With Electronic Arts returning to their highly successful college football video game series in 2023, here are a few things they need to add.
A Fully Realized In-Game Athletic Department
With sports games now taking up more than 100 GB of hard drive space, EA should offer a holistic experience. So, when you choose your school for the dynasty mode, you should be able to download a file that includes the entire athletic department on campus. For the Bearcats, this would include walking through the Lindner Center, a personalized coach’s office, practicing in the bubble at Sheakley in the offseason, and improving amenities as your team wins more. Past NCAA Football games had milestones for the coaches that would help get points which would help in recruiting, but the game needs to expand beyond that. Wins can get you better weight rooms, locker rooms, practice facilities, nutrition areas, better dorms for the players, etc.
Expanded Uniform Customization
Uniform customization is a no-brainer, but the selection needs to be expanded. Most schools have a long and storied history and the uniform selection should reflect that. I’d like to see the UC jerseys from almost every era including the throwbacks they wore in 2019 and the sleek Adidas unis from 08-09. Every team should have at least 8-10 uniforms to choose from. Again, EA should have this as optional (free) DLC so the file sizes aren’t too big.
I would like to see personal customization of uniforms using school logos, but this will probably never happen due to copyright and trademark issues where the school monitors how their property is used. However, there is a loophole. The gaming community can create custom uniforms with the logos as long as they provide it for free. This happens on NBA 2K. My brother and I created a Cincinnati Bearcats NBA team and downloaded UC uniforms in MyGM.
Stadium Customization
I remember the TeamBuilder mode from NCAA Football 14 where you could create your team from the ground up. In previous NCAA Football games, I would create an original team, but in later installments, I’d still use the normal Bearcats assets with one exception – instead of playing at 40,000 seat Nippert Stadium, UC would play at 100,000 seat Beaver Stadium. I still used the UC field, but I just wanted a bigger crowd.
With legitimate stadium customization, I’d expand Nippert to 50k-60k with extra luxury suites, and then I’d finally rest and watch the sun rise on a grateful universe.
Bonus: Combine college football and basketball in one game
This is a pipe dream because EA hasn’t announced that they would do a college basketball game and they would never combine the college football and basketball games into one because they would not be maximizing their profit margins. Despite this, it would be amazing if I could win at Nippert and then immediately go to Fifth-Third Arena to play a huge conference game. It’ll never happen, but one can dream.
JUNCTA JUVANT
