An opinion piece on the blog of the Infinity FC portal raises intriguing questions: What future do football computer games have? PC Games also speaks of new challenges for EA. And how does the competition from new games like UFL or GOALS affect the EA FC 25 career mode – I add my own thoughts on this.
But let’s take a closer look at the article from Infinity FC – it first includes a historical review of the era of computer games. And it’s quite worth reading: In the early 2000s, FIFA and Pro Evolution Soccer (PES) dominated the market for football games. For the author, these games offered an authentic gaming experience and used exclusive licenses to represent real teams and leagues.
FIFA focused on online modes like FIFA Ultimate Team (FUT), which led to massive player retention and revenue growth. PES, although popular, couldn’t keep up with EA Sports’ innovation and marketing pressure and was eventually renamed eFootball to appeal to a broader audience.
Football games in the 2010s
The 2010s brought a shift towards more realistic football games. FIFA and PES remained the dominant titles, but the focus increasingly shifted to monetization and microtransactions.
FUT became a central component of FIFA, leading to a shift from pure game mechanics to a model often criticized as gambling. PES tried to remain relevant by switching to a free-to-play model but struggled with similar monetization problems.
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Present and future of football games
In the 2020s, player dissatisfaction with existing titles grew due to aggressive monetization. This opened the door for new competitors, as Infinity lists:
- UFL: A free-to-play game that does without pay-to-win mechanics and focuses on fair progression and manual control
- GOALS: An arcade-style game that focuses on fast, fun action and contains no real players, but generated characters that age and are replaced.
- Man of the Match (MOTM): A game where players create their own avatars and can act as either a player or manager.
- Copa City: A football tycoon game set to release in 2025 that offers an immersive experience around football events.
- FIFA: Plans a comeback, possibly in collaboration with 2K Games, which could pose a serious threat to EA Sports FC’s dominance.
From the blog post’s perspective, these new titles promise more variety and a return to the roots of fun and competition that many players would miss. How do we evaluate these theses?
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FUT is a problem, but helps the game
There’s actually something to the thesis. Even if one tends to romanticize the past quickly – originally, game developers focused primarily on creating the most action-packed gaming experience possible, FUT and microtransactions were still foreign words. However: Through the enormous revenues, EA, for example, was able to invest more money in a realistic game representation.
Because this is also part of the truth: In addition to technical progress in terms of graphics and resolution, the gameplay, realism, and game representation have gained enormously in quality. Would this be possible without cash cows like FUT? One can at least put this thesis out there.
More imagination in career mode would be important
However, career mode fans have rightly been complaining for years that this mode, which is actually central for many fans, is being neglected. Cosmetic corrections, small changes, occasionally a new system, for example in training – but EA has always moderated major reforms with reference to allegedly lacking storage capacities in consoles.
What would it cost to incorporate sponsor negotiations, a stadium editor – which is already in the game – or to better negotiate finances, introduce statistics for previous seasons? Or a club grounds or club museum. 2K has shown with NBA 2K what is possible.
How promising are the new games?
The UFL project by Cristiano Ronaldo is interesting – it apparently received a very good response in the beta phase regarding realism and gameplay. The game GOALS also seems very interesting – there they simply do without licenses and create unique, evolving, and retiring players. This should be kept on the radar.
Copa City is certainly exciting for friends of complex management simulations – and what FIFA might be planning with 2K remains promising as well. However, all these games have one flaw – they only exist in rudimentary form. And they lack licenses to use real player faces, names, and leagues. EA has always scored points here with its 19,000 player names and an impressive package of licenses.
UFL, for example, only has Zinchenko, Lukaku, De Bruyne, and Cristiano Ronaldo as players and West Ham United.
Is EA responding to the new challengers?
Nevertheless, EA will – and must – respond to the new games. And that’s a good sign! The eternal duel between FIFA and PES has, of course, led to both games getting better. PES and its successor eFootball have always impressed with great gameplay and graphics, EA had to catch up there. It will be the same now – even if many of the promising new games will fizzle out.
Focusing only on microtransactions in UT cannot be a long-term solution. More love in details of the career mode, but also other modes like Pro Clubs should be mandatory. Because the more other games cater to the wishes of the community, the more pressure EA comes under. PC Games also writes about UFL: “The developers make it their task to release a game that meets the wishes of the fans.”
It even says: “Electronic Arts should slowly be careful and leave the ivory tower before it is brought to collapse.” This may be somewhat provocative, so far EA has beaten all competitors with sheer programming power, licenses, and market power. But while eFootball is hardly a competitor anymore, there are real new competitors. And that’s a good thing!