By Chris Wright
You may remember a month or so ago when Pies first bought you news of the British qualifying leg of the FIFA 12 Interactive World Cup (FIWC), which saw an 18-year old lad from Birmingham handing QPR striker Jay Bothroyd his England-capped arse back on a plate?
Well, the tournament proper has gone on from strength to strength since, surpassing the total number of players attracted by 2011’s competition (which previously held the Guinness World Record for the world’s largest online gaming tournament) by a further 130,000 people – thus tipping it over the one million – that’s 1,000,000 – player mark for the first time since the FIWC’s conception in 2004.
To mark the occasion, FIFA surveyed a shedload of their registered players and discovered that a staggering 58% of gamers believe the virtual skills garnered playing FIFA 12 on the Playstation for hours on end (awareness, vision, skill, positional play, etc) translate onto the real pitch and have made them better football players in real life.
Indeed, we’ve got a little infographic of all FIFA’s findings…
The only thing playing FIFA has ever taught me is how to efficiently reduce a Playstation controller down to it’s component parts in less than a split-second using nothing but basic propulsion, the laws of physics and a bloody hard wall.
However, I’m not sure about it improving my actual game. If it had made my vision, tactical nous and general technique any better, you’d think that the improvements may have taken affect by now. Alas, no.
Anyone out there feel any aspect of their game has been improved noticeably as a result of spending all evening thumb-twiddling on FIFA, rather than – y’know – kicking a ‘real life’ football around on a ‘real life’ football pitch out there in the ‘real world’?
Contestants can still participate in this year’s FIWC through an online tournament played on the PlayStation®Network, by registering ‘in-game’ in FIFA 12 on their PS3™. For more information on the FIWC, go to: www.fifa.com/fiwc.