Soccer is the biggest sport in the world and the most globally watched. When something is as popular as soccer, people will want to capitalize on this and try to profit from its popularity and success. The selling point of football games is being able to play as your favorite team and favorite players; this is such a big factor, and it makes it very enjoyable.
Fifa/EAFC
Fifa, now known as EAFC, is without a doubt the biggest sports game in the world and it shows no signs of stopping. The reason for the success of this game can be attributed to a few things, one of them being the longevity that it has. Fifa has been around for around 3 decades and is still growing year by year. It gets new sponsors, and new deals and makes more money every year which is a reason why it grows so much.
The biggest soccer league in the world is the Premier League, and EAFC and the Premier League constantly work together and have a great partnership; this is exactly why the game is so big. The beauty of EAFC is the fact you can make a career mode and manage and play as your favorite team and make your team exactly how you want it. You could even simulate the entire season and use this to do some premier league outright betting and predict who would win the league.
It is little things like this that make the game as fun as it is, but sometimes the fans of the game voice very fair concerns about the game, and we have the developers listen and make it how the fans want, and if they do, I will be excited to see how it gets better in the future.
Football Manager
Football Manager is the game played by people who turn their noses up at FIFA players, and I agree with that sentiment. As an avid EAFC player and having FIFA in my top 5 games of all time, Football Manager is better by a landslide. The game is less about the gameplay, and you don’t control the team at all; it is completely about the managerial side of football. You create tactics, run the club, handle transfers, etc. Everything you can think of is done in the game.
The more “nerdy” sides of the game are the reason why it is so popular and why I love it so much. It is completely tactical, financial, and managerial, with intricate detail, an unlimited tactical database, and a massive player database, this and EAFC are like Ying and Yang, with EAFC being close to Madden and Football Manager being closer to usual point-and-click games. Football Manager is huge because it is so in-depth and not like any other popular sports game. It is as close to managing a soccer team as most people will get.
Pro Evolution Soccer
Pro Evolution Soccer, also known as PES but later known as eFootball, is the main competitor to EAFC, even if it’s not a close competition.
This game had its prime years in the early 2000s and was, at some point, better than EAFC and played by more people. The success of one of the best football games of all time in PES 6 was hard to replicate, and they have yet to reach that popularity and success again. After this, FIFA and FIFA became the main market and have controlled it for better or worse.
Writing about these has made me reminisce and realize how great some soccer games are. Some of which I didn’t even mention, like FIFA Street and Sensible World Of Soccer, are just two of the other wildly popular games that have sadly fallen to the wayside.
