How FIFA has changed the world

FIFA by EA Sports, without a doubt, has altered football. The rise of the computer game from a simple soccer simulator to a global behemoth that influences and informs the sport of football nearly beggars belief. Few could have predicted that FIFA International Soccer, which debuted in 1993, would become the cultural powerhouse that it has become. It's now more famous than the organisation it's named after 25 years.

To comprehend the transition from a niche product to a must-have release, consider the state of the football world in 1993 when the first FIFA was released. It was created for the North American market by EA Sports Canada, which is an important component in evaluating how far the game has progressed. Twenty-five years ago, the United States was a football desert: there was no national league, and there hadn't been in almost a decade, and there were no professional players outside of indoor soccer. The United States had been awarded the 1994 World Cup by FIFA, but the men's professional game did not exist for the vast majority of Americans. It was limited to women's soccer (mostly amateur), ethnic communities (who continued to play on a local level), and children. To put it another way, it wasn't a serious sport. It isn't hyperbole to claim that FIFA-soccer predates actual soccer in America on a national cultural level: FIFA 95 even went so far as to create a fictional American league for the game because there wasn't one to refer to in real life.

A number of reasons have contributed to the game's success in helping the sport become mainstream. First and foremost, there's the game's appearance. Because most Americans have little access to live elite soccer, they watch it on TV: FIFA deliberately does not resemble genuine soccer; instead, it resembles broadcast soccer, complete with all the bells and whistles that come with television coverage. Creating a game image that included world football stars and projected them in the same light as big American sports stars have gone a long way toward transforming soccer's image as a kid's game into one that is on par with baseball, basketball, and American football.FIFA's reality component takes care of this as well: starting with FIFA 95, the game can feature actual players, real teams, real stadiums, and motion-captured athletes. Everything that American sports fans expected from Madden were delivered in FIFA. It's evolved significantly over time.

FIFA's influence extends far beyond football. The soundtracks have always been as eagerly anticipated as the games, and they have the power to create or destroy bands. In the mid-to-late 1990s, the Cool Britannia cultural movement merged the good aspects of England's hosting of Euro 96 with the pinnacle of Britpop: naturally, FIFA 97 included Britpop superstars Blur as its lead artist. It provided a forum for some groups that might not have gotten much airtime otherwise.

The FIFA 19 World Tour has attempted to bring these components together, with Stormzy and Dapaah facing off against Marcus Rashford and Jesse Lingard of Manchester United and England, respectively. On the other hand, the FIFA 19 World Tour has seen A$AP Rocky and Odell Beckham Jr. explain their love of soccer as children and then FIFA as adults – it was unthinkable in 1993 that two significant, mainstream US stars would be seen playing soccer in any way - now, they're playing FIFA. It's one thing for FIFA to have made a significant contribution to the game's development in the United States. Even fewer people could have predicted how it would impact the wider sport and transform the way communities with more than a century of football heritage enjoy the game back in 1993. We are now witnessing the retirement of the last generation to have grown up without FIFA: realistically, every player under the age of 32 has grown up with both the video game and the actual game.

The impact this has on footballers' perceptions of the game should not be overlooked. The ability to try new things, especially skill manoeuvres, has always been a feature of FIFA, although it is sometimes viewed as showboating by professionals. Many professionals now understand the thrills of humiliating an opponent in the FIFA style and are less hesitant to try it on the field.

Furthermore, players build their own personal brands based on their performance in the game: although Americans are accustomed to the adoration lavished on Michael Jordan, for example, European and South American football stars were completely unfamiliar with this prior to FIFA. Players such as Neymar and Paul Pogba have carefully created online personas that nearly allude to their gaming aliases, while others, such as Kylian Mbappe, Cristiano Ronaldo, and Antoine Griezmann, have goal celebrations that appear to be tailored to be emulated on FIFA.

FIFA's organisational structure has facilitated this shift toward individual football stars. The Ultimate Team feature, which was initially introduced in FIFA 2010, separates players from their teams and allows them to design their own lineups, resulting in a newer generation of fans that identify with the players as much as the clubs they represent. This has spilt over into how people consume football offline: all one has to do is switch on Twitter on a Champions League night to observe the multitude of Cristiano Ronaldo followers who are no longer loyal to his old team, Real Madrid. The FIFA train is showing no signs of slowing down anytime soon: the most recent iteration, FIFA 21, is once again regarded as one of the best games of the year, and the FIFA 21 World Tour is now bringing the game to new cultural heights.