With interest in women’s football at an all-time high, EA has made the terrific decision to introduce female footballers into FIFA 16, the first time that women’s football has ever been featured in the series.
According to EA, its development team EA Sports has included 12 international women’s football teams, including 11 that will feature in next month’s World Cup finals, with the likes of England, Brazil, Germany, Spain and World Cup hosts Canada all set to feature.
Each team will consist of the 11 regular players and a select number of reserves, all of whom have been facially scanned into the game using the techniques applied to the male footballers featured in the games.
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Speaking to the Guardian, the series’ vice-president David Rutter said of the addition of women’s football: “It’s been in the pipeline for a few years, and really it was just a case of making sure that the game was in a good enough state for it the work properly.
“We needed to have tools and technology in place that could differentiate between men and women. Plus, we had to factor in the time and effort required for travelling around the world to scan faces and heads, record motion capture, etc. It’s been on the to-do list for a while.”
England’s Stephanie Houghton will be among the players featured in the upcoming game.
There have been many calls in the past for EA to introduce women’s football to the series, and while the company stated that they were looking into it, it always seemed likely that the introduction of female footballers would be some way in the future. Speaking of the decision to bring them to the franchise in 2016, Rutter continued: “For girls of that age, or indeed any age, it doesn’t make sense for there not to be any women in FIFA. In the past there has always been a general acceptance that they weren’t in there. But within my household and social circle it’s always been significantly disappointing that female gamers couldn’t play FIFA with footballers of their own sex.
“I’m really glad we’re doing it. We’ve got some cracking teams in there and there’ll be some amazing matches. It’s a big relief for everyone.”
This is a huge step forward for the representation of women in sports games, and a big boost in publicity for women’s football in general. Bravo, EA.
