With FIFA 16 featuring women’s football for the first time, EA Sports have received tons of praise from almost anyone with an interest in games, and rightly so. But whilst the inclusion is a step in the right direction, it will potentially do more damage than anything else.
The fact of the matter is, whilst FIFA 16 will feature women’s football, it will also undermine it. Personally, I think women’s football should form the same portion of the game or it shouldn’t be there at all, in order to avoid any sort of competition.
In reality, women’s football teams are delegated only to certain modes in FIFA 16, unlike their male counterparts who can participate in every type of game mode. That’s not to mention that there are only a handful of female national teams to play with in the first place. Today the news came out that the FIFA 16 demo will allow you to try playing with some women’s teams – two of them to be precise – the USA and Germany. That would be fine if it weren’t for the fact that the demo also includes male teams, of which there are ten.
It doesn’t take a genius to realise then that the men still have a far greater significance in the game. If anything, FIFA 16 may serve as an indication of how far behind men’s football the women’s game is in real life. Perhaps in a few years down the line, women will form the same portion of the game as men, but for now FIFA 16 is treading on thin ice.
I’m not saying that women shouldn’t be in the game, but that they only should be in it if they’re going to be given the same attention and respect as their male counterparts.