Fifa: the video game that changed football | Simon Parkin

Fifa belongs to a select group of titles familiar to people who have no interest in gaming - or even real football. What's the secret of its success?

Jan Tian stood in nervous silence in the departure hall of Beijing Capital International Airport. Beside him, his sister held an envelope containing a thousand yuan, close to her entire year's wages. It was May 1993 and China's capital was humid, its parks ablaze with tulips, crab apples and red azaleas. But Tian, who had graduated from Beijing University a decade earlier and now worked in Vancouver for the video game company Electronic Arts, had not come to sightsee. The previous week, he had received a phone call to say that his father had suffered a stroke and Tian's bosses had booked him an emergency flight to China.

After a week, the doctors had given their prognosis: Tian's father would be paralysed down his left side, but would recover. As concern yielded to relief, Tian's thoughts returned to the work he had left behind in Canada. The release date for EA Soccer, his current project, had recently been brought forward, after an executive walked past an office and heard staff, who were playing an early version of the game, whooping with excitement. For the game to be on shelves by Christmas, it would need to be finished by October. They had less than five months.