This year, the women’s World Cup tournament will be held in Canada, and for the first time 24 teams will take the field (the men’s game has 32). Also for the first time, 12 of those teams will be represented in EA’s upcoming Fifa game. Despite Ubisoft’s claims that women are too hard to render, EA has somehow done the impossible and digitally modelled more than 200 of them, each a recognisable simulacrum of a real human person who is very good at playing football. World class, in fact.
FIFA and official licensee Electronic Arts announced today that EA SPORTS FIFA 16 will feature 12 Women’s national football teams for the first time in the game’s history when it launches later this year. Women's groups may have lost the fight to have this year's Women's World Cup played on grass, similar to that used in the men's tournament, rather than rough artificial turf. But there is one area where women will see marked improvement when it comes to gender balance in 2015. EA Sports announced Thursday that 12 national women’s soccer teams will be featured on FIFA 16. It is the first time that women's soccer teams have ever been featured in the video game, the company said. If you're less keen on the women's game, however, don't panic – as you might expect, you can still choose from the usual selection of male national and international teams, and you won't be able to play women against men, either. "It's the same way if you don't like Spanish football, you don't have to go and play with the Spanish teams. If you don't want to play with women players, then you don't have to go and play with women players," Rutter added.
For now, that means no plans this year to include male vs female matches (“As in real life, the sport itself doesn’t support that. If that changed, we definitely would”) or feature women footballers in the series’ most popular mode, Ultimate Team. The women’s teams – which also include USA, Mexico, Sweden, France, China, Australia and Italy – can be utilised in friendlies both on and offline, in addition to a bespoke offline tournament mode. The studio did discuss making an all-female Ultimate Team, as well as including the female teams from clubs such as Manchester City, but felt it too much of a stretch in this inaugural season. “We have 12 international teams,” said Rutter. “That won’t give us a population large enough to make anything close to a good Ultimate Team mode. We could have gone down the road of creating domestic leagues as well, but we probably wouldn’t have been able to stretch our resources far enough this year to provide a believable and broad crop of players.”
One of the strongest, most substantiated rumours surrounding the game could be massive for the FIFA franchise – the introduction of a story mode. Master Herald released a report which looked into the EA Sports careers website advertising a ‘narrative designer’ role. Their report suggests that the hired designer would be “responsible for: creating captivating, memorable characters for the player to interact with, as well as plot moments that will truly challenge the way players approach the game and give them a good experience.” It is not specified which game the advert is referring to, with the clue being “one of EA’s AAA titles.” Unless EA Sports have a huge ace up their sleeves with regards to a brand new game, the only other main contender would be Madden 2016, though that has already implemented many story-style features in previous editions.
Women play football. Women play videogames. EA has done a good thing for representation in both those fields by responding to these facts, and to the daft outrage about their decision. And those who don’t like it can take their balls and go home. As for the game, Rutter says that female club teams, such as Manchester City or Arsenal, could be added in the future, but for now he's just happy that the feature has finally been included. "It's a big relief for everyone." FIFA 16 is launching on September 22nd, while the Women's World Cup kicks off on June 6th.
