All over the country kids and big kids alike would have come down stairs on Christmas morning to find a copy of FIFA 12 or Pro Evolution Soccer 2012 (PES) under the tree. It’s fair to say that more people would have been enjoying the beautiful game on Xbox or PS3 than would have at the local park this Christmas.
However, this isn’t because of the winter weather. It’s just as true at the height of summer. Potentially an entire generation of gifted England International footballers wiped out by the popularity of gaming. So why is it so popular?
Football gaming isn’t exactly a new fad. FIFA has had an incarnation on various consoles since 1994. This year’s FIFA and PES games had sold close to 4 million copies in the UK after just a month of release, with gamers ranging from the very young to the more experienced. So why should this be able to compete with the real thing?
After years of development these games are now at the point where they don’t differ that much from actual football in many ways. Football gaming used to be something for one or two people to do in their own home together, whereas if you went to the local field as many people as were available could join in.
Now a game of FIFA or PES can accommodate just as many- up to 22 people can play in an online game. The days of computer games being for ‘billy-no-mates’ are long gone, as you can meet up with your friends in cyberspace and have a kick about. You can get the same competitiveness, same social aspect and the same banter. If you can play a full 11-a-side game with real people (as opposed to just a computer) in your armchair then why go out at all?
Joining your local team no longer has to mean long drives to play on a boggy pitch in the freezing cold. Just sit and join a club online, with other likeminded gamers. Master your own position, rely on your team-mates, and develop a team unity, just like in real life.
In fact, maybe now it’s got to the point where the computer game is moving ahead of the sport it was based on. Go down to your nearest pitch with your friends and you can get a game of football going. But, stay in and play online and you can play against people from all over the world.
It doesn’t even matter if people don’t speak your language. An England vs Germany game on PlayStation, takes on a new meaning when the person playing as England is sat at home in London and the person playing as Germany is in their own living room in Munich.
Gaming has some obvious strengths, no doubt about it. But it’s important that we don’t get carried away here. FIFA and PES are simulations of football. Close to the real thing, but ultimately not the real thing.
The gaming world has come on leaps and bounds in recent years, but it could never recreate the feeling of actually being out on a pitch somewhere- the living and breathing of a game. Coming into the dressing room afterwards, tired, muddy, wet, cold but euphoric from a great display or a big win. And let’s be honest, none of us grow up wanting to be the best at PES in the world, or wanting to represent their country at FIFA.
No, even in this day and age, children all over the country, all over the world in fact, want to be professional footballers. Thousands make it, millions don’t. But of those millions, so many are so passionate about actually playing the game that they turn up every Saturday anyway to play at whatever level they can. With no chance of earning £100,000 per week, lucrative endorsements or the adulation of thousands of screaming fans. It is simply just to play the game they love.
Let’s not shun gaming completely. It is Christmas after all. Why not gather around the TV with the family and indulge in a quick game of FIFA or PES? But, when the weather gets a little fairer, remember that they still do football outside too, the reason it’s so popular in the first place!
(I would just like to mention Champman, or as it is now called- Football Manager. The greatest football game ever! But that's another story- Ed.)