New Video Game Let’s You Live the Footballer’s Off-the-Pitch Life, Too

By: Laurie | October 14th, 2008

Awhile back, Daryl wrote about “Football Superstars,” the upcoming interactive video game, where you and nine other real people (everybody but goalkeeper) take the field together. With mandatory practice you can work your way up to league play and beyond.

Now it’s apparently time to take it to the next level.

The video game, created by CyberSports, is allowing you not just to play the game on the pitch, but to live the off-pitch life of a highly-paid professional footballer.

Once players have downloaded Football Superstars for nothing, they will develop their skills in small-sided kickabouts before graduating to full 11-a-side games and, if they become sufficiently skilled, being picked for representative games and eventually international tournaments.

Off the pitch, they will be able to socialise and blow their wages in a virtual world of restaurants, bars, clubs and shops. CyberSports has signed a branding deal with Puma that will see its Carnaby Street store recreated online and players able to wear its boots and clothing. It hopes to strike scores of similar branding deals. Although the game is free to play, which its backers hope will be an advantage during an economic downturn, players will also be encouraged to spend real money on virtual clothes, boots and cars.

Let me repeat that last part: Players will also be encouraged to spend real money on virtual clothes, boots and cars.

How much do you want to be that we’ll be seeing some of the following for sale before too long:

For that glowing, photo-shoot-ready skin? Bird poo facials. (What, you think I could make this stuff up?) And while we’re at the spa, let’s not forget the other things self-respecting ballers couldn’t live without: spray tans and manzilians.
What’s the point of being a famous footballer if you can’t purchase the services of the occasional lady of the evening? Cristiano Ronaldo sets the standard here, but if you can’t afford that, you can try Wayne Rooney’s Auld Slapper. Or if you’re really short on cash, you can go for the version purchased by the other Ronaldo. But I wouldn’t recommend it.
And of course your little baller is going to want dancing lessons, for those goal celebrations. Because you don’t want to risk looking like this. Or this.
What else will our little players need? WAG supplies: Designer clothes, designer bags, and jewelry, jewelry, jewelry. (Note: If your player has also partaken of the previously-mentioned ladies of the evening? The size and cost of the rocks go up exponentially.)

No word on whether partying till 4:00 a.m. the night before an important game will affect your play on the pitch, or whether real-life bimbo wannabes will be allowed to play the roles of the WAGs.

The best part about this game for me, though? The player avatars can be female. So we could be seeing some top-flight co-ed teams. And best of all, the women don’t seem to be enhanced for male viewers.