Playing with Alex Morgan, Marta, and their respective colleagues brings a new dynamic to the typical FIFA experience. Matches feel a little different, primarily in their pacing, which adds a unique twist to the action. Unfortunately, the women’s involvement is somewhat thin. You can only play with the aforementioned 12 national teams, so that means no clubs. You can set up exhibition matches, along with a mini-tournament, but that’s about it. Regardless, this is an important and necessary step for the franchise. Let’s hope next year’s release will incorporate an even bigger female presence.
The main reason for the conspicuous absence however, has something to do with licensing. The same issue that has hampered EA from bringing Japan's men's team from being part of the men's division. Though both the men's and women's teams of Japan are absent in the game, the latter has more weight in terms of importance since they have been one of the top players outside of the virtural world. Then, there is the limitation of the women's games since there is only a generic tournament or exhibition matches for the female soccer teams. The gaming experience in the women's soccer is also noticeably slow, but the visual presentation is just as beautiful as the men's.
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Along with capturing the women’s movements, players went through body scanning and head scanning for detailed player likeness. EA ultimately captured hundreds of new star-heads for the 12 new women’s national teams, many of them during the 2015 Women’s World Cup in Canada. “When someone looked at the game, they could say that’s a woman, which was the ultimate goal” emphasized Blair. FIFA 16 Senior Producer, Nick Channon, is excited to say he’s one of the producers that brought women into the game sharing, “it’s an incredibly important addition, possibly the most important thing we’ve ever added. We’ve done a lot of work, a lot of animation, reworked ratings systems. (It’s) a real contrast in the way the game’s played.”
This increasing popularity reached a remarkable peak recently with this year’s Women’s World Cup, which saw 25.4 million viewers tune into the USA vs. Japan final in America alone, alongside unprecedented media interest worldwide. As it has historically done with the men’s teams, EA has tried to make the women’s teams’ digital counterparts as realistic as possible in the smaller details. New physics allowing for realistic movement of longer hair have been implemented (“we had to do quite a bit of work to optimise our engine to allow it to still run at 60 FPS to get that simulation in”), and players across the globe had their heads scanned and modelled into the game.
Overall, 'FIFA 16' is a much improved version over 'FIFA 15,' with the AI making the game tougher and more realistic. With the addition of women and stadiums, this year's edition has more to offer than any other version in its history. But if I could add one thing to the game, it would be an indoor soccer mode at some point, just like in 'FIFA Road to World Cup 98.' Ah, those were the days, being 10 years old and spending the hours in which you should be sleeping slide tackling goalkeepers to earn red cards.
