Just as EA Sports announced that "FIFA 14" will be coming this Fall, a petition seeking inclusion of female footballers gathered 9,000 signatures. Female players have been absent from every "FIFA" game released.
The change.org petition has been created and sent to the EA's FIFA development team seeking the inclusion of female footballers in future FIFA games. The petition, which has collected 9,258 signatures at the time of this reporting, will be sent to Brian Keaster, senior director of customer service operations at EA Sports.
According to the petition, the fact that over 40 percent of football players in the U.S. are females, in addition to an Entertainment Software Association's finding that 47 percent of all gamers are women, makes a strong case for EA Sports to include female characters in their soccer games.
"By offering just men's teams as playable options on FIFA we're not only denying these girls a chance to relate to the characters they play on a videogame, but we're also wasting a great opportunity to encourage those same girls to be who they are, develop their passion, motivation and promote a healthy image and relation between women and sports," the petition argues.
"Don't restrict our choices to Messi, Rooney, Neymar, Cristiano Ronaldo. Allow girls and boys to play with Wambach, Sawa, Morgan, Cristiane, Miyama, Rapinoe, Marta, Hope Solo, Mia Hamm, Birgit Prinz," it explains. It remains to be seen what, if anything, EA Sports will do in response.