There’s an awfully large group of gamers with this strange conviction that sports games aren’t games. Which, in principle, confuses me. You put it in a system, you pick up a controller, and you direct an avatar in pursuit of a goal dictated by the software. You can win, you can lose. You can be excellent, or awful. It’s developed by a developer, and sold by a publisher.
If there’s a better definition of interactive entertainment, someone has yet to inform me of it.
First and foremost, I wish to remind everyone that the concept of professional sports, from which is derived the sports title, is in-and-of itself an evolution in form. I am certain most every reader present has not only heard of the Colosseum, but is likely in some small way in love with the whole concept. Geeks, culturally, are terribly attracted to the idea of dramatic battles with epic stakes, heroes and upstarts, shining moments of glory and gut-wrenching moments of defeat, victory teetering on the edge of a razor’s edge.
Unfortunately, it’s no longer legal for two men to fight to the death for the entertainment of the masses, and in our day and age there’s little-to-nothing that exemplifies the aforementioned ideas like our modern-day professional sports. The Superbowl, the World Cup, Wimbledon, the Stanley Cup, and others in their respective fields are packed full of the very stuff that forms the core essence of what we find so engaging and delightful in interactive entertainment. So if the elements that we love are present, and if it does in fact fit the definition of a game, what forms the basis of the oh-so-prevalent loathing of the sports title?
I have a theory, dear reader, as I am wont to do, and that theory has far more to do with the mythical Sports Gamer than with the games themselves. I firmly believe that what is actually loathed by the ‘Core Gamer’ demographic has less to do with the game itself (which would be miserably hypocritical, as most of the anti-sports-games advocates have NEVER played a sports title) and more in fact to do with Middle-and-High-School gym class, and how it made some of us feel.
Geeks, as lords of all they survey on the internet, are territorial in a very specific way when it comes to our demesne. We own and dominate this internet, from behind the curtain of anonymity of our glowing screen and username. We do not want our domain encroached upon, and the Sports Gamer is likely tall, tan, good-looking, fit, and has a girlfriend we’d be scared to even make eye contact with who he is probably cheating on with an even-hotter girl, with whom eye contact would trigger an immediate bladder-control issue.
This man, this dangerous, dangerous man cannot be allowed free roam within our world, as he is likely able to say the things to faces we can only say behind the comfortable shield of our IP addresses.
This, geeks, is a threat.
Except it’s not. This is another area in which we are as guilty as our imagined or half-remembered tormentors. We spend hours lamenting the unfairness of our undeserved stereotyping, raising a defiantly enraged middle finger at the miserable stereotypes on The Big Bang Theory, but we forget that we did, and do the same. How often did we assume the football team was populated with stupid but conveniently muscle-bound idiots? How often did we assume the cheerleaders were ditsy and easy-to-sleep-with?
About as many times as someone assuming that because I wore glasses that I was a miserable lonely nerd who didn’t have any friends, or that because I got good grades and knew all the answers that I couldn’t do a push-up and wouldn’t ever kiss a girl. None of that was true, or fair, on either side for any of the parties.
Nor is it fair of us to judge an entire genre of gaming on the principle that it pertains to a sport, or that self-same genre because it is exclusively played by the meat-head fascists that may-or-may-not-have stuffed some of us into lockers.
(Was anyone ever actually stuffed into a locker? Ever? I am inclined to cry hyperbole.)
Finally, whether or not you buy my rhetoric, there is no ignoring the financial impact of sports titles. Like Bioshock? NBA 2k6 and 2k7 bankrolled it. Enjoyed Far Cry? You can thank NBA Live 2003 & 2004. The sheer mass of income that sports titles reliably crank out year after year after year creates the cushion that allows publishers to take risks on new intellectual properties, dangerous titles that you as a gamer know and love because they push the edge that is gaming.
You may not like it, but every single time you hit that power button on your console or PC of choice you should know the Madden NFL juggernaut was in no small way responsible for boosting the interactive entertainment market into the position of the world’s single largest and most lucrative entertainment industry.
I’m not asking you to run out and buy Madden. You don’t need to. This year’s title has already outsold your (and my) favorite title, and likely both of our top five titles combined.
I am asking the next time someone mentions Madden or NBA 2k12 or UFC or anything you haven’t played because its a sports game, remember that nothing, and I mean nothing deserves to be judged without equality and fairness. Otherwise, you’re doing it the same way you remember being judged for being in Model UN and the Chess Club, or making 5s on the AP Calc exam, or dragging a Robert Jordan book around your middle school campus.
Why do I care? I was that guy, up there in the last paragraph. I have played every major, and most minor titles in most of the genres that have ever existed. I can rules lawyer 2nd Advanced, 3rd, and 4th edition D&D proficiently, and my paperback Sci-Fi collection rivals that of most of my peers. I am a nerd, and geek, and in no way a paragon of the unfortunate and inaccurate stereotype that is the ‘Sports Gamer.’ And you know what?
I play Madden, and I am not ashamed.