Playing to Win: Sports, Video Games, and the Culture of Play

by Thomas P. Oates (Editor), Andrew Baerg (Contribution by), Meredith M. Bagley (Contribution by), Michael L. Butterworth (Contribution by), Perri Campbell (Contribution by)

Overview

In this era of big media franchises, sports branding has crossed platforms, so that the sport, its television broadcast, and its replication in an electronic game are packaged and promoted as part of the same fan experience. Editors Robert Alan Brookey and Thomas P. Oates trace this development back to the unexpected success of Atari's Pong in the 1970s, which provoked a flood of sport simulation games that have had an impact on every sector of the electronic game market. From golf to football, basketball to step aerobics, electronic sports games are as familiar in the American household as the televised sporting events they simulate. This book explores the points of convergence at which gaming and sports culture merge.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780253015020
Publisher:	Indiana University Press
Publication date:	01/12/2015
Series:	Digital Game Studies
Pages:	252
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.80(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Robert Alan Brookey is Professor of Telecommunications at Ball State University where he also serves as the Director of Graduate Studies for the MA program in Digital Storytelling. He is the author of Hollywood Gamers: Digital Convergence in the Film and Video Game Industries (IUP, 2010).

Thomas P. Oates is Assistant Professor of American Studies and Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Iowa.

Table of Contents

Playing to Win: An introduction. / Thomas P. Oates and Robert Alan Brookey
Part I: Gender Play
1. The Name of the Game is Jocktronics: Sport and Masculinity in Early Video Games / Michael Z. Newman
2. Madden Men: Masculinity, Race, and the Marketing of a Video Game Franchise / Thomas P. Oates
3. Neoliberal Masculinity: The Government of Play and Masculinity in E-Sports / Gerald Voorhees
4. The Social and Gender in Fantasy Sports Leagues / Luke Howie and Perri Campbell
5. Domesticating Sports: The Wii, the Mii and Nintendo's Postfeminist Subject / Rene Powers and Robert Alan Brookey
Part II. The Uses of Simulation
6. Avastars: The Encoding of Fame within Sport Digital Games / Steven Conway
7. Keeping it Real: Sports Video Game Advertising and the Fan-Consumer / Cory Hillman and Michael Butterworth
8. Exploiting Nationalism and Banal Cosmopolitanism: EA's FIFA World Cup 2010 / Andrew Baerg
9. Ideology, It's In The Game: Selective Simulation in EA Sports' NCAA Football / Meredith M. Bagley and Ian Summers
10. Yes Wii Can or Can Wii: Theorizing the Possibilities of Video Games as Health Disparity Intervention / David J. Leonard, Sarah Ullrich-French, and Thomas G. Power
Contributors
Index

What People are Saying About This

"A timely volume, with a stellar array of authors."

Toby Miller

A timely volume, with a stellar array of authors.

Toby Miller]]>

A timely volume, with a stellar array of authors.

Editorial Reviews

Essays complement one another and, taken together, provide a comprehensive overview of important considerations in a field that is only beginning to be researched in depth. . . . Recommended.

Choice

11/01/2014
This volume focuses on the role that video games and sports fantasy leagues play in modern society. Editors Brookey (telecommunications, Ball State Univ.; Hollywood Gamers) and Oates (American studies, journalism and mass communication, Univ. of Iowa) tackle absorbing topics which examine the nature of "play" and its deeper meaning. Topics include the role of masculinity and male power evident in sports video games as well as the blurring of lines between myth and reality in order to create games that are as realistic as possible. There is also an examination of fantasy leaguers and their painstaking process of crunching numbers as a way to better understand and participate in a game that they cannot physically compete in. As one contributor notes, "there [is] something quintessentially male about fetishistically watching and remembering statistical representations of real sporting events." The consideration that arises again and again in this book is whether or not these players are playing active or passive roles, and, ultimately, what these games do for the betterment of their lives. VERDICT Numerous avenues of inquiry worthy of closer investigation are offered in this book. As such, this work is a useful contribution to this burgeoning field of study.—Brian Renvall, Mesalands Community Coll., Tucumcari, NM

Library Journal

"[W]hat is particularly unique about Playing to Win: Sports, Video Games, and the Culture of Play . . . is that it offers a critical assessment of sports video games at a time when such an assessment is necessary, given the convergence of gaming and sports culture."—International Journal of Sport Communication

"In taking on a number of dfferent kinds of topics, Brookey and Oates have assembled a collection that encourages the reader to think beyond any singular way of examining sports games."—American Journal of Play

"Numerous avenues of inquiry worthy of closer investigation are offered in this book. As such, this work is a useful contribution to this burgeoning field of study."—Library Journal

"Essays complement one another and, taken together, provide a comprehensive overview of important considerations in a field that is only beginning to be researched in depth. . . . Recommended."—Choice

"A timely volume, with a stellar array of authors."—Toby Miller, author of Blow Up the Humanities

From the Publisher

In taking on a number of dfferent kinds of topics, Brookey and Oates have assembled a collection that encourages the reader to think beyond any singular way of examining sports games.

American Journal of Play

[W]hat is particularly unique about Playing to Win: Sports, Video Games, and the Culture of Play . . . is that it offers a critical assessment of sports video games at a time when such an assessment is necessary, given the convergence of gaming and sports culture.

International Journal of Sport Communication

"...a timely volume, with a stellar array of authors." —Toby Miller, author of Blow Up the Humanities

author of Blow Up the Humanities - Toby Miller