The Football Simulation: the Case of FIFA

The FIFA series occupies an important position in the panorama of football-themed sports video games. Over the years, the Californian company EA Sports has expanded the ludic offerings of its series, including an increasing number of licenses with players and teams from all over the world, technically perfecting the audio-visual apparatus and adding various game modes to give users a simulation more and more like real football. The simulation concept is also the main theme of this essay: based on the insights of important exponents in the academic field of game studies and beyond (such as Gonzalo Frasca, Aki Jarvinen, Gianfranco Pecchinenda, Seth Giddings and others), the article will focus on simulation within the video games of the FIFA series and will identify three possible declinations: the techno-ludic simulation, the receptive simulation and the temporal simulation. The essay aims to demonstrate that these declinations, although linked to different semantic cores, are concretely related to offer a playful, receptive and socio-cultural experience parallel to that of real football. The union of the aforementioned declinations will lead in conclusion to the precise definition of football simulation.