FIFA- The perfect gateway drug to actually falling in love with Football

Hello everyone, I have decided to write a second blog after receiving words of encouragement from all of you after the first one. So, here is my take on FIFA (the video game series) on why is it so popular and how it is helping football to become popular in a country like India where cricket is considered less as a game and more as a religion. Please give it a read and let me know your opinions.

Being born in the early 90's in India,like many others of that time, I was also born with a love for cricket in my genes. Football was barely on my radar when I was a child and I couldn't understand what the excitement was all about in the newspapers before the 2002 football world cup when India hadn't even qualified for it. Well now, not even a day goes by without reading numerous articles on  Real madrid and its title chances or the player transfer news or bragging to friends about the 12 UCL titles that we have in our kitty. So what changed? How did I , a kid dreaming to represent India in cricket(lets not kid ourselves here,we all had dreamt of this when we were little) fall in love with the most beautiful game- Football. Well the answer is FIFA.

My cousin introduced me to this game for the first time when I was around 14-15. My mom had just bought me my first desktop and safe to say it was being used for all purposes except in studies which was the reason I had cited in order to persuade her to buy me the desktop. During one of the summer breaks,my cousin who was an avid gamer had brought along a host of games with him and among all the games there was a pirated cd of FIFA(2004 edition). As I had mentioned in my previous blog, I had only watched the finals of 2002 world cup before that and had no idea about football. But as we all might have experienced, FIFA works overtime to hook players who might not otherwise have any reason to care about football, and converts non-fans of football into fans more often than not. Well I used to find football boring as I thought there was not much action(by action I mean goals). But after being introduced to FIFA, I began to appreciate the aesthetics of football. I found myself enamored of the simplicity of passing a ball, of executing a defence splitting through ball, the delivery of an inch perfect cross and of the fact that two teams could play for 90 minutes and not score a single goal.

FIFA-The perfect dorm game

FIFA as a game was extremely popular in my college with tournaments being organized in the college fests along with other dorm games such as Counter Strike or DOTA. After buying a laptop, the first thoight that came in my mind was to instalk the lastest release of FIFA (2010 version) in it. There was no looking back after it. FIFA is the perfect dorm game and you can always find another FIFA fanatic within two rooms when you are staying in a dorm.
What I remember next is the trillions of hours me and my friends must have spent playing it and upgrading ourselves to a newer version of FIFA every year. I don't know the clear cut answer what makes FIFA so popular in dorms. Maybe its because of the joy you get when you finally beat a player that you know is better than you, or maybe its the thrill you get while scoring a winning goal at the final moments of the game, or maybe its the elation that you feel when you score a world class goal with your favourite player and you can't wait for the world to see it or maybe its the bragging rights you get when you beat your opponent by a considerable margin and you bag the license to tease them for the rest of their lives. There always has to be a series of minimum 5 matches to determine who the better player is (lets face it no one likes to lose at FIFA and no one accepts defeat after one or two matches) and even then in defeat you would hear scores of excuses as to why they lost this time ranging from console not working to the referee favouring the opposite side and will kick your ass the next time. From organising tournaments with 8-10 other players to staying awake till the next morning playing FIFA, I have done it all. I think where FIFA stands apart from the rest of the games is that every game you play offers you something different. FIFA also helps you to bond with other people which is extremely important in a dorm like environment when you are away from home and your known surroundings. Well lets face it you just have to be friends with a guy after you have played a series with FIFA(as said earlier no one can have just one). Heck,it is the best game to play either stoned or sloshed and I can guarantee no other games fits the bill in both these conditions.I can also proudly say that I had introduced two of my friends to FIFA who have now turned into FIFA fanatics and I often get schooled by them while playing at present. They in turn had shown the magic of this beautiful game to some more people  and as a result we now have a group that is absolutely crazy about football.

A new breed of Football fans

During my early days, I would often use FIFA as a football encyclopedia, where I would learn not just about different teams and players, but also about strategy and technique. And the best part was I didn't​ even had to strive for the knowledge I was gaining. FIFA has an incredible database of information about the game, so the more one plays the one can learns about the sport and grows an affinity for it. In a country like India, where the media houses prefer to analyze what a cricketer has for lunch or what a celebrity's juvenile daughter wears in the pool rather than covering the under-17 world cup starting in a couple of days in your own country, there aren't that many great alternatives to know and learn about the know hows and the technicalities of the game.
When you start playing with a team in FIFA you automatically start feeling an affinity towards your team, you start growing an interest to know how they are faring in their domestic league or the champions league.You start following their matches, you start following the favourite players of your team and before you know it FIFA has again turned one of the non-believers into a fan of this beautiful game.
I love FIFA, which in my opinion is the best sports video game representation of the actual sport itself and there can be no denying the fact that FIFA has helped create a new breed of football fans: one who recognizes the beauty of the real life experience by learning from its virtual alternative.