In The Game: FIFA 16 Gets Women's International Teams
Game changers
So here's a GOOD piece of news involving FIFA - the gaming franchise will finally be adding women to its playable character roster, kicking off [sorry] with the twelve women's international teams included in FIFA 16 [official site].
Here's the trailer:
While domestic sides aren't going to be represented in the 22-year-old game series (yet), in FIFA 16 you'll be able to play as the women's national teams from Germany, USA, France, Sweden, England, Brazil, Canada, Australia, Spain, China, Italy and Mexico. Your chosen side will then be able to face off against another women's international side. That's across several game modes - a FIFA press release specifies Kick Off, an offline tournament and online friendly matches.
It feels like a start. A significant and positive start.
To make sure that they captured the movement side of things correctly, a mixture of motion capture, 3D player modelling and head-scans were involved.
"Bringing some of the best women’s players and teams in the world to our franchise is a massive event for EA Sports, and we are equally excited about bringing millions of fans a new way to play," said David Rutter, VP of EA Sports FIFA.
"We’re making sure fans get an authentic experience when playing with Women’s National Teams thanks to our innovative player capture and reference tools, as well as the sophisticated gameplay platform which we will continue to innovate on in FIFA 16."
I'm actually rewatching the trailer right now (while carefully ignoring the comments) and it's really cool to see bits of the mo-cap session with the players from the USA team as well as the simple but effective repeated assertion, "I'm in the game/We're in the game".
FIFA 16 is out in September, I do believe.