Twenty-two years ago, there was enough of a market in association football games that Sony introduced a new title exclusively for its then-dominant PlayStation console. Despite players like ISS Pro Evolution and FIFA already starting to dominate on PS1, This is Football carved out a niche for itself.
While all others fell to the Konami/EA duopoly before the next generation of consoles hit the market, This is Football had a brief run on PlayStation 2, picking up four caps. It also represented Sony at junior level with three runouts on PSP.
The Death of Competition
By 2005, TiF too was swept away by the populist appeal of Pro Evolution Soccer and the brute force marketing behind FIFA. To this day, TiF remains the last true challenger to the two. This decline (or erasure) of competition has happened elsewhere. Most notably with the other football.
NFL, is dominated by just one player, EA Sports. Slowly but surely, EA acquired exclusive rights to the juiciest licenses, all but locking their competition out. As demonstrated by SoftDrinkTV, this has had a huge impact on the quality of American football titles.
At the very least, soccer, baseball and basketball still have meaningful competition at the elite level of sports sims. Basketball and baseball have two power players still – a combination of the sports’ international appeal and, more importantly, NBA and MLB’s refusal to license exclusively to a single developer.
Soccer’s two video game rivals exist despite exclusive licenses present for the biggest leagues and most widely supported teams. eFootball PES sells but a fraction of EA’s juggernaut yet it soldiers on, picking up little licensing wins while its glory days recede in the rearview mirror. As the most popular spectator sport on earth, one gets the feeling that even the face of such a dominant force and the near-extinction of its one remaining competitor, there are is enough interest in association football to host more options than basketball or baseball do.
The Big Opportunity
EA may have conquered but its subjects are far from happy. Review-bombed into oblivion on Metacritic, on the receiving end of some mixed reviews and faced with the possibility of losing a substantial portion of the one of the most lucrative child-friendly gambling schemes in video games.
FIFA 21 also suffers from most of what SoftDrinkTV refers to in his depressing appraisal of EA’s NFL licensed titles. The neglect of the game’s single-player content and the resurrection of old features in a gutted or soulless fashion, in particular, ring true for FIFA.
The neglect has been a long-term trend since the series peak late in the PS3/Xbox 360 era. The ‘Pet Semetary’-style resurrection of features is epitomised by the return of offline stat-tracking in Kick-Off mode in FIFA 19 but having profiles tied to online accounts. FIFA 21 finally allows the creation of console-bound accounts but it’s still a less thorough system than FIFA 10.
Those who play FIFA on a casual basis may never notice any of this rot. The appeal of real Premier League teams and its saccharine simulation will keep them with EA in their millions. But a third game would not necessarily be targeting the casual.
The Littler Opportunity
Pro Evolution Soccer once reigned supreme in single-player as well being as the king of the couch. However, PES‘s content and modes are just no longer distinct and unique. Its Master League and Become a Legend have less depth than it did ten years ago.
In ML, gamers could select new coaches and staff or improve team facilities. All had tangible effects that helped a player feel like they had control of their digital club. They also added longevity as your expenses scaled with your ambitions.
As your team improved, it wasn’t simply a matter of selecting a better employee. Different staff had a variety of salaries but also skillsets. One scout might be better with signing young players or players in the same league. A fitness coach might reduce injury frequency/severity or improve your players’ physical stats more quickly.
Become a Legend used to start with an exhibition youth game as scouts looked on. Once signed, you played training matches to try make the bench. Once you got first-team action, coaches give you individual instructions pre game as well as feedback after the match. Touches like this encouraged investment and immersion. Nowadays there is little to help the imagination and nurture some sports role-playing.
Single-Player Space
Between PES and FIFA, there is space for a game that focuses on the offline experience. The two have lost so much in their single-player play that there is a graveyard of lost features for a potential third player to round out their team or player career modes.
The serious football fan or a diehard Tifo is begging for the depth of career modes of yore. Pining for the opportunity to spend months on a single playthrough.
Community-Led
Even Sony couldn’t hope to prise the biggest licenses from EA. Like PES, This is Football would need placeholders, an easy route for enthusiasts to create content and an easy route for everyone else to download them.
Unlike PES, all of its potential platforms would have the ability to import images. Ever since Xbox One launched without the ability to import Option Files, Xbox PES is seen as an inferior version of the game, hampering sales in the green corner. Confusion over the availability of Option Files may also give lesser-informed consumers pause when considering a purchase of Konami’s annual effort.
This is Football would need to be marketed as ‘community-led’. Promo material would show the powerful tools used to create leagues and teams. We’d see how easy it is to find your peers’ work; sharing is caring, after all.
Grassroots
This is Football itself had some wonderful ideas of its own. For one, TiF 2005 let you start your career at the very beginning. One would take charge of a schoolboy team and work them into underage winners. Then you’d take your home town seniors to the very top of the national and European game.
Now, that’s a long-term project.
Not only that but it’s also a reminder of how steep the football pyramid truly is. A reminder of how for every professional footballer there are dozen, if not hundreds of hopefuls spat out along the way. Many of these hopefuls still play, every Sunday, in craterous pitches behind pubs with names like The Swan & Tomato.
In an era when 12 clubs almost locked themselves into a risk-free, meaningless tournament at the suggestion of an US investment firm, This is Football could celebrate football’s rightful place under the watch of the common man. It might resonate with the struggling fan in a time when the average Premier League footballer earns over ten times more in a year than those watching will earn in a lifetime.
Is there room for another soccer game considering the death of true single-player mastery in the genre? Would Sony be the right company for the job? Is eFootball PES on 9th gen. really going to blow us away or will it be the shallow, MyClub-focused experience we have had for years? Do you remember the football sim glut of the 90s?
