I may have just been reminded to never judge a book by its cover, but sometimes the cover is so bad that I can’t help it.
A few years back EA Sports and FIFA, who had collaborated for decades on the globe-conquering FIFA series of video games, split. EA now makes its own series, EA Sports FC, and FIFA–when not engaging in blatant corruption and cronyism with some of the worst people on Earth–had to find a new partner if they wanted to make some money in the video game space (which they do, all FIFA cares about is making money, see earlier comments).
I’m Taking It As A Bad Sign That Two Big Games Were Announced With No Screenshots
One game overthought it, the other knew exactly what it was doing
Late last year, it was announced they’d found one! As I said in December:
Earlier today Netflix announced that Delphi, a company you’ve likely never heard of (they’re relatively new, and their only public credit is as support on IO’s upcoming 007 game) will be both developing and publishing a new FIFA game.
That was all we knew at the time, but now, courtesy of an interview Delphi recently conducted with GI.biz, we know more. And what we know sucks.
“Delphi has evolved into a full-fledged developer and publisher,” [executive producer] Tang-Peronard says. “We believe in a lean, highly experienced core team, supported by best-in-class co-development and outsourcing partners.” For FIFA, that includes Refactor Games, based at Delphi’s LA headquarters, part-owned by Delphi and backed by venture capital giant A16z’s Speedrun fund. Founded in 2021, it launched physics-heavy American football title Football Simulator into Early Access in 2022. The studio employs alumni of VR dev Survios and blockchain dev N3TWORK.
A16z is Andreessen Horowitz, a terrible company even by venture capital’s vampiric standards, run by some of the most overt technofascists operating in Silicon Valley today. Refactor’s site boasts of hires from rights licensing company OneTeam (whose partners are currently under investigation by the FBI) and N3TWORK (a blockchain studio), and their single published sports game, Football Simulator, is not exactly a smash hit.
None of that guarantees anything! For all we know a new FIFA could turn out to be the sleeper hit of the decade, a true middle finger to complacent AAA sports gaming, a rebirth of the FIFA brand and a reward for the millions of gamers exhausted by EA’s near-monopoly on the sport.
Or, you know, it could show FIFA have no idea what they’re doing, and they’re going to get exactly the game they deserve for it.