VG Force: Play with (against) me.

I think video-game playing is a spectator sport.  I was obsessed with Super Mario Brothers (Nintendo NES, the one that came with Duck Hunt) when I was younger, but as I got older, I became more interested in watching than participating (with the exception of Tetris, which I was addicted to during college).

Given cheat codes such as immortality and/or limitless weaponry and ammunition, though, I could get back into the groove of playing (particularly first-person shooters).  RPGs just don’t compute with me–I haven’t the patience for them.

I was browsing through random WordPress blogs this morning and I came across this little island of crystalline brilliance called Pixel-Love.  One of their top posts is about Sports MMOs (or MMORPGs, aka “massively multi-player online online role-playing games”).  The entry itself contains a reprint of another online piece.

I’ve xeroxed a small excerpt from that entry here:

A Massively Multiplayer Online Sports Game? Why not? Any sport is a competition. Every competition needs at least two people to compete. Then there’s team sports, where many people are competing. Multiplayer, baby!

First, a couple of assumptions. The number of “sports gamers” probably wouldn’t equal the rest of the “gamers” if you were to divide them into two groups but there are a lot of them. There are A LOT of kids out there who own a PS2 for the sole purpose of playing Madden. Sure, those guys play other games like the occasional NBA Live, Tiger Woods, or NCAA game. But these guys can’t be bothered with Ico and Katamari Damacy. There’s Super Bowls to be won! They love their sports teams and they love their sports games.

You could probably break sports gamers into two groups, as well. You’d have the “casual” sports gamer who’s played thousands of Madden games but barely touched the “Superstar Mode” or the Dynasty Mode. The same could be said for the other sports. They like to play the game and can’t be sidetracked with things like drafts and trading. These guys would also be more inclined to play psuedo-sports games like NFL/NBA Street, Hot Shots Golf, etc. The other group of sports gamers are hard core. These are the players that have spreadsheets of statistics plotting the stats of the last ten simulated seasons to see if the video game stats are tracking actual real-life stats. These guys play rotisserie baseball, holding drafts in hotel conference rooms. I’m not saying either side is better than the other. But both expect certain things from their sports games. Some expect fluid animations and knock-out graphics. Others want reasonable simulation results and bases on balls. MMOSGs can accomodate both groups of players. I’ve looked at what’s out there right now and offerings that are on-deck (it’s gonna be hard to resist the sports cliches. There’s so many of them!) and then offer some thoughts about where things can go in Part II.Read the rest of the article here.

I also found an interview sample with Henry Jenkins, the man of hu-mans when it comes to new media studies and fan-culture.