EA responds to fan criticism of women players in Ultimate Team by reminding them it's 'fantasy football'
EA's big reveal of EA Sports FC took place last week, the first non-FIFA entry in its long-running football series, and aside from some dodgy box art seemed to go down quite well. There's always criticism of a game on this scale, of course, but one big theme EA's been pursuing for years is integrating the womens' game into the experience, and with this game it's introducing women players to its hugely popular Ultimate Team mode.
The decision has led to some pushback from players, based on the fact that female players' stats will be competitive with equally rated male players' (though UT also takes account of things like height). The objection boils down to whether female players could realistically compete with male players, with some fans calling for the game to split men and women into their own UT modes, and some even going full basement dweller and suggesting women players shouldn't be in the mode at all.
«It’s something we really thought deeply about,» said John Shepherd, an executive producer at Electronic Arts, in an IGN interview. «We feel we can play a really important role in the growth of that sport in introducing it to all of our fans. We just have this conviction that we believe we want to unite the world around football.»
Shepherd goes on to make a basic but extremely good point about the nature of UT. "[Ultimate Team] is a mode where you can build your fantasy team with different nationalities, different leagues, different clubs. And so it felt like a great spot to be able to do that."
It's fantasy football, a concept any football fan has been familiar with long before UT came on the scene, and it's always been about imaginary line-ups and player combinations. So to suddenly turn around and gatekeep the
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