This college football offseason, the hype isn’t focused on Heisman favorites, head coaching changes at three of the four College Football Playoff participants, the seismic changes of conference realignment or another on-the-field storyline. For what I have to imagine is the first time ever, the buzz is all about a video game: EA Sports’ College Football 25.
The installment marks the first licensed college football video game since NCAA Football 13 in 2014, and the series’ absence has been deeply felt by college football fanatics. After Ed O’Bannon’s lawsuit against the NCAA ruled the association couldn’t use players’ likenesses for commercial gain in products like video games, gamers had a couple of options, such as redoing the rosters of the NCAA Football 13 game each year, utilizing Madden NFL modifications (my alternate of choice) or shifting over to Madden entirely, but no real way to fill the void.
That changed early in the 2020s, as developments in the name, image and likeness world helped build real traction toward a new EA Sports College Football title, and plans to revive the series became official in February 2021. Players who opted into their inclusion in the game received $600 checks and a copy of the game.
Each step in the buildup to the game’s official release in July 2024 has been euphoric. College Football 25’s cover features Texas quarterback Quinn Ewers, Colorado star Travis Hunter and Michigan running back Donovan Edwards, while the deluxe edition includes dozens of players from various teams as they enter a stadium as a nod to the series’ return. Fans similarly embraced a two-minute gameplay trailer that EA Sports released in May. While details in the weeks since are still somewhat under wraps, members of the media who played the game early have indicated that the game lives up to the hype..
Why is the college football landscape so entranced by a video game? The promise of realism is a key appeal, and EA Sports has made it clear that this iteration will be the most realistic yet.
The graphics figure to be the most significant upgrade since the last release in 2013 — just imagine how photorealistic players and stadiums will look in this year’s game after more than a decade of technological advancements. Thanks to the game’s NIL deals with participating players, the return to the series will now have the actual players’ names (and faces to match) instead of generic replicas, removing another barrier that would ruin the realism. And college football, more than most professional and collegiate sports, is so closely tied to the experience of being a fan in the stadium that those improvements in gameplay experience and immersivity should make an even greater impact. Getting to play as my alma mater Northwestern or one of the current title contenders in college football’s legendary stadiums and test my abilities over the course of a season or the College Football Playoff is exhilarating to think about.
Considering its status as the first addition to its series in more than a decade, EA Sports College Football 25 will have as much of an emphasis on its realism and attention to detail in the weeks preceding and after its release as any sports video game in recent memory. That authenticity in sports video games is a great element, but realism alone isn’t enough to make a satisfying video game title. Arcade-style features are what give sports video games their joy, and while they detract from the authenticity of sports games at times, their influence is essential to a gameplay experience users will enjoy for years.
In comparison to some sports-related topics I discuss and opine about, sports video games are actually an area where I have academic expertise — I believe that I am the only Northwestern student to ever write a final paper about the NBA 2K video game (which you can find here!). Since its material pertains closely with the exciting recent developments surrounding NCAA Football 25, I’ll kick off my discussion there.
In that 15-page paper, I broke down NBA 2K19’s MyCareer Mode, which I played over the course of a weekend on the PC edition of the game. MyCareer mode is pretty self-explanatory and standard across games and gives users the chance to live out the dream of every sports fan — to play in their favorite sports league. In recent years, those modes have included their own narratives and milestones to add structure to these players’ stories and accentuate career progress as the user accumulates practice and game reps with their created player. Progress can be measured through overall attributes and the game’s currency, VC, which allows skill upgrades, new clothes and other improvements to gameplay.
This mode is more realistic than an imagined game at the neighborhood gym, but only to a point. MyCareer mode isn’t bogged down with the trappings of the NBA lifestyle (maybe Grand Theft Auto would be a better choice for that) or a lot of the challenges, like getting hounded in public or navigating personal or professional life issues. These can be just as prominent in the lives of real-life NBA players as the games themselves, but the team behind NBA 2K also wants the game to be enjoyable and addictive. As I wrote in the paper, “MyCareer mode serves well to satiate the NBA fan’s fantasy of playing with the giants they see on TV, but after “The Way Back” (the game’s MyCareer storyline), the mode can’t say that it puts the user in an NBA player’s figurative shoes.” I also gave my take on the shortcomings of this dynamic’s end result — “gameplay that stagnates enrichment and perpetuates the idealist view of sports that leagues market, not the one that players live and that fans want so desperately to emulate when they pick up the controller.”
In past decades, sports video games have existed on a spectrum between arcade and simulation game play. The authenticity of NBA 2K has its beloved retro counterpart, NBA Jam, while Madden NFL made an arcade-friendly spinoff of its main version (this one called, of all things, Madden NFL Arcade), that gave players a caricatured look and incorporated plenty of fun powerups that could never happen in a real NFL game. The Backyard Sports games — some of my all-time favorites — turned their distortion of reality into their key selling point, with each pro player transformed into a kid version of himself.
More serious games have also included arcade-style options within their menus. My most recent Nintendo Switch purchase, EA FC24, includes 4-on-4 and 5-on-5 “Volta Football” street soccer games in colorful and diverse locations that has served as a friendlier introduction to video game soccer than the full-team games themselves. NBA2K’s Blacktop mode provides a basketball equivalent and a casual gameplay option, while Madden 09’s 5-on-5 mode is one of my favorite video game modes of all-time.
In some cases, the most true-to-reality modes incorporate elements that are traditionally reserved for arcade games, like Madden NFL’s recent X-Factor power-ups and the player perks in MLB The Show’s “Road to the Show” mode. These elements have transformed my video game experience, and occasionally my understanding of the sport. Take the “Lucky 7” perk I’ve come to love in “Road to the Show,” which ensures the seventh pitch of an at-bat is in the strike zone. Through the feature, I’ve learned to be patient and work counts in the way a MLB player might try to do (and an impatient video game player might not) and the result has been an increased emphasis on pitch selectivity, more 3-2 counts that I try to work and … a whole lot of home runs for my player.
I was not one of the lucky media members to test out NCAA Football 25 so far (it’s never too late, EA Sports), but I’m hoping for plenty of these types of features in the new game. Arcade-style features might detract from the simulation aspect of a serious sports video game, but these aspects enhance gameplay and give video games their flavor. Extreme realism was never the entirety of the appeal of the old games, either — users turning Appalachian State into a championship contender or turning a no-name player into a Heisman winner aren’t perfectly aligned with the chalky nature of real-life college football. There’s a reason they call them video game numbers, after all. A great aspect of many of today’s sports video games is an ability to dial back kid-friendly elements or designate certain modes as arcade-style experiences.
Sports video games ultimately exist to serve the user with engaging gameplay experiences and make money, and elite games in the genre achieve both easily. EA Sports College Football 25 appears to be on the path to greatness, and the anticipation has been so great that some players (myself included) have considered buying entirely new video game consoles just to have the chance to try the new iteration.
But while the traditions of colleges’ fight songs and extensive SEC playbooks are sure to elevate the game through their attention to detail, College Football 25 shouldn’t take itself too seriously. It’s a video game after all, and, by all indications, one that will be well worth the wait.
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