Four U.S. soccer stars do motion capture for FIFA 16 game.
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The DeanBeat: The flap about FIFA’s new female soccer players shows progress and setbacks

Electronic Arts took a historic step forward for gender equity in video games this week by adding women’s national teams for the first time to its FIFA 16 video game, heretofore an all-male roster list for 22 years.

Accordingly, the Neanderthal men on the Internet voiced their objections. They found it threatening to have women in “their” soccer video game, and some vowed to buy from competitors who didn’t have female players. You can picture the scowling men, howling about female athletes who could play them into the ground on the real pitch.

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Written by

Dean Takahashi

Dean Takahashi is editorial director for GamesBeat. He has been a tech journalist since 1988, and he has covered games as a beat since 1996. He was lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat from 2008 to April 2025. Prior to that, he wrote for the San Jose Mercury News, the Red Herring, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Dallas Times-Herald. He is the author of two books, "Opening the Xbox" and "The Xbox 360 Uncloaked." He organizes the annual GamesBeat Next, GamesBeat Summit and GamesBeat Insider Series: Hollywood and Games conferences and is a frequent speaker at gaming and tech events. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.