FIFA 16 will feature women’s teams, marking the first time female footballers have been added to the game series.
Electronic Arts has announced it is introducing female footballers into its FIFA games, starting with this year’s FIFA 16.
FIFA 16 will feature 12 international all-female teams, 11 of which will play at June’s World Cup finals. Those teams include England, Brazil, Canada, Germany and Spain.
EA Sports has facially scanned the first 11 and select reserves from each team in the same way as it used for the male footballers.
That means photorealistic versions of the female world players will be captured for the game. Top players to note are Nadine Kessler (world player of the year), Abby Wambach (USA all-time leading scoring) and England’s own skipper Steph Houghton.
FIFA Series VP and GM David Rutter said the development team has been working to “overcome the technical challenges” of including women in FIFA for a while.
“It’s been in the pipeline for a few years, and really it was just a case of making sure that the game was in a good enough state for it to work properly,” explained Rutter to The Guardian. “We needed to have tools and technology in palce that could differentiate between men and women.”
“Plus, we had to factor in the time and effort required for travelling around the world to scan faces and heads, record motion capture, etc. It’s been on the to-do list for a while.”
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He added that after working with the Xbox One and PS4 for three years, the team now has the knowledge to retool engine elements for the female players.
“The big change we’ve had to make is rebuilding the animation rig, in order that the skeleton underneath each players works with different proportions,” added Rutter. “Our underlying animation system was universally based on height and build.”
There’s no word as to when FIFA 16 will be released as yet.
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