Earlier this year, EA Vancouver opened its doors for an inside look at EA Sports FC 27 and hands-on gameplay of its new mode, The Grounds.
For 30 years, I have played EA FC—or FIFA, as it’s still misnamed post-rebrand—and watched the franchise evolve alongside football itself; across three decades, it has completely transformed gaming and football culture, building an ecosystem of its own. Now, EA Sports FC 27 introduces an open-world experience designed to capture the wider culture of the game—not just what happens on the pitch. And look: initially, I was sceptical, as were many other fans, but having played it and spoken to its developers, I now see The Grounds as potentially the most potent mode EA FC has.
Comparisons to NBA 2K’s Neighbourhood and The City are inevitable, but The Grounds has its own ambition: to become a staple of the franchise and a space built around football culture. Players create a character and explore a world that begins in The Terrace before branching into three districts—Parkside, Montclair and Zeiza—each inspired by the football cultures of England, France and Argentina. Within them are a variety of street-inspired games, from 1v1 to new concepts such as Bucket and Balloon Ball. Clubs are also accessed through The Grounds, giving players another reason to roam. The mode builds on EA’s storied history of experimentation—from The Journey and Volta to Rush—while taking that ambition in a new direction.
Playing The Grounds, I was surprised by how enjoyable the arcade-style games felt. Balloon Ball was hilarious—my 1v1 against a developer out in Vancouver finished 1-1, while the 2v2 stipulation matches sparked a competitiveness that wasn’t dictated by the current META. That’s where I see The Grounds’ real potential. I grew up playing Wembley, 60 Seconds, 1 or 2 Touch and Nutmeg Rush—games that could turn almost anywhere into a pitch. Around the world, generations have their own versions, all shaped by where and how they grew up playing. The Grounds could become a conduit for all of it—bringing together street football from a variety of different cultures, acknowledging its influence on fashion and identity, and giving players the freedom to create a version of themselves that they can actually see in the game.
Complex UK was invited out to Vancouver, Canada, to play the new mode and to speak with Line Producer Karthik Venkatesan and Game Design Director Jean-François Guastalla. Dive in below.
COMPLEX: What sparked the idea for The Grounds, and how did it evolve into what we’re seeing today?
Karthik Venkatesan: The first, easiest factor is hearing from our club’s community about how they want more ways to interact with their clubmates—to do things together, or to keep connecting even when they’re doing things separately. Over the last few years, they’ve repeatedly told us they just want more ways to do what they love to do. We’ve seen that on YouTube and Twitch: people hacking together ways to play using club friendlies and things like that. We see them play 1v1, 2v2, and have a blast just doing that. To us, it’s always been about how we give them a more real way of doing that, without all the hoops and custom workarounds. That’s been the primary driver behind wanting a broader social offering. The other piece has been the industry itself. Ever since COVID, everybody has wanted to engage with games alongside others, in bigger online spaces.
The combination of people wanting that and the technology now allowing us to do it felt like the right timing for something massive—relatively massive for us, compared with the stadium spaces where a lot of people can be together. Outside of stadiums, being able to show, “Here is me, not wearing a kit, and this is how I experience football in my neighbourhood, my community”—that need for self-expression has been another driver. Players have always told us we don’t have a way to express ourselves outside of kits, which we do well and will keep doing. But the next generation, experiencing gaming today in more creative ways, wants: don’t tell me the rules, don’t tell me I have to do X, Y and Z—just give me a character and let me tell the game who that character is. Let me play football the way I want to play football. That freedom and creative control, it’s something we’ve seen players ask for more than ever before. Those three factors led us to think: “Okay, this is something that feels right for FC.”
What have your personal relationships with football been, and how have they evolved as developers of this game?
Jean-François Guastalla: I have a big brother, four years older than me, and I’m also French—football is pretty big in France—and so I grew up watching the old players: Michel Platini, that whole generation. It was a different time. I was always excited to watch the World Cup with the family, and to play football with the kids in my neighbourhood. A lot of my inspiration comes from that feeling as a kid, going out and playing ball, and then having that merge into football. It wasn’t really about football as a sport for me; it was about that feeling. And I think that’s what we’re trying to bottle with The Grounds. How do we make you feel like a kid again, without your parents watching? That sense of freedom Karthik’s talking about, the agency players are asking for now that they weren’t five years ago—I think that’s what pushed us to create this experience. We want you to feel free, to experiment, and to do that with your friends and clubmates in the same space.
Karthik: We talk a lot about that: how you experienced playing football growing up. When you’re a kid, if it’s your sport, you actually play it more than you watch it. We’re always reminded of those moments in community spaces—using chalk or, in my case, literally grabbing a red brick and drawing a football pitch on a neighbour’s wall. Just playing and making up your own rules—the ball can’t go past this point or it doesn’t count as a goal—that kind of thing. We see those stories resurface every World Cup, and it reinforces why that side of football is so amazing. Everybody knows this, so why haven’t we built something where people can actually experience that in the game? Similar to Jean, I grew up watching football. My club was Middlesbrough, for a number of reasons.
Juninho was my favourite player from Middlesborough.
Karthik: Exactly. Before I moved here, I made a pitstop in the UK, went to Teesside, watched a game and loved it! I used to play the heck out of Manager Mode back in the day—‘15, ‘17 seasons—on PC.
There’s a shift in philosophy within the keynote, expressed through the intentions behind The Grounds. What is it about football culture today—and the way its world is interconnected through the World Cup—that has personally caught the two of you and led you to bring this mode to life
Karthik: One of the things fans have told us is that the street experience is just as sacred as the stadium experience. That was already in the back of our heads, but it became even more obvious and exciting as we went through this process, and that was part of the inspiration for the mentors too. Talking to pro players—Mbappé, Bellingham, Chloe Kelly, who you’ll see in the game—and hearing them talk so fondly about their experiences in their neighbourhoods, how much they still treasure them today, and how much those experiences shaped who they are, really cemented it for us. The streets-to-stadium fantasy is universal, even at the highest professional level. They’re not talking about training gyms with private coaches—they’re talking about cages in Paris, or Chloe Kelly talking about her siblings and what they used to do. We think that’s just as authentic as the stadium experience, and it’s something that hasn’t really been tapped into yet. This is the beginning, and we want to see where we can take it.
Jean: It feels more relatable to the audience because they share the same dream I had as a kid. I’m making a football game now instead of playing the real game—different paths, same dream. We wanted to be part of that collective love for the sport, so it’s pretty cool to make a game that translates that to the audience.
What was the decision-making process behind centering the Grounds' culture around Argentina, England and France to start with?
Jean: It’s a long process; it didn’t happen overnight. When you’re building a world, you need to find the right size for 100 players—not too big, or you lose that visual connection to other players; not too small, or you lose that sense of freedom and agency. So the first thing was finding the right scale, understanding it would be structured as three districts, before we even knew which regions those would be. Then we started collaborating with the community: COPA90 was a big part of how we chose those three districts. The most important thing for us was creating contrast between them: global football culture looks different, feels different and sounds different in different places, and those three regions do that well. It doesn’t feel like it’s just Europe, or just South America. We tested it with people from regions we didn’t choose, and the answer was: I don’t care that it’s not Germany, because when I’m in the England district, it feels like what I’d expect the UK to feel like, and that’s what matters. People obviously ask when we’ll add their region. We’ll see—with the community, and with where the next World Cup is happening: Spain, Portugal, Morocco. That may influence which regions we represent or expand to. And through live events, every region will be represented in the world at some point during the first year at least, even if not as a permanent district.
Karthik: Like Team Of The Year campaigns—Bundesliga TOTY, for example—the global visual identity will show up even though the districts themselves aren’t Germany or Brazil.
Personally, I’d love to see some of these formats in future Grounds games. In London, we used to play a few different games—Wembley/World Cup, where we’d play singles, doubles or one keeper, with knockout rounds leading to a final; and 60 Seconds, or ‘66’, where again you’d have one keeper, but this time you’re counting down those seconds and singles or doubles have to score goals with different stipulations.
Jean: At some point, it will be in the game.
It’s 2030, Mbappé is 31, Bellingham is 27, and The Grounds is four years old. If you close your eyes and imagine how the mode has evolved between these two World Cups, where do you see it?
Jean: It could be anywhere. We have a million ideas we want to bring to this game, and we’ve had to prioritise which ones to chase first.
Karthik: What are the vectors? Let’s get into it.
Jean: Social, for sure—we want to dig into what it means to play socially. Also emergent play: how you go from playing ball to playing football, together, in the world. That’s what kids do—you play by yourself, a friend joins, then another, so how do you replicate that in a video game? That’s something we’re actively thinking about.
Karthik: There’s the sandbox element in the world, which is one of the biggest things we want to expand. If it’s a four-year journey, we hope the world itself becomes a genuine playground—more organic football happening without needing to be within the lines of a pitch. I have a 6-year-old and a 4-year-old, and the way they experience games is completely different—very sandbox, responsive, simple. Give them a character and a ball, and they just want to mess with the world and see what happens. We saw adults turn into kids in that playtest room too; the first thing everyone wanted to do was spawn a ball and kick it at a pub window to see if it’d break. We want to build towards that, those small moments that don’t sound like much in isolation.
Jean: When we’re ready, we know it’ll be meaningful. We just don’t want random window-breaking without it being part of the experience and the goals.
Karthik: But the British folks have told us that, in itself, is a great activity.
And losing the ball and not getting it back because the neighbour got angry about it [laughs].
Karthik: [Laughs] Whenever we’ve asked, people say you’d be surprised—that is an activity for us. Then there’s the narrative side: how do people want us to tell stories in this space? Do they want us to go deep with a single character, or wide with more characters? Where does it intersect with player career? There’s so much; it’s not a one-and-done. Four years from now, I hope there’s a real soup of ingredients, with so many different ways to play and experience football that it doesn’t feel linear.
Jean: Looking at where we were a year ago versus now, it’s hard to imagine where we’ll be in four years—we’ve made so many improvements already! It really is just the beginning. We’re going to keep working with the community, with everyone who wants to be part of it and has a voice, to build the game you all want—not the game we think you want.
