You and I could be in a game of FIFA
My dream as a kid was to become a professional soccer player. As I got older, my expectations started to lower, realizing I wasn’t as good as I once thought. But around 14, I remember thinking, “If I can just get good enough to be on FIFA, then I’ll be happy.” Whether that means lower league teams or MLS reserves, it didn’t matter. I just wanted to be on FIFA. I’m now 24, and I’ve essentially stopped playing altogether except for kicking the ball at my garage wall. So when I was playing FIFA the other day, I realized I’m never going to be on FIFA… I was kind of sad, to be honest, it’s kind of the official ending of that dream. But then I saw this disloyal asshole:
And I realized, “Wait. I could be him!” Well, not him because I’m an Arsenal fan and would struggle to put any other teams jersey on in my house, never mind wear it out in public and actively support them. But it got me thinking. The crowds in FIFA, for the most part, have been just very generic looking people doing the same things as everyone around them. EA did add these guys to FIFA last year, which gives a little more personalized reactions from the crowd. But after playing for a while, especially with different teams, you realize that it’s the same NPCs doing the same things, just dressed up differently, and it gets boring quickly.
And while this isn’t at the top of the list, I’m sure. EA must be working on trying to create a more realistic crowd. Like I’d love to see people leaving early if I’m smashing Yeovil Town 7–0. I’d love to see people in funny hats and people on their phones: things you see at an actual game. I want there to be singing and swearing. And if I’m playing the Champions League Final, I want to see a streaker. So I started thinking about what a FIFA crowd would be like in FIFA 100.
I imagine every single fan will be personalized. They will have different looks, outfits, reaction times, interests. But how would they do this? They can’t go in and individually design each fan individually. Big stadiums hold close to 100,000 fans; each team will have new fans at each game; and every team will have its own set of fans, a few of which will overlap because people support more than one team, especially in different leagues; and there will be hundreds, if not thousands, of teams on FIFA by then. By 2100, you could probably play as some small town 10th tier English team, whose only fans are the families of the players and bring them to winning the Champions League. You could also probably go back in time and play as this year’s Liverpool team if you wanted and actually win the leaguue. So at that level, the number of individual fans FIFA would need to make would easily be in the high millions, more likely billions.
The only way they could possibly do this would be to run a massive simulation, where billions of people would be generated, given back stories, friends, family, etc., which would cause them to have different interests, mannerisms, styles, etc. (Essentially, the world we currently live in.) And all of this would be for the sole reason that some of them would attend a soccer game and be in the 14th seat of the 76th row in the eastbound stand in the background of some 13 year old’s game.
So this possibility, mixed with my belief that lifelike simulations with conscious beings will exist and that I am probably in one, means that there is a possibility that I could be or have already been in a game of FIFA. Dreams really do come true.
