The release of this year's U.S. edition of "FIFA 16" with Alex Morgan on the cover marks a momentous cap to a pretty interesting summer. In my 25 years, I have never experienced such a buzz around women's sports. There have been moments: the founding of the WNBA in 1997; the 1999, 2011 and 2015 Women's World Cups; and the 2004, 2008 and 2012 Olympics, to name a few. But it's difficult to build a movement on a foundation of moments. Moore was born in Liverpool, but has spent most of his adult life in the U.S. He acknowledged the massive interest in the U.S. Women's National Team right now and how it could no longer be ignored.
The USWNT won the 2015 Women's World Cup in Canada, the nation's first title since 1999. "When add Alex, and you add Abby [Wambach] and you throw Carli Lloyd in there and you have that final, I just felt sorry for Japan," Moore says. For current players, being included in the game is progress but not the end goal. "We think it was a very smart move for FIFA to put us in the game and we hope it pays off for them because not only is it a cool thing for us, but a cool thing for everyone," says midfielder Heather O'Reilly, who sat on a BlazerCon panel with teammates Ali Krieger and Becky Sauerbrunn and moderator Katie Nolan of Fox Sports.
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The team decided that if they were going to create player models with more realistic female proportions, the FIFA engine would need an overhaul. From 2012 onward, designers worked behind the scenes through three further increments of FIFA to change proportions across all character models specifically for FIFA 16. “This year, we’ve got better body types for men as well,” explains Channon. “So it’s been something we’ve had to do to get women in the game properly, but it’s had a knock on effect for the men.” The development team responsible for FIFA 16 meticulously researched player movement and likeness to authentically recreate 12 top women’s teams.
Development was supported by a motion capture session at EA Canada with four top players from United States Women’s Team: Sydney Leroux, Abby Wambach, Alex Morgan, and Megan Rapinoe. In capturing the players’ gestures the FIFA 16 game will now feature new walks, runs, sprints and horizontal movements. Soccer Canada also visited EA to provide full-player references captured using 360 degree body scanning. A mobile head scanning unit traveled to a variety of tournaments and events around the world to capture player images and to ensure that the players in FIFA 16 look as realistic as possible.
With the World Cup in Canada game developers had the opportunity to watch women play live during the tournament. Sam Rivera expressed, “women’s football is developing, every time it’s better, the players are better. We were excited to see how good they had become in 2015 and then we kept fine tuning until the very end.” US fans will be happy to know that the fine tuning included adding a third star above the US crest on the women’s jersey after winning their third World Cup on July 5th. Unfortunately, EA was also forced to remove 13 women players due to NCAA rules just days before the release.
Some of that success may arise from the fact that the popularity of soccer has taken off in recent years. Moore said the FIFA player base has doubled from 2013 to 2015, and that more people in the US play Real Madrid-Barcelona than in Spain. And he claims some credit for it, too, adding, "We believe we've been instrumental, the invisible hand in driving this love of the game."
