Customization is a beautiful thing in sports video games. It allows you to put yourself in the game, to fill in gaps that are created by the licensing restrictions and to have fun with fantasy teams or players. The FIFA 13 series from EA Sports has a great example of that with Creation Centre.

EA is one of the leaders in the area of customization. Only THQ's WWE series gives gamers as many options for creating and sharing gaming content. EA's Game Face application is the most progressive and accurate face-rendering system available, but the Creation Centre takes things to the next level.

You can create and customize clubs from top to bottom. You can choose a logo, the kits, the stadium, the city or country your club represents. You can even upload an image of a sponsor for your team. Much of this can be done on other games, but what sets this apart from most other suites is that it is based on your computer.

It is similar to the Team Builder feature in the NCAA Football series, but it is even more expansive. The Creation Centre gives you more control over the team's strategic identity, but both allow you to upload images from your computer to represent your team's logo.

Making this a computer-based feature was a smart move. It conserves space for the game disc, thus it spares long loading times. It also makes the content easy to share. A creation expert can easily gain a good amount of notoriety for his or her content. 

This gamer created the Saudi League, and their creation has been downloaded more than 20,000 times.

I chose to go a different route. I am a pretty balanced sports fan, meaning I love all athletics. I thought it would be fun to create a club filled with athletes from other sports. For example, Boston Celtics center Kevin Garnett is my goalkeeper.

Can you imagine what that would be like, provided he'd been trained in the sport?

Here is an example of that concept, and some of the functionality in the mode:

The only drawback to this mode is that you can't use Game Face to create the players. That app is reserved for creating your virtual pro, but the creation options are good enough, considering how far- reaching the Creation Centre is. This content can be shared with any FIFA 13 players around the world

Content creation isn't every gamer's cup of tea, but if you like create-a-player and team options, you'll be hard-pressed to find a suite more robust than Creation Centre.

 

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