The world of football is strange and unpredictable. Leicester City’s 2016 Premier League win. Diego Maradona’s Hand of God. Sylvester Stallone playing in goal in Escape to Victory. And then, in May 2022, Electronic Arts lost the $20bn Fifa licence, putting a sudden end to the world’s bestselling sports game. The split came after the football body demanded double the previous $150m sum to use its brand. Huge corporations falling out over eye-popping amounts of money? Not so strange and unpredictable after all.
Now, we have EA Sports’ solo version of their beautiful game: EA Sports FC 24. Also to be known henceforth as the slightly less clunky, FC 24. So, what is a Fifa game without the, erm, Fifa part? According to the development team (the same team that made the Fifa games), this latest iteration is built on new animation technology and a fresh PlayStyles feature. The latter offers an intricate level of player customisation recognising that every player has a distinctive style, allowing you to give special skills to your squad members to make the most of their specific abilities.
There are 34 of these to play with, ranging from the Power Header, which will send the ball flying faster, and the Speed Dribbler, allowing higher speeds while keeping possession of the ball. Souped-up versions, PlayStyles+, which include moves such as Lionel Messi’s ability to get into tight spaces between defenders and score, can be added to a range of world-class players.
That “authenticity” is built on thanks to the game’s slick new tech for capturing player motions more accurately than ever. New to FC 24 is an animation technology called volumetric capture, described as a “gamechanger for sports gaming,” by the game’s senior producer, Sam Rivera. Instead of a player having to don a goofy ping-pong ball-covered suit to capture movements to model on, cameras around football stadiums capture their exact manoeuvres, from ankle to spine. It means that world-class players are now used in-game, creating animations from video, and that in the future, as players make real-world moves in the sport, they can be added right away.
At the same time, an AI algorithm mimics how individual players move in the real world (Phil Foden runs with his arms in front, for example, while cover star Erling Haaland keeps them behind him). It means the animations are varied and specific.
In a hands-on session with the game’s Kick Off mode, pitting Manchester City against PSG, it’s immediately apparent that, for all its shiny animation wizardry, the gameplay doesn’t look much different from Fifa 23 (although the new menu visuals are pretty). However, the addition of PlayStyles does add a new variety to the action. The Trickster PlayStyle added to Neymar, for example, adds individual moves such as flair nutmegs and flicks in your desired direction, for a more personalised way to one-up your opponent.
A new precision passing system in the limited preview we play, meanwhile, also makes for threading some unique passes in small spaces; all deliciously satisfying to pull off. Another welcome addition is the introduction of women’s football to Ultimate Team. EA has been gradually bringing the women’s game into the fold, but here it is front and centre, fully integrated across objectives, rivals and icons, and with 74 teams and more than 1,600 players added, all now playable as mixed teams.
One of those 1,600 is Kelly Smith, the former Arsenal and Lionesses forward, described as one of the greatest players ever to pull on an England shirt. “It’s normalising that women play football,” she says of the increased inclusion. “It’s more of an equal playing field in this game, and there’s no better way to do it than by having women in the game playing against men.”
Smith is aware of the impact it will have. “When I was young, I got kicked off two boys teams for being the best player,” she says. “They said I was the wrong sex – that I should go and play netball. But this game is a cultural shift for kids. Now, they can think, ‘I can be a female player’ and not think anything else of it – it’s just football.”
That real-world influence of the Fifa games has already happened with broadcasters imitating the game’s AR statistic overlays, for example. EA Sports FC 24 could signify a move towards even more of a symbiotic relationship between the video game and the sport. “We talk about this blending of the virtual and the real and I think we’re seeing that with technology, with volumetric capture, where we have cameras in the stadiums and we’re able to use those to take animation data,” say John Shepherd, executive producer and VP at EA. “There’s this weird interplay where we’re just not copying the broadcasters any more. We’re actually pushing and innovating on top of that.”
“Our players want to be closer to the sport, so how can we bring them closer? How can we get more integrated with the sport itself? What does interactive football become?” says Shepherd. “There’s a playground available to us that’s incredibly exciting.”
It’s not all change, of course. We may have only seen a relatively small part of the game, but so far, for all its lofty goals, FC 24 is largely the same old Fifa you’d expect from your annual football sim fix. The lack of Fifa branding is barely noticeable. The football governing body is yet to reveal its own plans for a major new video game series, but EA Sports is already on the pitch, with decades of research and development technology, boasting a franchise that’s single and ready to mingle with fresh partnerships and innovative connections to real-life sport. EA Sports FC could have the makings of a futuristic new football-verse. Stranger and more unpredictable things have happened.
• EA Sports FC 24 will launch on 29 September on PS4 and PS5. Bex April May attended an EA Sports FC press trip with other journalists to Amsterdam, where accommodation and transport costs were met by Electronic Arts.
