An age when anyone can be like Mike
Today’s video games pander to one’s desires of living a superstar athlete’s life
So you’re not really the athletic type, you’ve barely touched a basketball.
But here you are with your name stitched on a jersey, walking toward a press conference in custom Air Jordans while your phone buzzes with texts from an NBA general manager.
It’s a fantasy reserved in real life for a select few — professional athletes who’ve fought to the pinnacle of their respective sports. Yet a glimpse of that life is available, in increasingly sophisticated iterations, to anyone with a few hundred bucks and a television set.
Video games can offer you a view into that rarefied world.
“Everybody likes the idea of finding out what it’s like to be an NBA superstar,” says Ben Bishop, producer of the “MyCareer mode” in the longrunning NBA2K franchise. It’s a burgeoning element of sports video games — mirrored in baseball, football, soccer and hockey titles — that lets users create versions of themselves to climb through the ranks of the pros, experiencing everything from social media controversy to sponsorship deals and the thrill of a championship victory.
“It’s always something that we’re looking to do, get more and more into that NBA world and see what it’s really like so that those of us at home sitting on the couch get a little bit of a taste,” says Bishop.
The rise of this side to sports gaming in recent years is well-known among video gamers. Whereas before, sports games essentially mimicked a broadcast with the user controlling one of the teams, now they allow players to mimic the lives of the athletes they admire.
“It’s much more engrossing that way,” says Samit Sarkar, a sports video-games writer for the website, Polygon. “These modes have become hugely popular.”
But why is that?
Aside from the obvious — that it’s fun and interesting — does the rise of live-the-life sports gaming say anything about today’s sports fans?
Kevin Kelly, director of interactive media at Old Hat Creative sports marketing firm, believes it does. In the 21st century, with the advent and spread of social media, sports fans can reach out and interact with athletes and representatives of their favourite teams. With that ability comes the expectation that, at least sometimes, they’ll reach back.
“You have to create a community feeling, so people feel like they’re a part of something,” Kelly says. “It’s not enough to have a Red Sox hat. They want to have their Twitter handle on the back of a jersey or up on the stadium board.”
In other words, it’s not just about watching the game anymore. It’s about fostering a back-and-forth relationship with one’s favourite team and players.
Fans want to get closer.
“Everybody likes the idea of finding out what it’s like to be an NBA superstar.” BEN BISHOP NBA2K PRODUCER
A report published online by Synergy Sponsorship, a marketing agency in London, seems to echo Kelly’s point. Roughly 40 per cent of “millennials” surveyed (people born after 1980), said they find content on social media more engaging if it comes directly from athletes or sports organizations, versus less than 15 per cent if the post stems from sponsors or third-party brands.
The report chalks this up to a desire for “real” or “authentic” engagements with a sport, where the experience of witnessing a game and an athlete’s life isn’t seen as filtered or spun for marketing purposes.
“Social media has opened fans up to what direct, personal access can re- ally look and feel like,” the report states.
Bishop, the producer for NBA2K, adds that, while the intimate, behind-the-scenes feel of the career mode meshes with what people in the age of social media expect, it’s not just younger people who are gravitating toward this style of game play.
“It seems like our whole audience just likes that idea of being in control of that one guy and being that young player working their way up into the NBA world,” he says.
Sarkar sees it as part of a larger trend, in which fans expect the games they play to closely match the rhythms and realities of the sports they love. Some of these games, he explains, let users play along with each match of the season in real time, replicating their favourite team’s journey that year. During the protests in Baltimore this spring, for instance, the Orioles played the visiting Chicago White Sox in front of an empty stadium. In response, the makers of MLB The Show 15 — this year’s version of the bestselling pro baseball video game — reformatted the in-game version of that matchup so that there is no crowd.
“Any way that developers can incorporate those types of real-life elements, it really elevates the level of verisimilitude in the games,” Sarkar explains. “It just feels more realistic.” For Tom Oates, a University of Iowa professor and author of Playing to Win: Sports, Video Games, and the Culture of Play, the draw of this style of sports game — beyond the intrigue of experiencing a reflection of another life — is really about the challenge of it. You have to make the NBA. You have to deal with your agent, the GM and the media. You have to get named to the Hall of Fame. That’s what makes it fun.
After all, as real as the developers can make it feel, at the end of the day, we’re still talking about video games.
And you’re still on the couch.