FIFA FALL

The Insidious Rise of Monetized Game Play

You shouldn’t stand in the way of progress. Right? Wrong!

The video game industry today is pocket-book talking and companies like Electronic Arts are known for the depth of their pockets.

You might say: ‘a billion dollars here, a billion dollars there’, but the unfortunate point is — there is a direct relationship between the quality of the games they produce and we play, and the way that the FIFA game has become monetized.

FIFA is my focus today. The franchise that first conceived the method. The new game mode called Ultimate Team was added well over a decade ago now, that was FIFA 11. Previously of course, it was a paid expansion.

On the surface FIFA 11 offered an innocent card collecting feature but under the bonnet, sat a hyper competitive online gaming mode, exclusively used for eSports and tournaments where players are regularly spending a $1000 to build a half decent football team.

Even hardcore players of the game today who want to compete end up paying thousands more simply to have an even playing field with up to 99 players, including at least a Ronaldo or Messi card.

Since that new game mode was conceived, there has been a gold rush to create monetized training card games and with FIFA 21, it’s now the monetized game modes that are driving the game at the expense of game play.

I don’t think there’s any doubt that most players are realizing that FIFA 21 is barely…