Book Reviews

eth and game designer Chris Crawford get
obligatory citations, but key game studies
scholars working on animal representation in games are strangely absent here,
such as Alenda Chang, Krzysztof Jański,and Eleonora Imbierowicz, to say nothing of broader green game studies work.
Even Donna Haraway haunts this text withher relative absence, though intellectuallyrelated animal studies contemporaries
such as Giorgio Agamben and Carol J.
Adams are deployed here. Yet it is worth
stressing that this departure also rewards
the reader with intriguing primary sourcesin the form of games little discussed in theliterature, such as the work of Jeff Minteror mobile games like Into the Dead (2012).
This loose collection of short essay
chapters introduces an ambitious andengaging range of topics only to dropthem, lacking the space for unpacking
implications and applications. Chapters
open with long meditations on etymology that are made to bear a large burdenof argumentation, before digressions into
philosophy without signposting. The relevance of these detours only becomes clear
after the long-deferred return of the gameand animal as objects of study in brief andtantalizing conclusions. Ultimately theutility of the text depends on whether thereader wishes for a more granular analysis
and unpacking of games and concepts oris interested in running with the openings provided here. Although I would
have liked to see these fascinating casestudy analyses fleshed out to reckon withthe viscosity of Meat Boy, the physicalityof consoles dedicated to single games, orthe zaniness of Plague Inc. (2012), I wasdisappointed. But I reflect after reading
Game that we are no more than meat andpotential prey. In the face of this, perhaps
the reader’s time might be weighed against
scholarly diligence or restraint, and perhaps stimulation is as important as explication when we are enlivened by the sheer
number of topics here.
For all the ways Game is sometimes afrustrating read that can ignore the trails
left by scholarship on the medium, on balance I find that it is capable of delivering
fresh observations and points forfuture
departure. This is a species of creativeand critical writing more native to animalstudies and an intriguingly alien organismto game studies, but I wonder how well it
will thrive when it lacks well-establishedroots in eco game literature.
—Merlin Seller, The University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, Scotland
EA Sports FIFA:Feeling the Game
Raiford Guins, Henry Lowood, andCarlin Wing, eds.
New York: Bloomsbury, 2022.
Contents, list of figures, list oftables, acknowledgments, afterword,bibliography, list of contributors, index.
304 pp. $120 hardcover.
ISBN: 9781501375347
Guins, Lowood, and Wing’s anthology on
the most prominent digital sports gamein the world, EA Sports FIFA: Feeling theGame, provides a much-needed contribution to scholarship in an understudied area. Two previous books in this area
have focused on sports video games writlarge—Consalvo, Stein, and Mitgutch’sSports Videogames (2013) and Brookey

233

234

AMERICAN JOURNAL OF

P L AYand Oates’s Playing to Win: Sports, Video
Games, and the Culture of Play (2015). But
EA Sports FIFA: Feeling the Game represents the first scholarly text devoted exclusively to a single sports game. As such, it
is worthy of attention from game studies,sports studies, and media studies scholars
interested in the digital sports game anddigital games more broadly.
The editors self-consciously structure
their authors’ contributions around a common soccer formation, the 4-3-3. Section 1
is titled “Attack” and represents three forwards. Section 2 is titled “Midfield” andrepresents three midfielders. Section 3 istitled “Defense” and represents two wingbacks, two central defenders, and a keeper.
This structure may initially appear to be aclever conceit, but it aligns relatively wellwith how the collection’s contributors
approach the game that is EA Sports FIFA.
It could be relatively easy to present a collection of chapters that go on the attackand critique the game for its historic gender blindness or dismissive treatment of its
players. Alternatively, it might be equallyeasy to present a defensive anthology that
uncritically celebrates a highly financiallysuccessful entertainment product and thefans who gladly pay for each yearly iteration. Yet, the book’s 4-3-3 formation provides a useful balance between an all-out
offense and a “park the bus” defense.
Section 1’s forwards go on the offensive in taking EA Sports FIFA to task forits considerable shortcomings with respect
to gender. Michael Pennington argues that
EA’s failure to include women in the gamefor more than the first two decades of its
existence operates within the broader trajectory of football’s century-long ritualized exclusion of women, an exclusion

the game subsequently perpetuates with
its outsized focus on men. Carlin Wing’s
essay on the “feel” of EA Sports FIFAhighlights two types of feeling during
play: the feeling of the ball and the feeling of player movement. The latter focus
proves particularly interesting when Wingconcentrates on motion capture and theinclusion of women in the game. In one of
the more intriguing sections of the book,she astutely observes that arguments thedevelopers make about the technological challenges accompanying rendering female physiology elide problematic
ideological assumptions about sport, race,and gender. From a slightly different angle,
Mel Stanfill and Anastasia Salter attack thegame’s long-standing inability to include
women as a byproduct of a geek and sports
masculinity that works to trivialize female
participation in sport in the name of analleged realism. These chapters effectivelychallenge the notion that EA Sports FIFA
merely simulates “real” football.
Section 2’s midfielders provide differing perspectives on EA Sports FIFA’s
most lucrative mode, the digital cardbased, microtransaction rich, FIFA Ultimate Team (FUT). Piotr Siuda and MarkR. Johnson see FUT as a paradigmatic site
to examine power, money, streaming, andplayer reception. Henry Lowood uses FUT
to interrogate how the game’s mechanics
represent the intangible team quality thatis “chemistry,” a representation that causes
problems for player understanding of how
the game plays and for EA’s public relations
department as they attempt to explain it.
Abe Stein’s ethnographic study of FUT
players’ “fan-tagonistic” relationship withthe mode addresses their love-hate attitude toward it. These chapters provide a

Book Reviewsbalanced look at how the enormously successful FUT simultaneously represents ahighly profitable and entertaining, yethighly problematic, mode in the game.
Lastly, section 3’s defense and keeper
approximate an apologia for the game bypointing to some of the joys players experience as they engage EA Sports FIFA. Ranjodh Singh Dhaliwal considers these joys
from the perspective of real footballers
who have something of a measured joythat comes with playing with their virtual
selves. Matt Bouchard’s chapter considers
the joys of incremental improvements to
one’s squad across several versions of thegame’s management mode. Emma Witkowski and Rune K. L. Nielsen examine
the pastoral role of EA Sports FIFA as a siteof joy for at-risk youth in a juvenile detention facility. Chistopher A. Paul elucidates
the joy of optimizing play in the game sothat computer opponents are not merely
defeated but defeated handily. Raiford
Guin’s concluding chapter speaks to thejoys EA Sports FIFA afforded him, andother like-minded Leeds United supporters, in the virtual games the club
simulated for their fans in EA Sports FIFAduring the COVID-19 pandemic. Eachof section 3’s chapters defend the gamefor the value and importance it has in thelives of those who play it.

One of the book’s considerable
strengths comes in its diversity of methodological approaches. Section 1’s history-based and critical approach meldswith the media and reception studies insection 2 that subsequently flow smoothly
into section 3’s discourse analysis andautoethnography. With its methodological diversity, EA Sports FIFA: Feeling theGame should serve as a model for how
other books on prominent sports games
might be engaged. The editors’ methodological inclusivity would be welcome inpotential books devoted to sports games
like Madden Football, NBA 2K, or Football
Manager. On a minor note, the collection
could be helped by a chapter or two on therelationship between EA Sports FIFA andesports, given the increasing growth of thelatter in recent years. In addition, to playwith the book’s football formation mightmean going with a slightly more effective 3-4-3 and shifting Dhaliwal’s chapter
into the midfield, given his balanced lookat real athletes who play as their virtual
counterparts in the game. Nonetheless, EASports FIFA: Feeling the Game provides amuch-needed multidisciplinary contribution to a scholarly space where this type ofwork has been rare.
—Andrew Baerg, University of HoustonVictoria, Vicotria, TX

235