Sports Videogames

Mia Consalvo, Konstantin Mitgutsch, Abe Stein, Mia Consalvo, Konstantin Mitgutsch, Abe Stein

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781136191985
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Computer Science
• Subtopic: Social Aspects in Computer Science
• Index: Computer Science

From Pong to Madden NFL to Wii Fit, Sports Videogames argues for the multiple ways that sports videogames—alongside televised and physical sports—impact one another, and how players and viewers make sense of these multiple forms of play and information in their daily lives. Through case studies, ethnographic explorations, interviews and surveys, and by analyzing games, players, and the sports media industry, contributors from a wide variety of disciplines demonstrate the depth and complexity of games that were once considered simply sports simulations. Contributors also tackle key topics including the rise of online play and its implications for access to games, as well as how regulations surrounding player likenesses present challenges to the industry. Whether you're a scholar or a gamer, Sports Videogames offers a grounded, theory-building approach to how millions make sense of videogames today.

SECTION I

Defining the Game

1

GAMES, SPORTS AND SPORT VIDEOGAMES

Designed Challenges in Racing Games

Jonas Linderoth

Games and Sports

In the field of games studies, sport videogames is an understudied genre. Sport videogames do not really fit into the existing frameworks that we use for understanding other digital games. They can hardly be seen as related to other screen-based media and it is hard to think of a sports videogame as related to film and literature. To use Wittgenstein's terminology (1953, pp. 65–71), sport videogames seem to escape the “family resemblances” we ascribe to different games.

That game studies seem to miss out on sports videogames is utterly ironic since a recurring question in sports philosophy is the relation between games and sports. Are sports actually games? Bernard Suits made the claim that sports basically are skill-based athletic games, but then changed his position, saying that some sports are games whereas others are performances (such as gymnastics, diving, and other sports where the accomplishment is judged) (see Suits, 1988). The characteristic that seems to be the key for delimiting sports from games is physicality. Philosophers have argued that if something is to be called a sport, the outcome of the activity should have to do with exerting manual dexterity or other bodily skills (Suits, 1995; Meier, 1981). Yet as Hemphill (2005) points out, it becomes problematic to draw a line between gross motor skills and fine motor skills in order to determine what can be called a sport. Some activities, for example, like curling and darts, seem to be less physical and thus stir debates about whether or not they should achieve the status of being called sports. The issue becomes even trickier when considering digital games. If one is of the opinion that a sport is an activity in which the contestants should display gross motor skills, it is easy to oppose the idea that digital games with classical controllers ever could be called sports. The problem for such a position would of course arise when considering the rise of motion controls for digital games.

In the middle of this semantic confusion, we find the videogames that portray activities such as hockey, soccer, and motorsport. These sports videogames are mainly understood in relation to the sport they depict, that is, sports videogames are explored from the perspective of being representations of a sport (Fery and Ponserre, 2001; Rosenfeld Halverson and Halverson, 2008). Although such a viewpoint certainly is useful for cultural analysis (like understanding the role of sport games in fan cultures), some important aspects about sport games might also be overlooked when focusing on how they portray “real” sports. That is, we miss out on understanding them as independent game systems that demand specific situated skills of their players.

This chapter aims to supersede dichotomies between games and sports as well as between digital and nondigital games. By introducing the ecological approach to perception and action, my aim is to show how the activities we label board games, digital games, and sports all can be understood as designed challenges that test our ability to perceive affordances and/or utilize affordances. While most challenges call on both these modes of action, many games emphasize one or the other. As will be shown, this distinction is also fruitful for understanding skill and agency in relation to tools and other forms of support that can be found in many sports and games. The approach is illustrated by a comparative analysis of Formula 1 as a ‘real’ sport, a Formula 1 videogame, and two board games with Formula 1 as their theme. Instead of discussing how these games portray the sport, I will treat them all as designed challenges that can be understood within the same framework. The aim of this is to illustrate how the ecological approach to games can bridge the gap between sport studies and game studies.

Descriptions Instead of Definitions

The field of game studies has been rather occupied with defining games and gameplay (Juul, 2003; Salen and Zimmerman, 2004). In another account in this tradition of theoretical arguments, I would like to point out some epistemological concerns.

The academic confusion surrounding digital games is not in any sense unique. Many phenomena are studied in different disciplines with different knowledge interests, and it is part of being a scholar to argue about definitions, theories, and methodological approaches. But what is noteworthy in some of the attempts to give digital games an appropriate definition, theory, and history is that the attempts build on a so-called things-ontology (Säljö, 2009). Scholars in the game studies field are trying to define the “true” nature of games (cf. Juul, 2003, pp. 19–51; Salen and Zimmerman, 2004, pp. 70–91, for examples of game definitions).

This chapter offers yet another framework for approaching games, but attempts to do so without an essentialist epistemology. I do not see the value of theory in its relationship to an objective world of “things,” but in how a theory can illuminate and describe something in a powerful way (Säljö, 2009, p. 204). In line with Wittgenstein (1953), I do not seek to engage in conceptual analysis, defining games and sports by necessary and sufficient conditions. I do not seek to define games as much as describe them, pointing out some family resemblances. This idea holds that things we think are related by one common feature might be related by many overlapping similarities where no feature is shared by all. There will thus be deviant cases where my descriptions cannot be generalized. For example, some games of chance might not be obvious challenges since it is a trivial effort to engage with them. However, this does not mean that roulette or spin the bottle cannot be called games, just that they do not have one of the ‘family traits’ that some other games have.

Designed Challenges—Automobile Racing and Traffic Jams

A very rough distinction about human activity can be made between activities that are challenging and activities that are trivial. When we engage in a challenging activity we need to use skill, determination, energy, time, material resources, or other nontrivial means. Typically, an activity that we see as challenging will have an uncertain outcome. That is, we are uncertain whether or not the participants that engage in the activity will succeed with the tasks they have undertaken. Although life itself hands us numerous challenges that have to do with getting through everyday life, we are a species that specifically designs voluntary challenges.

Driving a car can, in some situations, be a challenge. If I am late for work and there is a traffic jam, driving will be challenging. It will not only test my patience but also my knowledge about alternative routes. Though the infrastructure of my city is designed and traffic certainly has rules, the situation is not designed to be a challenge. The infrastructure is designed with other goals in mind, hopefully to make driving as easy and smooth as possible. The layout of a racing circuit, even if it is a street circuit that only temporarily is used for racing, is designed in order to facilitate the challenge of an automobile race. In order to describe the challenge of the legendary circuit in Monaco, Formula 1 driver Nelson Piquet said that the Monaco grand prix was “like trying to cycle round your living room” (McAuley, 2008). Piquet's parable points to the artificial quality of the activity; automobile racing is not a challenge that we encounter in our attempt to reach some other goal. Driving at extreme speed in tight corners on the same course lap after lap is a designed challenge; it is made to put different aspects of human agency to a test.

The point I am making here is similar to but not the same as Bernard Suits' (2005[1978]) definition that playing a game “is the voluntary attempt to overcome unnecessary obstacles” (p. 55). According to his argument, the rules of a game dictate conditions for an activity that are not optimal for achieving a certain goal. In a game we use less efficient means than what is possible to achieve our goals; it is easier to pick up a golf ball and simply place it in the hole than to use a putter. I agree that this is a fruitful description that captures something similar to pointing out that those games and sports are designed challenges. The problem with Suits' definition is, as Juul (2003, p. 27) points out, that it becomes problematic to talk about ‘less efficient means’ in videogames where the rules of the game and the potential actions that are possible in the virtual environment often are the same.

Not all designed challenges are games and neither are all games designed challenges, but if we settle for “family resemblance” this can be a starting point for approaching the relation between board games, sports, and digital games, an approach that can be used for analyzing other aspects of sports videogames beyond how they simulate a sport. It should be stressed that in some games and sports, it might be misleading to talk about a single designed challenge. The same game can contain many designed challenges that are rather different in nature; for instance, a face-off in hockey can be seen as a mini-game within the game. In the same manner, digital games can vary fast-paced action scenes with puzzles, activities that are very different types of challenges. In order to come to making my case that games, board games, videogames, and sports can be seen as designed challenges, I will introduce the theory of ecological psychology. This approach sees human perception and action as closely related and reciprocal to our immediate environment. This approach has been used for both investigating sports (Fajen, Riley, and Turvey, 2008) and digital gaming (Linderoth, 2009, 2012).

An Ecological Approach to Perception and Action

The Affordance Concept

The theory of ecological psychology is mainly known from James Gibson's writings and the affordance concept that he coined (1986, p. 127). The affordance concept was picked up by traditions such as human-computer interaction and interaction design, where it came to take on a somewhat different meaning than it had originally (see Norman, 1998, 1999).

The main idea with the affordance concept, as it originally was developed, was to address the reciprocal relation between humans (as well as other animals; both humans and animals are regarded as perceiving and acting organisms in this theory) and the environment. The environment contains everything from buildings and plants to different objects, as well as other humans and animals. These things exist in relation to each other in a layout, a structure of the environment. This layout is constantly changing when events occur, things and people move, change, disappear, etc. At the same time animals and humans are active organisms interacting with the environment. The environment offers the individual different ways of acting. These offers are called affordances and an important part of the original formulation of the concept is that affordances are relative to an organism (relative between species as well as between individuals). For instance, a stone can afford being thrown for someone with a hand and an arm of certain strength. This affordance is thus relative to the physical constitution as well as the capabilities of the organism. Many humans and some apes could use a stone as a projectile, but this affordance is not an affordance for an infant or someone with a disability in his/her arms or hands.

For humans, the whole realm of social life is a flow of coming and going affordances depending on both permanent features and temporal states of people around us. Conversation, cooperation, competition, play, and all other forms of interaction are, from the ecological perspective, about perceiving and acting upon the affordances of others (Gibson, 1986, p. 42). Social ...