FIFA and eFootball competitor GOALS announced by SK Gaming founder

A new football game is set to hit the market, with gaming entrepreneur Andreas Thorstensson announcing the formation of his upcoming AAA title, GOALS.

When it comes to football games, there are two franchises that come to mind for most: the FIFA series and Pro Evolution Soccer (PES), the latter of which recently rebranded as eFootball.

This is the case in esports too, with FIFA serving as the pre-eminent competitive football game and eFootball attempting to play catch-up with a more exclusive approach.

Thorstensson — a former professional Counter-Strike player and co-founder of esports org SK Gaming and gaming agency Loaded — is looking to tackle the genre’s long-time giants with GOALS.

The game is planned as a triple-A title that’s free to play, features cross-play across consoles and devices, and is built with competition in mind. He hopes to open up the football genre with the aforementioned choices and sees no reason that the “world’s largest sport shouldn’t be the world’s largest game.”

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The entrepreneur plans to truly differentiate GOALS from both FIFA and eFootball by integrating more recent technology into the experience. Non-fungible tokens (NFTs) — unique digital files that can represent photos, videos, audio, and other media — will play a big part in the title.

By making the game play-to-earn through digital assets, Thorstensson says that players will be rewarded for investing time and developing skill. The hope here is for it to allow more people to “make a living playing the game” than is currently seen in similar entries to the football genre.

https://twitter.com/andreas/status/1427891467142500353

Being esports-ready, to Thorstensson, means that the best gamers will win through skill and skill alone as GOALS will look to create a “fluid experience online” where lag, latency, and button delay aren’t present. Riot Games’ first-person shooter Valorant is cited as an inspiration here.

The company is currently hiring people to be part of the founding team, so while the game has already been announced, it appears that prospective players will have to wait a significant amount of time before there’s anything for them to get their hands on.