The first big games of the annual sports video game release calendar are drawing close, and that makes this a great time to look at the state of the industry and see how things are going. Sometimes, the only thing we enjoy more as gamers than playing the games we love is complaining about the games we love, but it’s important to do so in a fair manner. Today, we’re looking at the top concerns fans have about modern sports video games to decide which are fair and which have some room for nuance.
Fair Criticisms Of Modern Sports Games
For all the positive things there are to say about modern sports video games and the state of the industry, there is room for improvement, too. These are the areas of frustration that most often strike sports video gamers, and why you’re right to be feeling irritation when faced with these problems:
Ultimate Team Modes Have Taken Over
I’m no stranger to banging the drum over the way card-based online modes have taken over sports gaming, so there’s nowhere else to start when looking for areas of reasonable concern and criticism. From a developer’s standpoint, it’s easy to understand why these modes are so appealing. Sports games have much shorter peak sales windows than other video games, as it doesn’t take long until the next game is just around the corner and worth waiting for.
To be fair to these modes, it’s important to note that this is not saying they shouldn’t exist or aren’t valid modes. They make a lot of money because they have a lot of players, and they have a lot of players because they are fun. It’s reasonable to invest resources into popular and profitable modes.
Where the fair criticism comes into play is with the way these modes have gained so much prominence in their respective series. Now, fans find themselves seeing huge rollouts for season after season of online content and Ultimate Team only elements like cosmetics, while less attention is paid to more traditional modes. As popular as Ultimate Team has become, many gamers still prefer the classic sports game experience, and with each year that passes, the time committed in development to these modes seems to become a smaller and smaller slice of the pie.
It’s All About The Microtransactions
Carrying on from the prior bullet is the worry that modern games are always looking for a new way to get into your pocket. The most obvious way this is apparent is in those very same online card-based game modes.
On the one hand, sure, you can absolutely take part in online modes without spending any money. Every Ultimate Team starts you off with a basic team to play with and build upon, and it’s fairly normal to sprinkle free or easy-to-unlock cards across a game’s release cycle to keep gamers interested and invested. If you simply want to enjoy yourself and do as well as possible on zero real money invested, you can do so.
If you want to get ahead online, however, you likely will find yourself being drawn into potentially putting down cold, hard cash to buy packs or virtual currencies. You can win for free, you can win a lot more often for pay. It doesn’t end there, however, as VC creep has begun to hit the sports video game world. From VC-gated development to adding little boosts and perks you can optionally purchase in offline modes, sports games are offering more and more ways to give money after you already paid full price to buy the game in the first place.
Early Months Can Feel Like A Paid Beta
Sports video games have been plagued by criticism about annual releases since they became the norm for the industry before the turn of the new millennium. Although other series like the Call of Duty series would come along and show that other genres could also take advantage of annual schedules, and that many of the criticisms sports games faced translated over as well, sports games have always been the poster-genre for the issue.
While this was worthy of criticism, at least those early sports games still felt like getting a fully baked new game when they arrived, even if you felt it carried over too many elements from prior editions. With modern sports video games, it now feels that an issue affecting the broader video game industry is also touching on sports games, as more and more new releases feel improperly tested at launch.
As online console access went from rare to common to standard, developers have faced less pressure to ship games in working condition. Day one patches are normal, and even still, many games still feel buggier and less stable than ever. Because this is a larger industry trend, it feels less likely to shift anytime soon, but that doesn’t make it any less frustrating.
Criticisms Of Modern Sports Games That Come With Caveats
When looking at issues within the things we love, it can be important to check and make sure we are being fair with our critiques. The following issues are no doubt real areas of concern for sports gamers, but also areas where sometimes we don’t extend the fairest interpretation to the folks responsible for making the games we enjoy:
Nothing Changes From With Each New Edition
Sports video games have never been famous for big, dynamic changes from year to year. The calls of “full price roster update” have existed nearly as long as sports video games have existed, and it is, in many ways, fair. It’s undeniable that if you pick up a sports game from a decade ago, it likely plays far closer to its modern peers than, say, comparing a 2026 first-person shooter to one from 2016.
What can be a bit unfair from fans is how easy it is to overlook the changes that are going on, which are not as immediately apparent. Because sports video games rely so heavily on the engine powering the in-game experience, the effect of developers’ work from year to year is not always immediately visible. This can result in a bit of a slow-boil situation where the incremental changes to how a game is handling are harder to see.
One interesting change to monitor will be the skipped release of an F1 game, which puts two years into the development of F1 27. While Football Manager 26 has shown that two years doesn’t promise a smooth launch, that game was also undergoing a full engine rebuild. If F1 can produce a game that is a hit with fans, it could show a new profitable avenue for developers to release fewer, better games.
Developers Care More About Looks Than Feel
Earlier this week, we talked about the state of modern visuals in sports games and how they can hold back progress. Now, obviously, there is merit to concerns and areas for complaint about how prioritization has affected development, but there is also room to look at the ways things are trending well.
For starters, it is clear that games look as good now as they ever have in terms of replicating reality. What can be easy to miss in there is how games don’t look so good just because of better graphics. While not every effort to improve things like animations and AI powering those graphics is a hit, it’s also true that a lot of energy is put into the game’s underlying engine, too.
We’ve Lost A Focus On Simulation
One major headache that has come to developers as a result of the changing state of sports video games is that there is less clarity on what is being designed for. No sports game serves as a true simulation of the real-world sport, and so there are always decisions made in development where what is “real” is weighed against what feels real.
The simple criticism is to say that anything that feels unnatural is a failure of execution, but often it’s actually a case of the shipped settings being the winning choice from significant testing and tweaking.
The problem for developers is that they are serving so many audiences with each game. For starters, base changes may be required for fun, such as how EA FC games play more quickly than real top matches, but then also considerations for the different modes and different skill levels of players all impact things. Maybe the problem you keep hitting is an issue of developer neglect, maybe it was a hard choice made in an imperfect developmental situation.
We’re all here because we love playing sports video games, and so we all want to see sports video games get better and better. Do you think we’re on the right track, or do the fair criticisms have you worried about where things are headed?
