Will This Be the Biggest Video Game of the Year?
By Movieguide® Contributor
EA Sports is bringing back its college football video game for the first time in over a decade, and with new features just announced, it is shaping up to be one of the best games of the year.
The biggest announcement came last week when EA announced the game will not only feature current college football players but also previous stars. This will allow fans to play as the college football stars of the past decade who already missed their chance to appear in a college football video game. The names revealed so far include Patrick Mahomes, Joe Burrow, Christian McCaffrey, C.J. Stroud, Sauce Gardner and Puka Nacua.
The announcement of legacy players came as EA also announced an “ultimate team” mode where players can build the team of their dreams and use it to go head-to-head against other players online. This game mode has been featured in EA Sports titles of the past and is especially popular within its FIFA franchise.
While EA Sports’ college football was one of the company’s more popular titles in the 2000s through the 2010s (under the name NCAA Football), the last version of the game came out in 2014 and was then put on hold due to licensing issues. The main problem arose because college athletes could not be compensated for their athletics, per NCAA rules. This rule was changed in June 2021 when the Supreme Court ruled that college athletes could, in fact, be compensated for their name, image and likeness (NIL), opening the door for EA to create another college football-based game.
The NIL ruling will set the upcoming game apart from the NCAA Football games of the past as players in those games could not be identified by name. Thus, Tim Tebow, for example, was only identified as “QB No. 15.” However, for this upcoming iteration, EA has paid over 10,000 players to include them in the game. The starting deal was $600 for their likeness along with a free copy of the game once it released.
For stars of the sport, the deal was more lucrative, with EA promising higher payment for players who actively promote the game.
EA Sports College Football 25 is set to release on July 19. The studio is planning to release more info about the game before its launch will a full roster list on the 17th and info about a “Road to Glory” game mode releasing on the 18th.
Movieguide® previously reported on video games:
A recent study from Pew revealed new insights into teen video game usage and how the population views the positives and negatives of the past time.
As many parents might guess, nearly every teen (85%), regardless of gender, plays video games on a regular basis. This is especially true of teenage boys, with 97% of them saying they play video games regularly. Despite the prevalence, however, only 40% of teens identify as “gamers.”
This self-identification is largely based on the time spent on gaming and a person’s view of the past time as a whole. Roughly seven in 10 teens (71%) who identify as gamers play daily, compared to only 30% who don’t see themselves as gamers. Gamers are also much more likely to view video games as a social activity than non-gamers.
While nearly every teen who plays video games does so with friends gamers are more likely to make friends through video games as well (68%) compared to non-gamers (29%). Gamers are also more involved in gaming communities through online platforms such as Discord (44% vs 20% for non-gamers) and Twitch (30% vs 9% for non-gamers).
The study also looked at the reason teens play video games.
