Analysis of players' abilities coded into bestselling Fifa title reveals bias that may be influencing children as they play.

EA Sports' Fifa football video game series is arguably the most successful sports gaming franchise of all time. Since its debut in 1993, it has sold over 260 million copies across 29 iterations.

This position was reaffirmed in 2022, with its latest instalment, Fifa23, reported as the UK's highest-selling video game at Christmas.

In Fifa games - soon to be rebranded as EA Sports FC - gamers are able to simulate playing as, and against, their idols, with state-of-the-art graphics and individual player attributes that are assigned to match the abilities of real-world players.

It is, as the franchise's website puts it, the "most true-to-life experience of the world's game" without physically kicking a ball about.

Our recent study into the Fifa20 game shows that physical play wasn't the only thing the game replicated. It also reproduced - within its very coding - the racial stereotypes that are deeply embedded within the sport.

How digital players are ranked

In Fifa, gamers choose to play as almost any professional club or national team. These are digital versions of current, real-world squads, which...