Sports gaming is simultaneously one of the most diverse and most homogenous genres in all of video games. On the one hand, it’s a very broad field due to the extremely diverse nature of modern sports. What you are asked to do in your average baseball game is entirely different from that in a basketball game, and both are fully separate in action and experience from a football game, for example.
Not only do the different sports all have different rules and mechanics, but also often vastly different league structures and other administrative considerations. This means that no two sports games across genres will play overly similarly when you’re out on the virtual courts and fields trying to win games.
On the other hand, there is also a lot about sports video gaming that remains entirely consistent from franchise to franchise and sport to sport. The vast majority of sports games about major leagues are annual, releasing a new edition every year and most come with the same criticism from fans about what this has done to the creativity and levels of improvement on offer from year to year.
Another less obvious similarity is in how many sports games behave similarly when outside of the playing the field, with modes and menu structures that have strong similarities and ties that cross boundaries of both sport and developer. So, while it would at first seem difficult to find a single game that defines such a broad spectrum of game types in the modern era, when you look past the on-field play a clear picture of the most influential game on the modern sports landscape comes into focus.
EA Sports FIFA 09: The Game That Invented Modern Sports Games
There is no sport in the world more popular than soccer, or football to the majority of those playing and enjoying it worldwide. It is the world’s game and its quadrennial championship the World Cup routinely smashes viewership records with each new iteration, making the World Cup final the biggest spectacle in sports.
It should come as no surprise that a game with such broad appeal around the globe also carries a lot of weight in the sports gaming landscape. While the Madden series routinely moves nine figures of units every year, FIFA (now EA FC) still leaves it in the dust. It’s fitting, then, that the most iconic and era-defining sports game of the 21st century was a FIFA game.
Although indeed, a soccer game may not have a lot of influence over how your digital Steph Curry handles or how hard virtual Alex Perreira can kick you in the head, the legacy of FIFA 09 comes in its influence on the shared element and the introduction of one that has taken over sports video gaming: Ultimate Team Mode.
How Ultimate Team Modes Took Over Modern Sports Games
FIFA 09 is not the first game to ever include any elements similar to what we now know as Ultimate Team modes; it is the game that brought the game to the series in the form of a downloadable content pack for console players. In Ultimate Team mode, gamers don’t use real-world teams to play matches, but instead assemble their own squads of players from around the world and throughout time.
Gamers earn players by completing tasks, playing matches, and earning, or more controversially purchasing, virtual currencies to open up “card” packs. In these packs, gamers unlock players, skins, and other elements they can work into their Ultimate Team set-up, slowly building up a squad that starts with mediocre spot fillers into a who’s who of all-time greats.
To say that Ultimate Team modes are popular would be an understatement, and today, nearly every annual sports franchise carries some form of Ultimate Team mode. While this is, of course, related to the popularity of the modes with gamers, it’s also easy to see the popularity with developers, as they have turned into the primary means of extracting more money out of players.
No longer is it standard expectation that you will spend one lump sum on your annual sports game and be good until next year, as these modes highly incentivize investing real money into virtual currencies to rapidly improve your team. Critics often point out that this is behavior that can be highly exploitative and is legally classified as gambling in some countries, requiring modification to the modes.
What Would The Modern Sports Gaming Landscape Look Like Without FIFA 09?
For players who love online modes, it might be horrific to imagine a cycle without Ultimate Team play. For gamers who don’t enjoy the feature and prefer sports games when they were about playing virtual versions of real-world leagues, it would be an incredible boon.
It is openly known that online modes are major drivers of income for sports games, and the trade-off of their elimination could go either way. For those optimistic about the effect it would have, doing so would mean diverting resources that are all too skewed in favor of lucrative online modes into the more traditional play modes. This could lead to better implementation of leagues, improved investment in the underlying gameplay engine, and quality-of-life improvements.
Those critical of removing Ultimate Team would point to the potential loss of income, which could have a negative net effect on other modes, removing more investment power than the Ultimate Team modes are taking up for a net loss to offline quality.
We may not be able to perfectly predict how sports gaming would be different were FIFA 09 to have never introduced Ultimate Team play, but the last 15 years and change would be very different had the mode never been invented and spread out from franchise to franchise in the intervening years. Are you glad for what FIFA 09 accomplished, or do you wish it had never bothered?
