What’s holding FIFA back as a top tier esport?

The FIFA Esport scene has been getting a lot more attention in the past few years. Let’s talk about FIFA as an esport.

The FIFA esports scene has been around for almost two decades now , but over the past couple of years, the professional FIFA esports scene has been growing tremendously and taking big steps forward. The game has always had a loyal following and huge player base, but EA has taken steps to make FIFA an esport, organizing tournaments, creating a competitive foundation featuring multiple competitions and integrating teams and players into their own esport sphere.

Why it can work

FIFA has a lot of factors that work to its advantage, especially when creating an active esports scene around their base game. It’s no secret that one of the biggest advantages FIFA as a game has is its tremendous player base due to its accessibility. Everyone knows how football works, everyone can pick the game up in mere seconds and understand it almost completely on a surface level. In a sense it never gets old, yet the players keep changing.

Another one is the marketing value an esport league surrounding FIFA can provide players and, more importantly, teams. Almost every major football competition in the world has set up an esports league which features players they’ve signed to compete with their team in the game. It provides an immense opportunity for a lot of these teams to partner up with some more established organizations and players within the esports scene, allowing them to reach a younger fan base that’s historically been notoriously hard to reach. 

Traditionally FIFA has also always been a game which featured a ton of content creators, mostly connected to their most popular game mode Ultimate Team. There’s no shortage of people enjoying the game and creating content around it, with it being heavily interconnected with the traditional football scene. A lot of top level football players are avid fans of the game as well, opening up even more opportunities for their esports scene as well.

Hurdles

Despite all the things that could make FIFA one of the biggest esports out there, there are some hurdles they need to overcome or, like some of the players have said before, learn to live with. If there’s one topic that keeps popping up or that keeps being criticized by even the professional players and fans alike, it’s the gameplay, the engine and its dependency on artificial intelligence. 

Different to other simulation games that aren’t based on real-life sports, FIFA is emulating the random factors in football. Long story short, these random elements they’ve integrated into the game make the game unbalanced and wonky. While there’s certainly a skill ceiling involved, mastering the mechanics within FIFA is inherently impossible. It puts a damper on achievements and takes away a lot of the reward you feel in other games, such as clutching out a 4k in CS:GO or stealing away the Baron in League of Legends.

The biggest argument against FIFA becoming a huge esports is the dependency on artificial intelligence to control the other 10 players on the pitch you are not in control of. It takes away the joy of a good run or clever tactics and often results in boring matches where the AI is blatantly being abused. In a sense, it’d be better if FIFA esports was played in a 11 versus 11 format. While logistically being (almost) impossible to pull off on a grand scale, it would certainly raise the skill ceiling and make the game a lot more fun to watch.

Money talking

Then there’s also the cost that comes with playing FIFA competitively. Players need a decked out Ultimate Team Squad to even compete with others, as the playing field in Weekend League is not equal at all. Esports teams often pay their athletes huge sums to open packs, just to make sure they get all the advantages they can get. It’s unfair and makes some victories, especially early on in the life-span of that year’s FIFA feel unearned.

There’s even more things that stunt the growth of FIFA as an esport. Their current system that’s in place to work towards eWorld Cup qualification is convoluted and difficult to keep track of, broadcasts are few and far between and not nearly promoted enough (but offer drops to get you watching), the Weekend League is an unbalanced mess that doesn’t feature an in-depth ELO system, meaning you could potentially go up against a World Champion on EA’s wonky servers. There’s a lot of things holding the esports scene back and if it doesn’t get fixed, their growth will remain stunted.

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Image Credit: EA / FIFA
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