3 game design lessons from the world's most popular sport

What can you learn about games from watching football?

What is the most popular game in the world? The answer is complicated. Minecraft sold over 300 million copies. PUBG has been downloaded 1.1 billion times (but it’s free). But the world of games shouldn’t be limited to digital bits.

Already in 1999, Monopoly was recognized by Guinness World Records as the game that has been played by 500 million people since its invention. 605 million adults play chess regularly, and 70% of people play them at least once at some point in their lives! Besides that, there are physical games that we call sports, which are played and watched by millions of people.

And there is football.

To be clear, one particular nation calls this game soccer, because “football” is used there as a name for another sport where players kick an egg-shaped object and can use their hands. That’s not the type of football that we’ll be talking about here.

How many people are playing football? It’s difficult to count every kid kicking the ball in the backyard, teenagers playing at school fields or colleagues meeting after work for a match. In 2006, the FIFA organization conducted a survey (Big Count) that estimated that 270 million people were actively playing this game, making it probably the most popular sport around the globe.

But the popularity of football isn’t limited to actively playing it. Actually, it’s the contrary - more people are watching it than playing.

FIFA claims that the final match of the last global tournament (the World Cup in Qatar 2022) reached a global audience of 1.5 billion viewers. What’s more, they said that around 5 billion people “engaged" somehow with the tournament.

That should be taken with the grain of salt, as FIFA is an organization that benefits the most from football popularity, but there is plenty of other data that suggests that football is currently the most popular game in the world.

We like ball games for some reason. There is evidence of ball games being played in Mesoamerica around 3000 BC or in Egypt and Greece a thousand years later. So maybe it is worth thinking about their appeal. (Source: Fifa Museum)

Surprisingly, I don’t think that game designers often analyze football. Even though, statistically speaking, it might be the most engaging game ever invented.

So let’s try to find some design lessons coming from football (and justify why I spent several hours watching the last EURO tournament).

1. Football is easy to play (and watch)

It’s one of the cheapest sports to play. You need only one ball (or even an object that resembles it) and a small ground. The goal can be made from anything - when I was in school, backpacks were perfectly fine as posts. There is no need for a certain number of players - even two players are enough to play. Weather doesn’t impact it that much, and if you are determined enough, you can play with wind, rain, or even snow.

A photo by Mohamed Hozyen Ahmed (source: Wikipedia)

There aren’t many sports which are so easy to start. Even other fairly accessible games require a little more than a ball. For basketball, you need a hoop and flat ground to bounce the ball. For volleyball, a net on the proper level is necessary. For baseball, a bat and a glove are must-haves.

Moreover, football is also really easy to watch. The basic rules are simple to grasp by simply watching the game:

1. Two teams rivals to put one ball in the opposite goal to score.

2. Of the 11 players, only one can touch the ball with his hands and only in the zone near their team's goal.

And basically, that’s it. Of course, there are plenty more: fouls, free kicks, and the infamous offside rule, the topic of many jokes about its complicacy. But to start watching, you only need to know the bare minimum.

Such simplicity on the ground level might be quite common for popular sports but it’s something that video games often lack. Try to explain League of Legends to somebody who has never played it, and I guarantee it will take more time than in the case of football.

Moreover, video games often assume that you already have played something else in the same genre, so the entry point is set higher than you think. If you don’t believe it, launch some mainstream action game, give a gamepad to somebody who has never played games like that and watch how much it takes to walk and aim the camera at the same time.

LESSON:

If your game cannot be explained in a few words or understood by watching it for a couple of minutes, it will have limited potential to attract players.

It’s important even when you don’t aspire to be an e-sport phenomenon: it is much easier to sell well when people can understand your game after watching a short GIF.

2. Football has depth.

Simplicity doesn’t rule out depth.  

Football might seem uncomplicated, but it has enough space to have different strategies, evolving for years. 

At first glance, football now and 50 years ago is similar: the outfits or hairstyles of footballers have certainly changed but in both cases, you can see 11 men trying to score more goals than the opposite 11.

But under the surface, the game has changed tremendously over the years. Today, footballers play at a higher pace, they play in unknown formations and score most of the goals differently.

It all boils down to the football rules being both simple and deep enough to provide space for creating and perfecting many different strategies to win. In terms of strategy, football is similar to chess, where every game after opening quickly becomes a unique experience. But there is one important difference. In football, nobody knows a perfect strategy to win - even computers.

The most fashionable tactics even got their nicknames, which are amazingly effective in nailing their essence. Tiki-taka sounds playful, catenaccio is equally boring as its name and gegenpress intimidates rivals like the German language.

Different tactics have been trending over time. For example, years ago, teams used to have a defender called a libero (or sweeper) between the last line and goalkeeper. However, over time, this role became obsolete as new strategies appeared, making it obsolete in the face of zonal marking and offside traps. Instead, the best goalkeepers started to play far from their goalpost, similarly supporting the team as the libero used to. 

Doesn’t it remind you something? If you playing any multiplayer game, it probably does.

In video games, a tendency of emerging dominant strategies to win is often called a metagame. But there is one important difference, in most of the online games creators often update the game to modify the meta and make sure that the game stays exciting to play. In football, updates of rules are far more rare and usually, dominant strategies last until some coach invents a fresh, new tactic that is a good method to win over a dominant style of playing.

LESSON:

The game rules might be simple but if they are open to different strategies, the game will evolve by itself.

Instead of trying to predict ways of playing, create rules that allow players to invent solutions that you would never think of.

3. Football evokes emotions.

If you have ever seen a football match live in the stadium, you understand how strong emotions football can evoke. Being part of a group that roots for the same team is something that triggers some primal element in our brain that has told humans to organize in tribes, settlements, and nations.

People have a strong need to belong to a group and sports can be a way to satisfy that feeling. Strong identification with a team can cause higher social self-esteem and decrease loneliness and alienation. Engaged fans share emotions with their beloved team, meaning that footballers’ successes can bring them real pride and euphoria almost like they would achieve something on their own.

Football does something more to cause emotions than just offer a sense of belonging. It’s a game which evolved to be emotional. One of the most important factors is something as trivial as… average number of points scored during a match.

I used the term ”points” on purpose, even though football fans always speak about goals. But let’s compare this element to other sports. In basketball scoring over 100 points in the game is quite usual.  In American football games usually end with dozens of points scored. Football has an entirely different game dynamic - as the average ranges from only 2 to 3 goals per match - the last big football tournament (EURO 2024) had an average of 2.25 goals per match.

Hockey is quite close to football with 3.12 as the average number of goals in the last season in NHL. Even though occasionally in some football leagues the average comes close to this number or even overpasses it, football fans are more used to seeing scores like 1-1 or 2-1 and call results like 4:3 a hockey-like.

A low amount of points scored creates a risk of boredom. Especially, as a football match can end without ANY goals at all (except the play-off phase). But it also makes each score a very important moment, a big event that is awaited by fans.'

It’s difficult to predict when it will happen: sometimes it’s a result of long-lasting pressure, sometimes it comes from a rapid counterattack, and other times it’s such unexpected and random that is hard to believe that it’s actually a goal. 

But in any case, it causes a high spike of emotions. The crowd at the stadium erupts in applause and cheering. Of course, if the goal was scored by their team. If not, silence full of disappointment occurs, often followed by anger or despair. 

In football, many events have a great emotional weight. It isn’t only about the rarity of goals.

Physical contact between rivals often results in calling a foul, meaning that rules have been violated. Fouls happen quite often but the closer they are to a goalpost, the more controversial they become.

Fans of the opposite team usually disagree with the referee's decision, especially since in many cases it’s not obvious if contact exceeded the rules or not.

The consequences of it may be decisive: a foul close to the goal post might end in a free kick from the optimal position to score or even a penalty shot from 11 meters (statistically 3 out of 4 of them end with a goal).

What’s more, the player who fouls may also get an individual punishment. Giving yellow and red cards by a referee is usually also a quite dramatic moment. The range of punishment is short and quite merciless: two yellows immediately turn into a red card that bans the player for the rest of the match. Which is a strong disadvantage and usually a turning point in the match.

Football is often mocked for players who after even a slight touch from a rival behave like they lost an arm at war. But it’s a part of being the most effective within a set of rules that works in football. Often is not easy to see a foul from a field perspective, so without expressive reaction, it might be overseen by a referee. When players feel illegal contact, they often strengthen its effect to encourage the referee to give a higher punishment for the rival. It’s just the most optimal play to use opportunities created by physical contact. On the other side, football organizations countered abusing such methods by introducing a yellow card penalty for pretending to be fouled and the possibility of seeing a video replay by a referee.

On top of everything, the football game has a great sound design. One layer comes from fans in the stadium: often deafening cheering, songs about beloved teams (or hated rivals) and loud reactions to important events. Another comes when you are watching a match on TV: many commentators are famous for how much they can add to the emotions of the match by simply using the tone of their voice.

LESSON:

Design the game to have moments that evoke strong emotions. Rare events with a strong effect on a gameplay may help with that.

Remember also that a sense of belonging to a larger group is a strong source of emotions. Their successes and failures become our own.

Football has origins in games from medieval or even ancient times but most of its modern rules come from the mid- or late-19th century. (Source: firstsportz.com)

That’s only a small chunk of interesting aspects of football that might be a great inspiration for game designers. I have a feeling that we as game creators too often pay too much attention to other VIDEO games when designing our own. Especially to ones that just become a groundbreaking hit or belong to the same genre as our project.

Meanwhile, games were developed for thousands of years, without even inventing computers. People play them, teach others their rules or modify them to make them more interesting or accessible. Sports, traditional board games, cards, children’s games. Using them as a source of inspiration is not always obvious and easy. But if you succeed with that, I believe you may create something equally timeless and universal. And maybe one day, it will be played as often as football.