GamerNode: Columns - The Significance of Sports Games

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Speaking in simple dollars and cents -- no small matters in the high-risk, high-reward business that the modern videogame industry has become -- the sports genre is immensely important. Dorm-room managers and other sports game consumers make up a huge market sector, and pump money into the industry year-in and year-out. While the oft-criticized yearly updates to sports game franchises may only incrementally improve (or not) with each passing year, fans still gobble up these yearly editions by the millions in order to stay up to date with their sport(s) of choice. The major downside to this trend is that the "sequelitis" development strategy has been implemented in genres where the caliber of titles is more heavily affected by novelty and originality... or lack thereof. This practice has not only helped game companies to realize their goals of increased production and revenue, but has also unfortunately served to dilute the quality of games in those categories, as well.

Beyond the hard numbers, sports games also carry social significance in a number of ways. These games are educational tools for players seeking to learn the rules, strategies, and other intricacies of a given sport. Playing a sports videogame is essentially a form of practice on a virtual field. Players may not be training themselves physically, but their mental game can be sharpened as they continually run through each game's proceedings via what are, in part, interactive instructional guides. Similarly, virtual participation within videogames may be the only opportunity for some people to enjoy sports at all, on more than just a passive level. Physical impairment, age, time constraints, lack of athleticism, etc. are all obstacles that can be leveled on the virtual playing field, giving these individuals the chance to enjoy something that would otherwise be out of reach.

Finally, to complete the answer to our initial question, we must understand the importance of sports outside of gaming -- real-life sports. Since time immemorial, people have organized together and in opposition to compete in physical contests whose outcomes would inevitably distinguish clear winners and losers. War is the most obvious form of human conflict to arise under normal conditions, from the individual duel, to tribal skirmishes, to large-scale campaigns. Many early sports were created by adapting war training exercises, such as spear throwing, in order to hone the skills required for more deadly activities. This behavior was an adaptive survival strategy, and still remains a part of what it means to be human. So, as an extension of this inherent competitive human nature, sports, games, and the subsequent marriage of the two -- sports games -- are important outlets for our universal "survival of the fittest" instinct. Yes, sports games are theoretically good for us from an socio-evolutionary perspective.

Sports games, like "casual" titles, may not be first-round draft picks for the so-called "hardcore" gaming crowd, but that does not mean that they are simply unimportant augmentations to the industry's catalog of games. The sports genre has been economically, socially, and developmentally significant to the videogame industry throughout its history, and will continue to be well into the future.

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