EXP Podcast #400: Games on the Field

"400 episodes? Hell yea!"

The world of sports and the world of gaming have never been so intertwined. We've got real life announcers adding color commentary to Madden patches and professional soccer players raising a fit over in-game FIFA stats.

What's going on here? And more importantly, when are Americans finally going to care about soccer!? This week on the show, we kick around the influence games and sports have on each other.


- Here's the show's stand-alone feed
- Listen to the podcast in your browser by left-clicking here, right-click and select "save as link" to download the show in MP3 format, or click play below.

Show Notes:

- Runtime: 33 mins 33 sec
- "How Video Games Are Changing the Way Soccer Is Played," by Rory Smith, via the New York Times
- Music by Brad Sucks

EXP Podcast #292: eSports Extravaganza

The football season is back, but the eSports League of Legends season is almost coming to a close. Now I can go from sitting in a room watching strangers play a video game to sitting in a room watching strangers play a sports ball game. How different, really, are the two experiences? And what will eSports look like when we consider it a "past time"? All this and more on this week's EXP Podcast!

- Subscribe to the EXP Podcast via iTunes
- Find the show on Stitcher
- Here's the show's stand-alone feed
- Listen to the podcast in your browser by left-clicking here. Or, right-click and select "save as link" to download the show in MP3 format.
- Subscribe to this podcast and EXP's written content with the RSS link on the right.

Show Notes:
- Runtime: 44 mins 33 secs

- Music by Brad Sucks

EXP Podcast #238: Sports Games from the Sidelines

NHL 94

The football season is upon us! Yet while the games might be raging in the stadiums, our gaming habits have long since abandoned sports games. Why did we play sports games more when we were young? Why did they fall off our radar? And what could bring us back to the field? This week on the EXP Podcast, Scott and I discuss our professional ping-pong careers, Madden, and free-to-play economics. Let us know your own relationship with sports games in the comments below!

- Subscribe to the EXP Podcast via iTunes
- Find the show on Stitcher
- Here's the show's stand-alone feed
- Listen to the podcast in your browser by left-clicking here. Or, right-click and select "save as link" to download the show in MP3 format.
- Subscribe to this podcast and EXP's written content with the RSS link on the right.

Show notes:

- Runtime: 29 min 16 sec
- Music by: Brad Sucks

Strategies, Tactics, and Turnovers

Brace yourselves: this week at Popmatters, I'm talking about football. Don't worry, I'm also talking about video games and board games.

This weekend I was able partake in all three areas: I watched the 49ers' heartbreaking loss, I played the deviously complex Game of Thrones board game, and I plugged away on a few video games I've been playing. The combination of the three started to help me crystallize the way I think about video games as a medium in comparison to its other ludic cousins.
This piece was a hard one, and even after trying to think it through over the past couple days, I'm not entirely happy with it. An email exchange with my always-helpful editor, G. Christopher Williams, actually helped clarify my article's point, so I'll paraphrase my own emails here:

"Essentially, I'm trying to say that many video games are more like sports [than board games] because pressure to perform and tactical challenges can upset your strategy to a greater extent than can happen in most (all?) board games.

Another good example [of the connection between video games and sports] [is] tennis: if you're serving and you fail to get the ball over the net two times in a row, your opponent gets a point. Any tennis player worth his or her salt can easily get the ball over the net, but random mistakes, mental lapses, over-thinking their opponent's next move, even the wind can mess them up. When this happens, their whole strategy needs to change: now that they're down a point, they might not charge the net, they might try to serve slower but more accurately, or they might have just given up the game. The best tennis players are good at overcoming the pressure and mitigating random factors and are thus able to implement their strategy without having to worry about tactical mistakes.

Most board games do not, and possibly cannot, simulate the feeling of your body betraying your mind. You're never going to throw the dice "wrong." You're never going to have trouble playing a card; even if it is the wrong card from a strategic sense, you'll never have trouble implementing your action. Very few games have "double faults" in the way tennis does; random bad luck is either purely random (in the form of dice rolls or random cards) or nonexistent (like in chess). Video games with any kind of action component require at least some minimum amount of coordination between mental and physical effort, which makes them seem more like sports to me.

[Playing a board game might elicit an emotional response], but I imagine most of the groaning comes from the strategic binds [the game] places you in, rather than the immediate challenge of making your decisions. Now, if you had a timer that was ticking, forcing you to quickly move your pieces around the board, shuffle your cards, or count up points, I think you'd be bleeding back into sports territory, as a sloppy tactical mistake (dropping your tiles, counting incorrectly, missing a card, etc.) could compromise your strategy."

Granted, the line can get a bit murky, but I think the video game/sport relationship is understudied. Again, this theory isn't fully formed, but I think there is something to it.

In any case, at least it took my mind off of the 49ers' inglorious end.

A Fall Classic

If you've been watching the World Series (and chances are you haven't), then you've been treated to a particularly exciting contest. The Rangers and the Cardinals might not be the biggest names in the league, but they've put on an exciting show. I still have a soft spot for Tony LaRussa thanks to his time with the A's, but I'm mainly rooting for the St. Louis in hopes of getting to see a seventh game. Today's a travel day, so at the risk of losing my sports credibility, I thought I'd share some thoughts on my favorite baseball video game: Ken Griffey, Jr. Presents Major League Baseball.

As regular readers know, I don't play many sports games. It's not for lack of interest; I love watching sports and am quite interested in the strategy and athleticism behind them. It's just that sports games, like many other genres, have become increasingly specialized over the years. Imagine if someone who only played Doom dove right in to Battlefield 3? It's hard to simply jump into a current version of Madden or The Show without feeling overwhelmed. I played Griffey when it came out in 1994, and that's pretty much where my skill at baseball video games peaked.

Griffey came out at a time when the line between arcade and simulation styles was blurrier than it is today. The game had deep rosters, accurate player statistics, and realistic representations of every major league stadium. At the same time, player collisions resulted in cartoonish fainting spells, fielders ran at twice the speed of on-base runners, and players routinely broke bats over their knees. It was the kind of game that let you play through an entire season and also regularly blast 500-foot homers.

For some reason, my friends, cousins, and brother took a shining to the quirky title. Because the game wasn't licensed by the players' union, all the names (except for Griffey's) had been changed to thematic pseudonyms. The A's were made up of famous authors like Byron and Twain. Seattle unsurprisingly boasted a roster of Nintendo employees like Howard Lincoln and Dan Owsen. Because the stats, numbers, and teams were true to life, it was easy to figure out who was who, but I never bothered editing most of the names. There was something great about seeing "J. Wayne" of the Angels hit grand slams.

When it got too dark to play three flies up, we would head inside and huddle around the TV, taunting each other with slow moves to first and disrespectful tag-outs. The hitting and pitching systems are rudimentary by today's standards, but they were more than adequate for strategic play as well as mind games. Just like in the real game, Griffey was as much about anticipating your opponent's decision as it was executing the play. Of course, the pros don't have to worry about their friends trying to slap the controller out of their hands in hopes of messing up an easy fly ball.

Today, I can still remember that iconic intro song that played over the title screen. It's as if Joe Satriani was distilled into MIDI format. Also: check out the sick base solo at 1:24.

It was the 1990's y'all! I spent so much time playing the game that modern sports games still strike me as eerily quiet. Alas, I feel like the day of digital organ-laden melodic loops are long passed.

Perhaps more so than any other American sport, Baseball is steeped nostalgia. Our memories of it goes deeper than the stats we record about every pitch. The game marks the change in the seasons and gets intertwined with memories of growing up. In this way, Ken Griffey, Jr. Presents Major League Baseball is a fitting tribute to the sport. After all these years, I still recall it like some sprite-based sandlot; a digital field of dreams whose fantasy elements imbued its more realistic features with the magic necessary to make indelible memories.

The HUD and the Huddle

It's fall in the U.S., which means football season is back. After missing practically all of last season, returning to the ritual of the Sunday football marathon has been especially enjoyable. The fact that both the 49ers and Raiders are off to strong starts only sweetens the experience.

However, even when watching football, my mind never strays too far from video games. Recently, it occurred to me that football broadcasts have become increasingly similar to video games in regards to how they communicate situational information. As a way of sorting through some of the changes and challenges of designing on-screen information systems, I'll share some thoughts about the HUDs (heads-up displays) used in both video game and televised football.

A League of My Own

I have never been a fan of football (the American version for our friends abroad). To be completely honest, I found most organized sports strange for most of my life. While I learned to play and appreciate soccer, even watching it on television occasionally, football still seemed one of the strangest recreations undeserving of its fame. What are all these men doing in body armor? Why is each side essentially composed of two completely separate offensive and defensive teams? What is with the frequent breaks, time-outs, and lack of stoppage time? Watching and enjoying a game of football seemed a worthless endeavor. Now I am a proud owner of a fantasy football team, excitedly anticipating the season’s first game just two weeks from yesterday.

If we were to broaden our definition of video games to include fantasy sports, its player base would be more than double that of World of Warcraft. Since its birth, fantasy football has spawned other games, such as hockey, cricket, professional wrestling, and even fantasy congress. The basic concept is simple. Each participant in a fantasy football league drafts players or groups of players for each required position. For example, my particular league players with one quarterback, one running back, one running back/wide receiver (either position can fill this slot), two wide receivers, one wide receiver/tight end, one defense, and one kicker for a total of nine slots, with an additional seven benched players. Thus, each player composes a team of sixteen real life players and then compete each week against another player for highest total points.
Those who know and appreciate football will tend to get the most out of a fantasy football game. For many, drafting real players satisfies their desire run a team of their very own, normally reserved for the ludicrously rich. Personally, I found such aspirations unappealing. Instead, I learned to enjoy the sport by making it completely my own.

This is not to say fantasy football is a solitary sport. I play with my brother and several good friends, all of whom pressured me greatly to first lead a team. Playing with others goes a long way for enjoying a game, even games in which you have no interest. Draft day is a highlight, an excuse to hang out with friends, jape their picks, and try to outwit and predict their selections. Ranking my list of players becomes a game in and of itself, even with help from internet professionals. In many ways, fantasy football is like an MMO. It’s a persistent online game, that I play, even before the actual season has started.

In retrospect, I think my initial displeasure with real football stemmed from an incorrect perception about how the game is played. This is different than the set of rules followed in football, many of which I still do not understand. I have no expertise about pass-plays and run-plays, or how to decide which to choose. Simply put, I had always thought football was an action game, when really it is a turn-based strategy game. Each play is a single turn, and each option the quarter back has is a potential maneuver. Whether a throw succeeds or fails depends on which strategy was used in one instance, how expertly it was performed, and how it matches up with the same condition from the opposing team.

With this in mind, fantasy football is actually a dual-layered strategy game. Building a team with real players is akin to picking a starting set of flowers in Plants vs. Zombies, for example. Deciding which players to put in during a given weak is like choosing which troops to build in Starcraft. I admit, these are weak metaphors. Regardless, they capture some of the forethought that goes into preparing to play while not actually playing - the entirety of fantasy football. By the time the Steelers play the Falcons, my fate is sealed. I merely watch how well my gambles pay off.
Which is not to sell the game short. The mechanics of fantasy football, that is the ability for players to use waivers, research players and teams, and plan accordingly, is very deep. Starting Jay Cutler, the Chicago quarter back, may seem like a bad idea considering his score average last season. However, considering he is playing against a weak Detroit defense, has a strengthened defensive line, and is newly coached by Mike Martz (the very capable offensive coordinator), such a strategic decision might actually prove worthwhile.

I am still not a huge fan of sports culture. I do not root for any particular team, nor do I wear a jersey with my Ochocinco scrawled on the back. I do, however, pay attention to football with the fervent attention of a competitive gamer. I play this game many times each week, and every round has its own risks and rewards. My understanding is colored almost exclusively by my gaming habits. I play a class-based strategy game with armored warriors, long-distance spell casters, and legendary heroes. Although many people love football, the game is mine alone.