Full disclosure, I work for Electronic Arts. I am the Content Manager for easports.com and I work primarily with our FIFA and NHL (plus UFC) Franchises. Please do not view this as gospel as I don’t specifically work in the “Ratings Dept.” of either franchise. I just wanted to talk about this subject as a fan of sports and as someone who has to look at player ratings as part of his job.

Player Ratings is one of the most talked about aspects in sports video games. Last September, we at easports.com had over 10 million pages views on our various FIFA 15 ratings blogs (that figure is just on our English-language pages as our blogs are localized in over a dozen different languages.) We covered everything from the Top 50, to the Top 20 of each major league and we even broke down specific positions and other attributes.

On Monday, Game Informer posted a blog regarding Player Ratings in various sports games (http://www.gameinformer.com/b/features/archive/2015/04/06/performance-enhancing-plugs-which-sports-game-is-guilty-of-inflated-ratings.aspx.) The author (Matt Bertz) makes some interesting points but as someone who has worked on player ratings pieces, I found the blog lacking in certain areas.

Without question, NHL is guilty of having too many players who are rated far too close to one another. Just taking a look at our pre-season ratings for NHL 15, of the Top 50 players (https://www.easports.com/nhl/news/2014/nhl-15-player-ratings-top-50-overall), the #50 player is rated with an 89-overall. In comparison with FIFA 15, #50 was rated with an 84-overall (https://www.easports.com/fifa/news/2014/fifa-15-player-ratings-top-50). At the top of the table, NHL’s highest rated player was 96 while FIFA’s was 93.

However, player ratings in video games are not black and white. It would have been nice if the Game Informer article broke down the ratings by position rather than grouping all players together. An 86-rated Goalie cannot be equally compared to an 86-rated Center. Just like a 90-rated Point Guard can’t be compared in the same light as a 90-rated Quarterback. Do we compare Call of Duty with Dragon Age? I’m pretty certain we don’t (and we shouldn’t.)

One thing you need to look at in regards to NHL 15 are the leagues available. In Bertz’s article, he stated that he only looked at “… each player on the professional rosters…” of the four major titles. Since he only factored the “professional rosters”, that would assume he only looked at the 32 NFL, 30 NBA, 30 MLB and 30 NHL franchises. While Madden only includes the NFL, the other games include other leagues in their games. NBA 2K15 features the Euroleague (made up of professional teams from Europe), The Show features Minor League teams and NHL 15 includes the AHL, a number of leagues in Europe and junior hockey.

Minor (Farm) Leagues play a major role in how players are rated in NHL. In the NBA 2K series, players are rated based in comparison to other NBA players. Although NBA 2K15 does include Euroleague teams, those players pale in comparison to those who make a living in the NBA and teams like Berlin, Madrid or even Belgrade were not included in his data. If they were or if NBA 2K included D-League players and their ratings were included, the 74.8 OVR for NBA 2K15 would certainly drop below 70.

You have to look at the rosters in NHL 15 as three tiers.

Tier 1 is the NHL, these are the best of the best. So, players should be rated mostly rated in the 70s and 80s with a few players falling in the 60 and 90 ranges (the common Bell Curve.)

Tier 2 would be players from the AHL and the European leagues. Again, still “professional leagues” but these are players who are either not quite ready for prime-time or are just not good enough to get there. As you’d expect, these players should be rated in the 55 – 70 range with a few players in the low (or sub) 50s and maybe a handful of players landing in the low 80s.

Your final tier is the junior leagues. These are 16-18 year old players, so they should be rated in the 40 – 60 range with a few landing on the high or low end of the chart (the Bell Curve still applies.)

Again, I am not fighting against the fact that the NHL players in NHL 15 could be spread out a bit more (meaning more players in the 70s), but if you were to look at the entire player database, the average of 82 would not hold true.

At the same time, if you begin to rate more NHL players below 70 (or move players from the 80 range to the 70 range), then you would have to decrease the overall ratings of the other leagues. Meaning that CHL and young European players who are already in the 35-55 range would then need to be dropped an additional 5-10 points. Would you ever play with a team made up of players rated 30 (or, would you accept starting your Be a Pro Career with a similar rating)? Probably not, unless you support that team.

Some of the comments in the piece pointed out that FIFA (or even Pro Evolution Soccer) were not included in this list. I think neither game was included for a few reasons.

1) The MLS is not a top tier league in the same vein as the other pro leagues in North America (at the launch of FIFA 15, only three MLS players were rated above 80, and one of those guys now plays in England.)

2) There are far too many leagues and players available in FIFA (30+ leagues, 10,000+ players).

3) It would be impossible to only include one league (and unfortunately, you could not just include just the Champions League as FIFA doesn’t have the license (or all 32 teams) while PES doesn’t have all 32 teams (although they have the license.))

If you take a quick look at a few of the clubs that make up the Barclays Premier League, the ratings of players is not that spread out. Of Chelsea’s core 18 (meaning their starting 11 players and seven available subs), only one player is rated below 75 and he’s on the bench. Of the 11 starters for Chelsea, the lowest rated players have an 81 overall rating. While the reserves do include players in the 50s and 60s range, these players are rarely featured and would not be counted in Bertz’s article.

Arsenal does have a sub 70 rated player starting for them. But unlike Chelsea, Arsenal have a deep Reserve squad featuring players in the 80s. The 64-OVR player that’s starting at rightback could be easily swapped for an 80 rated player who is currently sitting on the reserves.

Even the worst team (looking at the Current BPL standings) doesn’t skew the ratings spectrum that much. Leicester City’s 18 does not include a player rated below 64 and their lowest rated player on their reserve squad is a 54.

Would you look at the player ratings of the BPL (or any of the five major leagues) in FIFA 15 and say that they are inflated? No, because those are the best soccer players in the world.

When you start looking at other leagues available in FIFA 15, this opens up the average player rating. For every high-rated player in England, France, Germany, Italy and Spain, you have low-rated player in Australia, Poland, Saudi Arabia and Sweden (not harping on those countries, just stating the obvious.) If FIFA 15 was just called Barclays Premier League 15, and player ratings were cast in a bubble where the other 30 leagues were not considered, then you’d see a wider arrange of overall ratings.

It’s impossible to use the full 100 point scale when rating professional athletes in a video game. If someone is getting paid a “livable” salary to play sports professionally, they should be rated 45 or higher.

Player Ratings will always be subjective. I did not write this to defend NHL or to disqualify the GI article. But player ratings are a very difficult aspect to a video game and there is no definite way to rate a player, regardless of the sport. Everyone, from fans to the athletes themselves, love to mill over what Player X got and why Player Y was rated better than Player Z. We’re always going to have disagreements, and that’s why we love sports so much.