Why Baby Steps Is the Best Sports Game in Years (Analysis)

The best football game in years isn't Rematch or EA Sports FC—it's BABY STEPS. In this analysis/essay, let's uncover the secrets of why, how you missed it, and why sports games are so weird generally.

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It's difficult to imagine a genre that more completely epitomises the problems of the AAA games industry than sports games. On the surface they seem so creatively stagnant that IGN copy-pasted their FIFA review a few years in a row. Thanks to EA and 2k, you're essentially paying 70 quid a year for stat changes and Ultimate Team.

#babystepsgame #fifa #easportsfc

That's where a little game called BABY STEPS comes in—developed by Gabe Cuzillo, Maxi Boch and none other than Bennett Foddy of Getting Over It infamy. It also features a secret football game that completely shifted how I view the genre—getting me to ask why we don't have more games using the mechanics of football to tell the kinds of resonant stories that this game does with protagonist and manchild Nate. In this analysis/essay, let's talk about Baby Steps and how it is secretly the best football game you've never heard of.

0:00 - Sports games are beyond stagnant, right?
2:12 - The best, most secret football game you've never played
3:42 - Baby Steps and the story of Nate
7:34 - OK but what about the football part of this?
8:50 - Football is about personal stories
11:10 - Games can tell more than just one type of story
12:15 - Outro