Why don’t we hear more about sports videogames being in esports? It seems like common sense that these games would be easily integrated into the esports scene. I mean, the first Madden game was created in 1988, it’s based on an actual sport, why wouldn't it be easy to make it an esport? It shouldn't be too hard to get people interested, should it? Well, as it turns out, they are already a thing.
Electronic Arts (EA) has long been making insanely popular sports video games like FIFA and Madden. It seems only natural that sports games should be included in esports, and at the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3), EA announced that they have new plans to do so. They will be hosting four events coming up, and the first one will be the “Madden NFL Championships.”
In any competitive activity, your success is based directly on your skill versus your opponent’s skill. You have nearly full control over your own performance. There are no uncontrollable variables (as any competitive activity should be). Many esports are 5v5 or some such set-up, and your teammates are there to help you, as you are there to help them.
leaves the developers little room to balance the characters.
Now, I could maybe see this as a possibility if you have 11 players on a team, all with stats that have been balanced against every other character’s stats, but how ridiculous and complicated would that be? Well, I don’t actually know. Maybe not too complicated to work.
If you’re a huge football fan, and you like video games, you probably play Madden. The same goes for soccer fans and FIFA. So, if you already love the sport, chances are you will enjoy watching its video game counterpart played professionally. I mean, the point of most video games is to be as close to the real thing as possible. The fanbase is already there, theoretically. All it would take is for EA to do a bang-up job of putting together a fair, fun, interesting league that is as fun to watch as it is to play.
EA is launching an esports initiative aimed at making the Madden esports scene available for anyone. It will have three tiers. The “Challenger” tier will be for “community-focused competitions.” This allows small communities to form their own events and compete on whatever level they find themselves at. The “Premier” tier will be for “large-scale events that EA will host in partnership with other companies.” And the “EA Majors” will be just that. This is where the champs will be determined.
"We want to make stars of all our players with new competitive modes and weekly contests," says EA executive and EA’s esports chief Peter Moore.
EA has been dabbling in esports for a while now. Madden has been at it for well over a decade, and the first FIFA Interactive World Cup was held in 2004. But many of these were quick one-off competitions, and what EA wants now is a standing esports league with big prize pools. The Madden NFL Championships boasts a $1 million prize pool, much bigger than this year’s Madden Challenge prize of $50,000.
The FIFA Interactive World Cup since 2004, but this year, Manchester City actually recruited its first FIFA player. Kieran “Kez” Brown will represent the U.K. football club at official and fan-operated events. Yet another argument that esports is a sport—a franchise that focuses on physical sports recruiting a gamer to their roster.
And with the announcement of FIFA 2017’s release, EA announced a new competitive mode called the Ultimate Championship Series, which will have a $1.3 million prize pool, once again headed by Peter Moore. "The popularity of Ultimate Team, combined with the global nature of the most popular sports franchise on the planet, makes FIFA 17 a very exciting title for a season of competitive gaming like the one we are announcing today,” says Moore.
The question isn’t whether or not games like Madden and FIFA will become a part of esports (they already are), but whether or not they will stick around in the competitive scene. If they do well, other sports-themed games may find a home in the esports arena. If not, well, at least the games themselves will remain popular. Soccer fans will always enjoy a casual game of FIFA, regardless of whether or not it is being played professionally.
