fifa on the Mega Drive in our school days,’ recalled Hill. ‘Draw paper names out of hats FA Cup-style at lunch, then all back to a friend’s, pre-match warm-ups on the small TV in the back room, the living-room telly for the main events. Good times.’