FIFA 21: Online Career — UX/UI Case Study

Background

The computer game industry is huge. Production budget revenue in 2019 generated reached around $138.7 billion, and the predictions say it will increase by about 9.6% this year. Esports also continues to grow, becoming very popular in recent years and becoming one of the central forms of entertainment. Total esports viewership is expected to grow at a 9% compound annual growth rate (CAGR) between 2019 and 2023, up from 454 million in 2019 to 646 million in 2023, per Business Insider Intelligence estimates. More and more esportmen sign professional contracts, thus turning their hobbies into an everyday job.

FIFA Series by EA Sports is not an exception. Many teams of leading football championships are recruiting new formation players — players who can score goals with the help of a gamepad. Such clubs as Manchester City, Valencia, or Wolfsburg already have esports teams, which represent them on the FIFA virtual stages.

However, FIFA Esports is a fairly young industry, so I decided to spend some time to think about how it can be promoted even more and how the niche can be fully exploited.

Discovery

FIFA is one of the most popular franchises in video games. Only FIFA 20 has hit 10 million players with 410+ million matches played.

During the fiscal year 2019, EA registered 45 million unique players on PC, PlayStation 4, Switch, and Xbox One.

The game offers several game modes: Ultimate Team, Online Seasons, Career Mode, Pro Clubs, etc. To better understand which one is the most popular, I’ve conducted user testing with 75 fans from FIFA Community from my country. One of the questions was: “What is your favorite game mode in FIFA, and why?”. The answer you can see below:

Let’s talk about the pros and cons of each game mode.

FIFA Ultimate Team

Pros
Introduced in FIFA 09, FUT is the most played mode in the whole game. It is a complex system where the players can create their dream team by collecting the cards of players who will help to create the Best XI possible. They can be both the best players of the moment and legends of world football. Also, the player can follow the FUT market, where they can sell his players or to buy new ones. The cards can be obtained by buying the special packs or by participating in tournaments.

Of course, one of the biggest pros of this game mode is that users can play online versus each other. From user testing results, also is clear that FIFA players appreciate this very much:

• “I like the opportunity to play online with my friends or other players.”
• “I like the competition and experience of playing with other real FIFA players around the world.”
• “It’s cool that I can see how good I am in comparison with other players.”

EA Sports is organizing also the offline tournaments, called FIFA 20 Global Series, where the best players in the world meet, and a lot of fans are watching the competition online.

Cons
FIFA Players have to create the team from scratch. They have to add the name, choose the badge, and the kits for his club. After that, they can start to add cards of players in his team. All these elements are not unique, so, very often, two teams with the same badge, name, kit, and what is more important — the same football players can play versus each other.

So, it is very common a situation when on the same pitch is playing Messi vs. Messi, Ronaldo vs. Ronaldo, or Van Dijk vs. Van Dijk.

Also, FIFA players can play only in special tournaments like Weekend League, Division Rivals, or Squad Battles, where they obtain rewards, by playing randomly with other millions of players around the world. The chance that the same two players will play twice against each other is very small.

All these things are killing pleasure to play for your real favorite football team, together with the rivalry between teams, things which are the reason why millions of people love this type of sport around the world. You cannot see for example an El Clasico: Barcelona — Real Madrid in FIFA Ultimate Team, where millions of fans would watch this virtual match and would support their favorite team.

FIFA Online Seasons

FIFA 20 Season mode is also an online divisional game mode that allows players to play against other online players within their division. In this game mode are available 10 Seasons, where FIFA players are trying to earn points to go promote to a higher division and win the title.

Pros
Compared to Fifa Ultimate Team, in this game mode, the users can play for their favorite club or country. They can score with their favorite players, which will wear the usual club kits, with the unique badge.

Cons
Each player can choose any club or country. So, even if you can see here a rival match AC Milan vs. Inter Milan or Man United vs. Man City, it is very common to see a match between the same team. E.g. Liverpool vs. Liverpool or France vs. France, with the same players on the pitch.

Besides, the same as in FUT, the players are playing randomly with thousands of players, so it is almost impossible to meet the same player twice in this competition. So I don’t think we can talk about rivalry here either. Even more, the fans around the world are gathering together to support their favorite team because it is unique. When thousands and millions of players are playing for the same virtual club, it’s hard to follow and support all of them or to choose only one.

FIFA Career Mode

This game mode is the closest to real life, and it is the second game mode preferred by respondents asked in the user testing, after Ultimate Team.

There are two options that users can choose: Manager Career and Player Career. If the user chooses the first option, he needs to deal with almost everything — the team’s line-up, player transfers, youth development and even selling t-shirts. While in the “Player Career”, he can lead a player to fame and make them a real legend. These opportunities are also appreciated by users. Here are some thoughts about that from my user testing results:

• “It is nice that you can transfer players and create your dream team!”
• “I like the simulation of professional growth.”
• “I can manage and develop my favorite team.”

Pros
The last response from user testing results represents one of the pros of this game mode. Besides, compared with Online Seasons, in this game mode, users will never play against an identical team. The favorite team is unique, the same as players. You will not see another Neymar or Mbappe. And if you want to transfer a player from another team, then you have to spend some money from your transfer budget and convince the player that they have to choose your club.

Cons

Career Mode is Overdue For Major Additions. I’m not overly impressed with the “enhancements” to career mode. FIFA’s career modes aren’t the worst in the industry, but it’s time EA and other publishers of sports video games find a new way to make team building and chemistry management more fun.
© Forbes

Even though many good improvements have been made, it still seems that this game mode is not so popular among players. Even if Career Mode is the second choice of the users which I asked in the survey, only 23.7% said they like it, and almost 40% of respondents said they didn’t play this game mode in the last three editions of FIFA:

These numbers could be better, especially if we compare them with the “Ultimate Team” game mode.

And one of the improvements could be the online mode. Right now, the users can play only with the computer, which after some seasons, it can be boring because the opponent’s movement becomes predictable. And we already know that users like very much the opportunity to play online, with real players.

About this game mode, I would like to talk next, in detail. But to better illustrate the idea, I’ve created the design of the new FIFA 21 game.

FIFA 21 — Design

Sketching

After the small research, where I studied the designs of the previous generation of FIFA games, I’ve started with sketching and user flow. The main target of this stage was to create the structure for the whole app, especially for the new game mode.

Wireframes

The next step was to transform sketching into the wireframes.

Being a FIFA fan, and playing in the last four editions of this game, I’ve noticed some UX issues. And being a Product designer, I’ve collected them and tried to solve, by coming with better solutions from the design perspective. That was started to be done in wireframes.

Look and feel. Style guide

Each year, for each new edition of the game, EA Sports is coming with brand new design and is doing an excellent UI job. Besides the football star on the cover, fans can associate each edition of FIFA with its color. So, if we take as an example the last four editions of FIFA, we can see that for FIFA 20, as the main color was used red, for FIFA 19 — blue, FIFA 18 — purple, and for FIFA 17 — yellow.

For FIFA 21, I’ve decided to use the palette with green as the primary color. It is the first color that comes in mind when I’m thinking about football. It is associated with the grass and football field. Another reason why I chose green is that it has not been used in the recent past, which permits us to use it as a distinct color for the new edition of the game.

If, with color, I wanted to give the user the sensation of something new and fresh, the scope of the typography was to create a feeling of familiar things. Aktive Grotesk font perfectly fitted in this context, because the same type of font was used in the last editions of FIFA games.

The last part which I needed to define, before starting to work on mockups was Grid, which is very important, especially for developing a design for TV.

First of all, I took care of the safe-zone. For Living Room Applications, all UI design elements should be arranged so that none of them is in margins of approximately 5% on all sides. And talking about the Grid itself, I’ve chosen to use a 16 columns grid (with column width = 94px, and gutter — 16px). It would help me to have more flexibility in the sizes of the cards, which will be created.

With all rules in mind, I’ve started to create mockups, and here is the Final Result:

The screen above represents the Home Page of FIFA 21 and it’s the first interaction with the user, after the Splash Screen.

Overall, I didn’t change so much the pattern that EA is using in the last years. I’ve tried to make it familiar and easier to use for users who played FIFA before.

The left part of the screen it’s dedicated to the graphic-promotional stuff. Usually, here EA is using the real images of football-stars. I didn’t make an exception for this version and used the same idea.

Another good FIFA tradition is to launch each year a new game mode. Last year, it was “Volta,” two years ago, it was “The Journey.” These game modes usually are also presented on the Home Page to make the user easier to find them and to try them. This year, it can be FIFA Online Career (FOC). Therefore I’ve added this game mode on the Home Page as well, and further, I want to talk about in detail.

FIFA Online Career (Concept)

The main idea of FIFA Online Career (FOC) is to make the game as close to real-life as possible.

One player — One team
Each club in this game mode is associated with a single FIFA player. When the user first joins Online Careers, they can choose a team from the list of available clubs. It can be one from the leagues from their country or any other leagues available in FIFA.

Does it mean that a player who bought the game later than others will never have the opportunity to play for another club that is already selected by somebody else?

No. Everything depends on the player’s performance. If the user is playing for a smaller club, but they have good results, the bigger clubs will invite them to play for their team. And vice versa, if the player registers bad results and doesn’t fit with the board expectation, they would be fired, and the AI (artificial intelligence) of the game would find a replacement and would select a FIFA player who registered good results with his club.

Well, you ask, they are 10+ million players who play FIFA, and not so many clubs. What the rest of the players should do?

If all clubs from a league are already booked, the user can create a new team. The AI will randomly create players, that will have the overall default ratings, but which the user can train and grow. The more workouts the user does with his players, the better they become. So, everybody has a chance to grow the next Messi or Ronaldo.

The team will be placed in the last value league of the country which the user chose. But they have a limited number of available places, so if it doesn’t fit in this league, another one will be created automatically.

So, all players will have a chance to assert themselves, to receive the opportunity to play in the higher leagues and to win titles, because everything else, it is the same as in real life. The best 3 teams promote to the next leagues, the last 3-relegate.

Every day is Match Day

The advantage of the video game, compared with real football, is that esportsmen didn’t need so much time for recovery. And from user testing results, we can see that FIFA fans like to play this game everyday.

On the question: “How often do you play FIFA?”, 43.4% of FIFA players respond they are playing every day. Other 46.1% said they are playing FIFA several times per week. Only 10.5 of users said they are playing once per week or less.

That means that for real FIFA fans, who are playing every day, it can be insufficient to have one or two matches per week (the same as real football teams has in real life). It will be boring for them to wait so much for the next matches.

So, instead of that, in FOC is scheduled at least one match per day for one team. The matches are scheduled for a specific time.

Meanwhile, the user has to prepare their team to be ready for the match. The better they are preparing it, the more chances they have to win.

Preparation

Four things define the overall preparation of the team:

1. Training — the FIFA player has to do a minimum of 5 training sessions per day to have a 100% index on this point.
2. Conditions — besides the matches themselves and training sessions, the user can play friendly matches with their friends, or with other random FIFA players. It will help users better to prepare the team and himself for the upcoming matches and to grow the overall ratings. All this takes the power of the players, and only after every four hours, 5% of the fitness will be added to all players. The user has to make sure that their players are not too tired before upcoming matches.
3. Morale — is also a very important part of the preparation, which can influence the matches. The user has to make sure that players are in a good mood. The same as in Offline Career Mode, the player’s morale depends on a lot of things: how often he plays, conversations which the manager has in private with him, and the manager’s answers in press-conferences.
4. Injuries — The fewer injuries are in the team, the more solutions the coach has to line up the best first eleven. The user has to take care of players and to avoid injuries.

The user can prepare the team on his own or they can use special cards.

These will give an advantage for FIFA players who will use them. The user can grow their players faster by doing more training sessions and play more friendly matches. If the user wants to avoid training sessions, they can use “Training Cards”. If players are too tired, the user can use the “fitness card,” which will recover the players. And if a player got an injury, the “healing card” will help to make him fit instantly. The “morale card” will increase automatically the team morale, which will make the squad stronger, and will increase the chance of winning for the next matches.

The FIFA players will receive those cards as rewards after matches, or they can buy them from FOC Market.

Transfers

The same as in real life, in FIFA Online Career, all players are unique. But the same as in real life, they can be bought on Transfer Market. It will be opened at the beginning of each month, and all FIFA players will have a chance to buy, to sell, to exchange, or to loan a player. Therefore, each user can select their tactic and vision. They can choose to grow players, and after that to sell them, they can buy the best players on the market, and to create the best possible team, or just to keep their squad untouched and to train those players which they have. It depends on how much money the player has in the transfer budget, and which are the team goals.

Opponent Squad

In real life, teams are preparing themselves by analyzing their opponent. The same opportunity now has the FIFA players in Online Career Mode.

They can see details about the opponent as recent form, the formation which he is using, the overall rating of the team, etc.

But what is more important, they can see the opponent squad and details about each player. That will help to prepare themselves even better, to make a plan for the game, to choose the formation, etc.

Online Games

The matches are set for a specific time, and only the player who is playing home can change the time (only once).

The players will have 60 seconds to connect to the match. If one (or both) of the players doesn’t connect, the computer will play for them.

Therefore, FIFA players have to do their best to be available on time when games are scheduled, because it is an advantage to play live, and it’s easier to play against the AI.

Simulate (Manage) the match

If the user feels that they prepared very well the team, and they are very confident in their squad, they can just watch the game and manage the team, while the computer will play for them.

Users can also see the statistic of the match, make substitutions, and see live standings of the league.

Moreover, at any time, the user can enter the game, and continue to play for their team.

Mobile Applications and Web Client

If the FIFA player doesn’t manage to be near his console and to play the match on the scheduled time, he can watch the match live on his mobile device, or on the web site.

Also, in FOC Companion, the player can see their standings and fixtures. They can simulate the training, and make sure that the team is prepared for the next match, by buying the special cards from FOC Market and applying to their players. Besides, users can make transfers when the market is opened.

Concept and Format

Given that in Online Career, the FIFA players can and want to play every day, that means that one season equivalent in real life can be played in one month. So, all matches from the championship, cup and champions league (if the team is involved), will be scheduled for 30 days. Thus, each month, from each country we’ll have one league champion and one cup winner.

All players who won the top-level leagues available in FIFA 21, will play in an offline FOC Tournament. These tournaments will be organized by FIFA each month, during one weekend, in different countries of the world.

The same approach works for the Cup Winners. All players who will win the cup tournament in their countries will play each month in another dedicated offline tournament.

Besides that, the first four teams from each European top-league will qualify for the next month in UEFA Champions League. In conclusion, each month, it will also be registered, one Champions League Winner.

The first tournament is scheduled at the end of October after the game is launched. And the last tournament will take place in July.

August is dedicated to the FOC — Final Tournament, where 30 players who won tournaments of the month, will meet each other.

And only one player will win the main trophy of the game. He will be named the best FIFA Player of the Year, and the team he represents — the best eFootball team of the year!

Conclusion

This game mode will help FIFA to go to the next level in the esport industry. More users will want to try the new game mode, will do a lot of training, and will buy the game as soon as possible just to have a chance to play for their favorite team, or at least for a good team from top-leagues.

The professional football teams, who cares about their images and name, will want to be represented by a good FIFA player in this game mode. Because nobody (especially the big clubs) wants to see that their clubs are in the relegation zone, or even worse, somewhere in the second or third league. Even in the virtual football world. The press will write and will talk about that. And it is a bad reputation for a club.

In conclusion, more clubs will offer real contracts to professional esportsmen, because those football clubs, who have an official esport team, can send a request by saying that they want their club to be represented by their FIFA player. In this case, this club will not be available to be selected in FIFA Online Career, and only the club decides when they want to fire their player, and when to sign a new contract with the other one.

Even more, the special, dedicated scout departments can appear, which will monitor the FIFA players, and will follow them, to sign later, a professional contract with better of them.

In conclusion, FIFA esportmen will have more chances to sign professional contracts with real football clubs. Also, all FIFA players around the world will have the opportunity to turn their hobbies into an everyday job. All they need is a console or a good game computer with FIFA 21 installed on that.

Another advantage of this game mode for EA will be that they can increase the number of people who are following the industry. A lot of football fans will want to see and to support their favorite team in FOC Tournaments. A possible virtual derby between two rivals teams will be watched by thousands of fans around the world. Even more, a lot of fans will want to come to FOC Offline Tournament to support the FIFA player who is playing for their team! Therefore the FOC Tournaments, especially the Final Tournament, can gather entire stadiums of fans.