Bogost on Sports Games

Ian Bogost’s article about the phenomenon of sports video games raises a number of interesting questions that I had never considered before. While Bogost starts the article by making the assertion that “sports videogames could be seen as computational translations of sports“, by the end of the article, he clarifies his stance by saying “sports videogames are just another way to play sports“. In Bogost’s view, just because playing a sports video game is inherently different from playing a game in a field, that doesn’t mean it is not that sport. The translation of the sport does not necessarily change the sport.

Just because some of the rules and boundaries of the sport have changed in the translation, that does not mean that a sport is no longer being played. As Bogost suggests in the article, “folk games” of the past shifted and changed from generation to generation. One of the examples that Bogost gives is the bowling game included in Wii Sports. He claims that the game was popular amongst elderly communities, as it serves the same function as bowling without the physical exertion. The mechanics of the sport has changed, but the translation has not necessarily changed its status as a sport. The player can treat it like playing “the real thing”.

This has larger implications to gaming communities. As professional gaming tournaments have become more widely recognized as valid arenas, the debate of whether e-sports count as sports has become more recognized. For instance, in 2017, the promotional team for League of Legends released a video entitled Our Game intended to dispel the idea that video games are not sports. The video features an array of talking heads, from anchors of The View to Jimmy Kimmel, deriding the idea that video games could be considered sports. The video intends to show that video game tournaments act as any sports arena do (admittedly, the video is a bit overly serious and reeks of a gamer persecution complex). Competitive tournaments for games like League of Legends essentially act sports, even if everything is controlled with keyboards and mouses.