Why FIFA struggles as a competitive eSport...and why that will change very soon
FIFA hasn't been the first choice of most Esports players, but that may not be the case anymore
By Mouhamad Rachini
Photo courtesy of Uzayr Marria
Uzayr "Uzi" Marria poses with a cheque after winning the 2017 Fanta Masters Championship. It was his first ever major FIFA championship win.
Uzayr ‘Uzi’ Marria has been a FIFA gamer for as long as he can remember.
“I’ve been playing since I was nine-years old,” he said. “I started with FIFA 07, and I would always play using Tottenham.”
He would participate in his first competitive tournament when he was only 14-years old. His brother and his friends invited Marria to take part in a local tournament that was being held in the United Arab Emirates.
“It was the first tournament in the UAE at that time,” he said. “I think 250 people turned up and I came in second.”
From that moment, he knew that he possessed a special talent when it came to FIFA gaming. He began honing his skills as a competitor, and he’s now a professional FIFA gamer signed on to Nasr Esports, a professional gaming club with divisions in FIFA, League of Legends, and other competitive games.
“I kept on going to these tournaments with my friends,” he said. “And my parents and my brother told me to continue going to these tournaments. I started to realize that I could be good, and I’ve just kept playing since then.”
Given how long he’s been playing the game for, it’s no surprise that Marria has noticed a few changes in FIFA’s gameplay and presentation over the editions. But while he welcomes a lot of them, he believes the latest edition of the series has a few glaring problems.
“FIFA 19 has come out and I think it’s terrible at the moment,” he said. “They’ve changed a lot of the game. The shooting is really bad, the passing is bad, and the game-play is really slow.”
He’s not the only gamer who feels this way. 34-year old Nagy Magdy of Egypt has been playing FIFA games since the first edition was released in 1993. He said that FIFA is focusing more of their efforts on gamers who play the FIFA Ultimate Team mode, and that’s something that has hurt the other game modes.
“They’re always focused on FIFA Ultimate Team,” he said. “They’re not expanding or updating their other modes online. Other online modes are the same since they were introduced, and they haven’t done an update to them.”
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Photo courtesy of Uzayr Marria
Uzayr "Uzi" Marria competes in the 2017 Fanta Masters Championship. He hopes that FIFA will one day be as big in competitive gaming as traditional Esports titles.
FIFA Ultimate Team is a mode that allows players to create their own teams of footballers and play against other squads online. Players can acquire footballers by buying in-game card packs using their FIFA Ultimate Team coins, which they earn through completing online matches and challenges, or FIFA Points, which can be bought with real-life currency. The latter method is more popular with the average FIFA gamer.
To Magdy, EA Sports’ focus on FIFA Ultimate Team is harming their place in competitive gaming because they’re closing the door on skilled gamers who can’t afford to spend lots of money on packs.
“FIFA is not at that level of Counter-Strike and League of Legends yet because they’re focusing more on gaining profit than giving an open chance to those who’ve got skills,” he said. “They should be helping players develop their skills without having them buy a lot of packs.”
Another perceived problem with FIFA is their inexperience in the Esports industry. Although the FIFA series is older than most Esport games, they have lagged behind on the competitive side.
“League of Legends and these games have been around for a long time,” Marria said. “FIFA has as well, but the competitive leagues have just started.”
FIFA isn’t a newbie to competitive tournaments, though. The FIFA eWorld Cup, an annual Esports competition hosted by FIFA, the global governing body of soccer, and EA Sports, has been played yearly since 2004, drawing an increasing number of players and viewers each edition. But FIFA tournaments have lacked prize pools and official funding from sponsorships until recently, and Jason Abou Chaaya, a 26-year old Canadian-Lebanese project manager with gaming convention and expo hosts, DreamHack Canada, argues that that’s what hurts them the most competitively.
“Official backing from professional teams came late,” he said. “The reason why first-person shooters (FPS) and multiplayer online battle arenas (MOBAs) became more popular in Esports were because of the backing they got from sponsors and endorsement deals to bring up the prize pool and help cover event costs.”
EA Sports was reached for a comment on these criticisms through Senior PR Manager Jino Talens and International PR Lead Caitilin Doherty, but they could not set up an interview in time.
It hasn’t all been bad for FIFA, though. Like other Esports, competitive FIFA has seen a significant rise in viewers and participants. In 2016, the FIFA eWorld Cup was broadcast live on TV for the first time. It was shown across various channels in more than 100 countries that year. This included Fox Sports 1 in the U.S., whose program was moderated by soccer broadcast journalist Kay Murray and featured former soccer player Alexis Lalas and FIFA YouTuber Spencer FC as analysts. More than 2.4 million players participated in the 2016 edition’s qualifiers, just four years after the competition breached the one million players mark for the first time.
Marria hopes this means that FIFA will someday reach the heights of other competitive Esports.
“FIFA is getting bigger and bigger each year,” he said. “Hopefully, one year, it would become probably as big [as traditional Esports].”