Why women are finally in the FIFA videogame

For the first time in its more than 20-year history, the Electronic Arts’ FIFA videogame series will include women’s soccer teams when FIFA 16 comes out this fall. 

It’s been a long time coming. Fernanda Schabarum started a petition in 2012 to bring female players to the series, after playing only as male teams since her first game of World Cup 98 more than a decade earlier. “It was kind of difficult not having anything to relate to,” she says. 

Game designer and Georgia Tech professor Ian Bogost says it may be a sign that we’re finally coming out of a “Dark Ages” in which games became entrenched as a medium for men.

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