By Kenneth Ibarra Suarez
My name is Kenneth Ibarra Suarez, I’m currently a sophomore majoring in Electrical Engineering. This research project is titled “Thoughtful Play: A Scholarly Conversation of Undergraduate Video Game Research,” which is part of the 2024-2025 Roads-To-Research program through the RHSA.
With the objective to analyze a videogame’s psychological effects on the people who play it, I decided to talk about the game that I’ve personally seen undergo a lot of changes in the 15+ years that I’ve been playing it; EA FC (previously titled “FIFA“). Having spent hundreds of dollars in previous titles, and progressively spending more money each year, I decided to take a break from it in FIFA 23.Not playing the game for several months and not spending money on it, while watching some of my friends still spending money on it, made me realize one thing and one thing only: something needs to be done about in-game purchases with real money (microtransactions). My contribution is to try to raise awareness of the potential dangers behind those purchases with real money and the use of loot boxes that resemble casino slot machines, which can ultimately lead to a Gambling addiction and/or an Internet Gaming Disorder (IGD) because they are correlated.
Though I had a general understanding of how gambling worked and how it was possibly related to microtransactions, previous to starting this project, I also saw this project as an opportunity to learn about the psychological effects of jumping into the pitch with 11 digital Figures replicating real-world soccer players, and going up against 11 other digital Figures either operated by the game’s AI (artificial intelligence), another random player online, or friends. Although there isn’t much research behind the 11 vs. 11 matches, there is a lot of research on the still relatively new topic of video game microtransactions and “loot boxes,” which are randomized rewards that typically come in an opaque box that lights up and typically produces sounds when opening. The reason for the extensive research behind these two features in video games is that they bring together scholars from many different disciplines like economics, psychology, computer science, education, and health.
This page contains a timeline of different EA FC (or “FIFA” titles), for example: FIFA 09, FIFA 15, FIFA 17, and EA FC 25, displaying the tactics used by EA over the years to steer the game into simply a money-making scheme. To provide more context about the situation and a thorough analysis of not only the findings, but also a discussion of scholars about the topic of videogames being connected to developing a gambling addiction, a literature review was provided. Lastly, having presented this project at the UMass Lowell Symposium in April 2025, I also wanted to provide the PowerPoint presentation at the end of the page.
Analysis
It’s important to study a game’s socioeconomic context because it might shape the future of the game series. FIFA 09 was the first to introduce the Ultimate Team series back in 2009. Although EA Sports is a Canadian company, it’s important to remember that the 2008 Recession affected the entire world. Is it a coincidence that EA implemented in-game purchases for their game the following year? Most likely not.
Figure 1: All available packs in the store in FIFA 09 Ultimate Team. ©EA Sports, 2009.
Figure 2: The introduction of price ranges in the transfer market in FIFA 15 Ultimate Team. ©EA Sports, 2015.
FIFA 15 was the first to implement price ranges on players for the transfer market (Figure 2). This was EA’s way of directly controlling player’s demand and rarity, and not the videogame users, meaning that players’ in-game performance wouldn’t necessarily be reflected in their transfer market cost. This oftentimes lead to players becoming overpriced, or be extinct in the market (due to being too underpriced), ultimately forcing users to test their luck and obtain these kinds of players through packs that could be bought either with coins or FIFA points that cost real money.
FIFA 17 was the first one to introduce the game mode “FUT Champions” within the Ultimate Team game mode, a competitive game mode where users played placement matches to participate in the “weekend league” event- the main event that started every Friday morning and ended the following Sunday. For that, users needed an alternative way to obtain players other than packs or the transfer market. The solution for this was “Squad Building Challenges (SBC’s)” which consist of exchanging from ten up to hundreds of players with specific ratings, and sometimes from specific countries or leagues. The completion rewards go from club kits, to special-edition boosted players, or packs not available in the pack store.
Figure 3: The introduction of Squad Building Challenges (SBC’s) in FIFA 17 Ultimate Team. fifauteam.com, ©EA Sports, 2017.
Figure 4: A glance at the pack store containing a 16-coin pack and a 500,000-coin pack, as of March 7th, 2025, in EA FC 25. ©EA Sports, 2025.
Figure 5: The cost for EA FC 25 in the Xbox store as of March 7th, 2025. ©EA Sports, 2025.
Figure 6: The cost for EA FC 25 points in the store section. A 10% discount is applied for those with an active “EA Play” subscription (white) while it’s the price in red for those who do not have it. ©EA Sports, 2025.
Figure 4 represents what EA FC 25 has come to. A practically free pack costing 16 coins, including 16 Rare Gold (75+ OVR) players due to the 16th anniversary of the Ultimate Team game. The purpose of this pack is to get players more in the habit of not only opening packs (building a higher dopamine tolerance), but also constantly checking the store for packs like these that are practically free. On the other side of this specific pack section is another pack that costs approximately more than half of the videogame itself ($40 USD) (Figures 5 and 6).
Figure 7: “TOTY Blueprint” evolution released in January 17th, 2025 in EA FC 25. ©EA Sports, 2025.
Figure 8: EA FC 25 “classic packs” section in store. ©Teamgullit.com, ©EA Sports, 2024.
EA FC 25 has implemented a solution for those users who don’t want to gamble as much but still push them to make in-game purchases, that is the case with Evolutions. Evolutions are limited-time upgrades to a player that can be unlocked either with coins or FC points, which consist of completing specific challenges like playing or winning a certain amount of games, and scoring a certain amount of goals with the player being “evo’d.” However, oftentimes these evolutions are extremely disproportionate coin-to-point ratios (Figure 7), which makes the evolutions almost not be worth it if bought with coins, resorting to spending money on the game. The typical point-to-coin ratio is 100 points for 5,000 coins (Figure 8), meaning that hypothetically, the TOTY Blueprint evolution should cost 50,000 coins and not ten times that. This tactic from EA might’ve been simply to get an extra $10 USD from some users, or to get them in the habit of spending points on the game and normalizing microtransactions.
Symposium PowerPoint
Literature Review
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Here are the original and downloadable versions of the PowerPoint Slideshow and the Literature Review as a Word document:
If you’ve made it this far, I want to thank you for your attention, and I ask that you please be aware and/or do research about the developer’s history before buying a videogame and it’s too late.
