Honest opinion, on a game that is underwhelming as usual.

I’ve played FIFA since FIFA 10. I’ve played the World Cup games, Career Mode, Ultimate Team and pretty much every major version of the game over the years.

And honestly, I think EA has lost sight of what made this series special.

I’m not saying the games haven’t changed. Of course they have. The graphics, gameplay, animations and presentation are miles ahead of what they were years ago.

My problem is that the depth of the actual football experience hasn’t progressed anywhere near as much as it should have.

Career Mode is the biggest example

Go back to the older FIFA games and you’ll find surprisingly deep ideas that, in hindsight, should have been the foundations for something much bigger.

Even FIFA 09’s Manager Mode had things like sponsors, ticket prices, stadium upgrades and staff upgrades.

Those features were basic. I’m not pretending FIFA 09 had some incredible football management simulator.

But that’s exactly the point.

Why didn’t EA spend the next 17 years building on those ideas?

Imagine what Career Mode could look like today if EA had continually expanded that system.

I want to actually run a football club.

I want meaningful sponsorship negotiations.

I want to decide ticket prices and see how that affects attendance and revenue.

I want stadium expansion.

I want proper training facilities.

I want youth academies that actually feel like academies.

I want staff members who genuinely affect my club.

I want board members with different expectations.

I want supporters to react to my decisions.

I want the financial side of the club to matter.

I want to feel like I’m building something over 10, 15 or 20 seasons.

Instead, Career Mode still feels like it has been built around the same basic foundations for years.

EA has added features, yes. But adding features isn’t the same as evolving the mode.

And then there’s The Grounds

This is where I really start questioning EA’s priorities.

The Grounds is clearly designed around the modern social/open-world sports-game formula. It reminds me heavily of what NBA 2K has been doing with The City.

And that’s not necessarily a bad idea by itself.

But EA has already been down the road of taking another existing football concept and putting its own spin on it with Volta.

Volta was essentially EA’s attempt to bring the FIFA Street-style experience into the main FIFA series.

Now we’re moving towards another big social environment with The Grounds.

My question is simple:

Why is EA putting this level of ambition into another social mode when Career Mode still has so much potential left untapped?

I’m not saying The Grounds shouldn’t exist.

I’m saying I’d rather see that development ambition applied to Career Mode.

Ultimate Team makes the priorities obvious

I understand EA is a business.

I understand Ultimate Team makes enormous amounts of money.

But from a player’s perspective, it is difficult not to notice where the biggest investment and attention goes.

Ultimate Team has become an enormous ecosystem of content, rewards, currencies and ways to keep players coming back.

And now The Grounds has its own progression, items and purchasable-style ecosystem around it.

Meanwhile, Career Mode players aren’t asking for another way to spend money.

We’re asking for a better football management experience.

That’s the difference.

And then there’s the World Cup

This one probably frustrates me more than anything because I’ve played the World Cup games since FIFA 10.

The old World Cup games felt like events.

They had their own identity.

They felt like EA had made a game specifically to celebrate the biggest tournament in football and potentially the world. 

I know things have changed with licensing, and I understand why EA’s approach is different now.

But when you’ve experienced those older World Cup games, seeing the World Cup increasingly treated as content within the existing FC ecosystem doesn’t have the same feeling.

It feels less special.

And that’s what I think has happened to EA Sports FC generally.

EA isn’t necessarily making bad games.

It’s making games that feel like they could be so much better.

That’s what annoys me.

I’m not expecting EA to recreate FIFA 09.

I’m expecting them to look at what worked, take those ideas and develop them into something incredible.

You’ve had nearly two decades of technology, bigger budgets, more powerful consoles and years of feedback from millions of players.

Career Mode should be unrecognisable compared with FIFA 09 in terms of depth.

Instead, some of the things that made the older games feel like genuine football management experiences have disappeared, while newer modes and monetisation systems continue to expand.

I’ve played this series for years because I love football.

I don’t want EA to stop innovating.

I want EA to innovate in the places that actually matter to football fans.

Give us a Career Mode where running a club actually feels like running a club.

Give us a World Cup experience that feels like the World Cup.

Give us reasons to be excited about playing the game for 10 seasons rather than reasons to keep checking the store.

Stop treating Career Mode like the mode that gets a few additions every year while everything else gets built around engagement and monetisation.

I’ve been playing since FIFA 10. I’ve seen what this series used to be.

I’m not asking EA to go backwards.

I’m asking you to finally take the best ideas you’ve had over the years and actually build on them.

Because EA Sports FC has the potential to be the greatest football game ever made.

It just feels like EA has forgotten that being the greatest football game isn’t the same thing as being the most profitable football game.