EA Sports FIFA • When the spirit of adventurism disappeared

EA Sports – It’s in the Game – A slogan familiar to many sports games in general, and football in particular. It is rather ironic, because EA themselves have long been “outside the game” – they are more and more immersed in cynical money making money.

And today’s FIFA is the most successful product in terms of profitability in the Electronic Arts line. This state of affairs was formed after adding to FIFA 09 regime Ultimate Team – online component with microtransactions. From this moment, the new iterations of the game went on conveyor rails, increasing the individuality and love of players (but not their number, because there is no worthy alternative, no matter how Pes tried to become it).

True, in their almost 40-year history, Electronics managed to develop and publish a huge number of different games of dedicated to sports No. 1. Yes, first of all, by hearing the main series of FIFA with its annual releases of varying degrees of lousy. Well, her "younger sister", FIFA MOBILE, which "yells" players on mobile devices since 2016. But this is only a yellowed peak of a rather large iceberg.

Football for every taste

There are constantly games in the EA clip, dedicated to large international tournaments – the World Cup (C 98) and the European Championship (since 2000). But the license for the Che-2016 and Che-2020 managed to get Konami For her PES (the presence of tournaments inaccessible in FIFA – has always been the main lift in Pro Evolution Soccer). By the way, games in the 2010 and 2014 World Cup from Electronic Arts did not go to the PC, and remaining with console exclusives.

The most famous club tournament – UEFA Champions League did not bypass the electronics. The right to embody it was wandered between various developers, Konami owned it for the longest time. EA were able to release two games in the middle of the "zero", after which they lost the struggle for the license of Japanese competitors. But, starting since 2018, all the European competitions completely and completely surrendered to the care of “Electronics”, which no longer did separate projects on them, but integrated into the FIFA series (good, the frame without a license has long been there).

For lovers of street football, a separate series was created FIFA Street, Three parts and restart of which were released in the interval from 2005 to 2012. Subsequently, street football disappeared from radar, but appeared, for example, during the plot in the history of Alex Hunter. And starting with FIFA 20, he returned for a variety to the main game as a “new” mode Volta.

EA regularly delivered a separate site for maneuvers from 1997 to 2013 to brilliant tactics and born strategists. We are talking about the series FIFA Manager and its predecessors – Total Club Manager and The F.A. Premier League Football Manager. True, having lost competition Sega With her Football Manager, EA stopped developing the manager’s simulator, because additionally monetizing such a game is extremely difficult. A very simplified version of the manager is available in the main FIFA series to this day.

Also, Electronic Arts in the 2010s https://nonukonlinecasinos.uk/international/ tried quite actively on Free-to-Play MMO in various genres. Football fans were offered a game FIFA World. But the project did not give the expected “exhaust”, and 18 months after the launch of the open beta, in 2015, it was turned along with the “NFS World, Battlefield Heroes and Play4free).

Kunstkamera

But all of the above – quite famous games. But in the track record of Electronic Arts there are projects that had their own interesting features or went to not quite obvious platforms and regions. And we are not talking about mobile crafts such as the FIFA number on Java, N-gage or GBA, but about more unique games.

For example, The f.A. Premier League Stars (1999–2000)-Unlike FIFA, which is striving for realism, this is a more dynamic version of football with the unique mechanics of the “stars”: for various achievements, the player receives currency stars that can be spent on pumping his players. Like other games of the EA sports line of that time, has separate versions for countries such as England, Spain or Germany.

And here FIFA SOCCER World Championship (2000) already purely Japanese exclusive for PlayStation 2. In fact, this is FIFA 2001, but containing teams of football teams U-23 different countries. Released, of course, the case, under the summer Olympic Games 2000. Also, only for the Japanese market, ordinary versions of FIFA called Total Football were also published.

For a wider audience, EA in 2002 performed the publisher of the game Lego Soccer Mania, which can be called the Arcadus "Fifoy", only in Lego-world and with a full plot regime. In the usual FIFA story story appeared only in 2016.

They did not bypass the "electronics" by the side and the boom of social networks, releasing a browser game in 2010 FIFA SUPERSTARS on Facebook.* It was a complete analogue of the Ultimate Team mode with the usual version of the game with its cards and coins. It is ironic that the process of playing football was not there – only the calculation of the results. The project has accumulated many complaints from users and was poorly supported by the company, which led to the closure of the game in 2013.

A separate pillar stands free-to-Play’na FIFA Online for the Asian market, the first version of which was released in 2006, and which receives regular updates so far. The emphasis there is made, as the name understands, on the online component, well, the game itself is popularized as an e -sports discipline. How successful it can be judged by the number of players – in 2020 there were about 30 million people there.

Is there light at the end of the tunnel?

Subsequently, Electronic Arts refused from ambiguous, but sometimes very curious projects, focusing on the "development" of the online component FIFA. After all, the Ultimate Team and FIFA Online mode every year bring a stable profit, which has long been measured in billions of dollars.

With such an income level, to make an image project, which, yes, will not bring golden mountains, but will show that the company still has an excitement of a player and not a businessman – just spit. But this, of course, no one needs.

Although, what can we say about additional games, if your main “nurse” Electronic arts is filled with content from hand. So, in the first game of the series, which was released in 1993 on Sega Mega Drive / Genesis there were only 48 national teams plus one team EA. And now the question is how many prefabricated in the last release (FIFA 21)? 49! That is, the game, which in the table of contents made the name of the most important football body in the world, has been able to include only a quarter of real participants in the organization for almost 30 years for almost 30 years. Yes, in separate games for tournaments, they added more teams, but they apparently do not want to bother (or rather, spending on licensing).

Well, maybe they are club football perfectly? Let’s look at real numbers: after adding the mode Fut, The emergence of new tournaments in each iteration of the simulator slowed 3 times (from 1.77 to 0.53). And the increase in the number of new clubs fell more than 2 times (from 27.46 to 12.84).

It can be argued that now there are all top tournaments in FIFA, but one cannot deny the fact that the old championships that were previously in the game have not appeared there for a long time. For example, the League of Israel, the Czech Republic and Greece. Or exotic Malaysia – even such, frankly weak championships in football plan, in the old days EA could safely add to the game.

It is unlikely that today Pro Evolution Soccer, which is constantly in the shadow of FIFA, can offer more money than EA for the license of the Italian series B, Brazilian tournaments or the Russian Premier League. The Japanese simply “pick up” the fact that Electronic Arts is not very profitable to buy. Separate exclusive PES licenses, for example, Italian Juventus, rather, an exception to the rules, and even scary to imagine how much “samurai” paid for this. But the third division of Germany EA licensed not so long ago with a completely obvious calculation – German fans famous lovers of football games, and clearly bring more money than Russians and Brazilians combined.

So, in the dry balance, today football from EA Sport Like Shelezyyak’s planet: “There are no innovations. There is no manager. It is inhabited online."Why come up with something else, if the" golden vein "has already been found, though.

* The activities of the parent organization META are recognized as extremist and prohibited in the Russian Federation

The best comments

It’s sad that from the Arcade/Simulator everything turned into the seasonal donat of Ultimate Team … He played more in PES – 13 of the most beloved (eh, how much time was spent in the master League). I especially liked taking something very weak and “drag” to the top, ”develop players and sell them in top clubs.