The FIFA video game series is the most popular sports game on the planet and this year's edition will have a new innovative feature.
Women's teams will be in the FIFA '16 game for the first time ever. Twelve international teams, including the United States, England, France, Sweden, Australia, China, Italy, Mexico, Brazil, Canada, Germany and Spain, will be available to users when the game is released in September.
United States stars Alex Morgan, Sydney Leroux and Abby Wambach were among those who spent a day at EA Sports' Vancouver Headquarters to provide developers with female-specific motion capture. Each women's team will include the starting 11 players plus select reserves - all of whom have been facially scanned to provide a real-life experience.
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"It is such an honor for women's players and our team to be included in FIFA 16," Morgan said, via EASports.com. "I always wondered what it would be like to see our team in the game and it is very cool to know that it is now a reality."
Women's soccer has been popular for years, but it took EA Sports a fairly long time to include them in the video game franchise. Star men's players such as Lionel Messi, Cristiano Ronaldo, Wayne Rooney and others have dominated the FIFA scene, especially during this decade. The FIFA series vice president and general manager David Rutter explained why.
"It's been in the pipeline for a few years, and really it was just a case of making sure that the game was in a good enough state for it the work properly," Rutter told The Guardian. "We needed to have tools and technology in place that could differentiate between men and women. Plus, we had to factor in the time and effort required for travelling around the world to scan faces and heads, record motion capture, etc. It's been on the to-do list for a while.
"The big change we've had to make is rebuilding the animation rig, in order that the skeleton underneath each player works with different proportions. Our underlying animation system was universally based on height and build. Rather than manipulating the proportions between joint and bone, it was like stretching an elastic band."
Rutter also mentioned the female domestic teams are a goal for the future, but that will likely take time.
The groundbreaking inclusion of women in the FIFA video game series coincides with the 2015 Women's World Cup, which will take place in Canada this summer. FIFA '16 will be available for purchase on September 22, 2015.
