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Only the most marketable and remarkable players in world sport are rewarded with cover appearances on annual video games. Chelsea's Australian striker Sam Kerr was revealed as the first global female cover star for FIFA 23, alongside EA ambassador and global megastar Kylian Mbappé. The breakthrough didn't stop there for women's football, either. The big drop was that domestic clubs were announced with the Women's Super League and D1 Arkema introduced in full. Then, when player ratings were revealed, Barcelona's Alexia Putellas took the top spot with a 92 OVR – higher than almost all male peers. Obviously, this caused controversy within the FIFA community, but Putellas is a double Ballon d'Or Féminin winner, considered the best in women's football, perhaps even the GOAT.
These moves are smart decisions commercially, but VP of Brand at EA Sports Andrea Hopelain insists it's about even more than that. "EA Sports is at the epicentre of global football fandom, and we recognize the role we have in representing and elevating diversity and participation in the sport," she says. "Our commitment extends beyond the pitch in the virtual and real world."
Champion ambitions
When I was eight years old, kicking a football for the first time after the excitement in primary school about the 2002 Korea/Japan World Cup, I also got my first edition of FIFA. I was about to embark on a lifelong love affair with the series. I never imagined myself in the game. At least, not until FIFA 16 with the celebrated arrival of 12 women's international teams. This number slowly increased with each volume released. Last year on FIFA 22, players got the chance to pick their gender for their Pro Clubs and VOLTA avatars – mixing team play between men and women on FIFA for the first time.
More content will come in the middle of the FIFA 23 cycle. EA announced last month that they would add knockout stages of the UEFA Women's Champions League in 'Spring 23', and we already know that the Australia/New Zealand Women's World Cup will come as a summer 23 update. But is women's football in FIFA 23 any good? Is it an accurate representation of the beautiful game?
Gameplay is totally different to the man-on-man contests you're familiar with. Anyone who has played knows. Developments with HyperMotion2, including a 90-minute pro-match motion captured for both men's and women's teams, have made the women's teams feel like women, instead of re-skinned, shorter men with different stats. Women move differently. They're almost smarter on the ball, as IRL women don't have the physical strength to compare with men, so their technical control needs to be better. Although I'm not a skill move user in FIFA, little nudges and flicks to find space happen automatically when you're playing with the top female stars, and it makes me feel better at the game. Player face scanning makes the game look as authentic as it feels, too. Inevitably, the matchday presentation is glowing, as it always is in FIFA.
Commentary is gendered too: in future instalments it would be nice to have specific commentary on female players to make things seem as full as the years of library conversation FIFA has built up for the men's teams. We need to hear more women's voices, too. Ex-England defender Alex Scott does have a slither of broadcasting responsibility in FIFA, but her updates from scores around the grounds feel like a token.
Career troubles
Jeers of women's inclusion being a box-ticking exercise, wokery or pandering can be dismissed if players try the gameplay that EA has perfected in FIFA 23. The biggest disappointment, however, is the omission of women's clubs in FIFA 23 Career Mode. Career Mode in general has been neglected as the sickly sibling of a money-printing Ultimate Team. Adding women's clubs and only being allowed to use them in Kick Off, Seasons, Online Friendlies, and Tournament modes feels like missing an open goal. Playing a tournament is fine but frustrating. For example, during my season with Manchester United, I could have really done with signing a backup centre back, as the cover options I had were limited. I also wanted to help develop the players that were there, sign youth prospects, and generally get absorbed into the WSL across multiple seasons. None of this is available on the women's side of the game.
Oh, and didn't win the league? No jazzy cutscenes or celebrations of the tournament you've just grinded through for you. This screenshot is what I was presented with for finishing third:
Kicked straight back to the main menu. It didn't make me want to play again!
To fully support this integration, it's clear that more leagues are required. Top of my wishlist would be the NWSL in America, and Liga F in Spain. As Bayern Munich and Juventus are already entering FIFA 23 with the UWCL knockout, it's obvious that their domestic competitions must follow.
Pucking progress
EA has taken women's integration much further in one of its games. In NHL 23, stars of women's hockey can be drafted into Hockey Ultimate Team (HUT), making mixed teams for the first time in an Ultimate Team mode. In Be A Pro Career, you can choose the gender of your player and get drafted into the NHL, following a story-linked path to greatness. Two examples of genuinely engaging inclusion. In theory, this can happen in ice hockey, whereas in football - unless friendly - you wouldn't see mixed pro football teams. That doesn't mean it won't happen in FUT too. Realism may be cried if women are introduced, but personally, I'd love to have Lucy Bronze and Beth Mead solve my team's current right-sided issues. FUT already makes inhuman boosts to players with promo cards, so why not add women?
Elsewhere, NBA 2K23 has a league- and player-based entire game mode, by expanding 'The W' for next gen consoles. By adding ongoing community challenges, 2K is incentivising its player base to engage with the women's mode, get to know the WNBA stars, and check in regularly, rather than a one-and-done engagement. This is a perfect example of how a video game can grow engagement with sport in real life and make fans of the WNBA feel more connected to the game.
In the future, women's football will be coming to the Football Manager series, too. FM is the gold standard for management sims in football, and EA Sports could take a lot from it to improve Career Mode. Sports Interactive is working on a 'multi-year project' to integrate women's club and international teams into the title. "Longer term, as the women's game grows in popularity, the financial rewards may come, but at the moment we're embarking on this journey because we know it's the right thing to do," said studio director Miles Jacobson in a recent update.
How else could EA expand women's football in-game? 'The Journey' was a popular story-driven take on FIFA Player Career Mode, following the career of Alex Hunter in FIFAs 17, 18 and 19. EA Sports FC has an opportunity to bring this back, led by a female player, or by a man and a woman playing for respective teams at the same club. Storytelling could be made into a docudrama, a la 'All or Nothing', and show the struggles players have faced to get equity within the sport on a global level, compared with their male counterparts.
Bringing Alex Scott into the main fold in EA Sports FC, or another female broadcaster, would add another layer of immersion to the presentation of the women's game. We know that EA Sports wants to add its weight to the growth of women's football both on consoles and on the field. I attended their first Women's Football Summit in October, where they announced the UWCL release, broadcast sponsorship in collaboration with DAZN, and an $11m investment in the sport known as the Starting XI fund.
"We are taking unique approaches across all of our titles," Hopelain told USA Today. "We're just getting started… It's about respecting and honouring the women's game and not just making one-to-one moves with what we've done with the men's game," she noted on the omission of women's teams in Career Mode thus far.
So, is any representation better than the mimicked experience of FIFA 23 for men's football fans? Sure it is. Does it already feel so far behind? Yes. In the UK especially, following England's stunning win at the European Championships, women's football is a juggernaut. Attendance is up year on year. Broadcast is catching up. New media - TikTok, YouTube - bypass sports journalists and connect players directly to fans. Sporting culture is closely tied to the video game industry, and I think developers can make meaningful connections by creating more profound experiences in-game.
Conversely, a whole new audience of football fans might pick FIFA up for the first time now that their WSL or D1F team are playable. The young girls playing their first FIFA as their heroes already thank you, but there's plenty of work left to do to offer the whole experience, no matter the gender of the players. It's somewhat of a chicken and egg situation; in FIFA 22, The Gamer reported less than 4% of players had touched any of the women's game modes, but with a half-baked offering, is it any surprise?
I wish sneering football fans who hate the IRL growth of the women's game and the inclusion of women's football 'taking up hard drive space' could just imagine the joy of a young family member seeing herself in the sport she loves. Gameplay is sensational. EA Sports FC, a lot is riding on you at launch, following on the Women's World Cup coattails in summer 2023. A women's football revolution is here, and I hope you keep up. For now, I'm keeping faith.
