The man who wants to make lacrosse a FIFA beater

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"Lacrosse is the sickest sport ever." Carlo Sunseri is being neither cute nor ironic. His enthusiasm is uncomplicated. "It's down to the finesse of the game," he says. "The speed, the stick-work, the physicality: lacrosse inspires passion." Sunseri, who fell in love with lacrosse in high school and played to top college league level, is not merely passionate about the sport: he is evangelical. During his final year at the Robert Morris University in Pittsburgh he founded a video game company with a single purpose: to create lacrosse-based video games that could compete with EA's flagship sports series in terms of quality and attention to detail.
Since 2009 Sunseri has independently released no fewer than ten lacrosse titles. Most, such as those he made with the endorsement of the National Lacrosse League have been realistic in approach. Others, such as the iOS game Laxy Bro, a lacrosse-themed Flappy Bird clone, are more flippant. But Sunseri's puppy-esque energy and fervour is not without a business case, even if he has been unable to convince any major video game publisher to help develop the games. Last month his latest project, Lacrosse 15, was funded on Indiegogo for close to $150,000, more than double its goal. There is, it turns out, a paying audience to support his vision.
Lacrosse is older than football (on both sides of the Atlantic). The sport, in which two teams of ten players pass a ball using a lacrosse stick (a pole of varying lengths with a netted pouch fixed to the top end) and attempt to heft it into the opponent's goal was reputedly originated by Native Americans almost a thousand years ago. By the 17th century lacrosse was widely played across America. For a time the sport featured in the Olympics. And yet it remains a niche interest compared to the younger team games played around the world. Some even poke fun. Perhaps it's the word itself, both Gallic and feminine in its formation. Or maybe it's the fact that, on the field, lacrosse appears less physical than American Football, less plainly elegant than soccer, less brutal than hockey (whose unadorned sticks seem somehow more honest), and more complicated than all of the above.
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