Is Fantasy Football an Electronic Game?
Posted by Marc Check - 09/22/09 at 09:09 pm
Autumn in upstate New York is not my favorite season. I’m a summer guy. I enjoy the heat, swimming, golfing, landscaping, fresh air blowing through open windows, and light clothing. Autumn abruptly ends all of these things, and each year I suffer more than your normal New Yorker from Seasonal Affective Disorder.
Sure, I love the autumn leaves and landscape, the first batch of chili, and Halloween. However, these are small consolations as I count the many days until the return of summer, and endure the inevitable rain, sleet, snow, and constant gray skies characteristic of the other three seasons in this region.
The one aspect of autumn that I truly look forward to and that provides some glimmer of hope is football. My schedule is carefully planned around various college and NFL games, attending some and watching the rest on television. My greatest anticipation is watching my pro team once again take the league by storm, week by week, through their failures, victories, injuries, various coaching decisions that make or break each game, and consequentially each season. This emotional roller coaster provides a great deal of entertainment and satisfaction.
Now, because I am from upstate New York you might think the pro team I’m talking about is the Buffalo Bills. Then again if you have any historical perspective of the Bills over the last decade you’ll know this isn’t the case. Whereas the Bills haven’t reached the playoffs in a decade, my team of chiseled athletes has made the playoffs several times, taking at least one Superbowl victory in the last decade and placing in the top four spots almost every season. I credit this success to the sheer genius of the coaching staff.
At this point, you may be wondering what this has to do with electronic games. Quite a bit actually, as my favorite pro team is my fantasy football team and the genius coach responsible for the success of the team is me.
As we look at the history of various electronic games related to sports, especially football, many come to mind. We might think of classic arcade games such as the Atari Football arcade game of 1979 (available to play in our Videotopia exhibit), Nintendo’s 10-Yard Fight, TV Sports Football, Tecmo Bowl, and of course Electronic Arts’ Madden NFL. I could devote a series of blogs to the evolution of these games alone, but despite their popularity they can’t compare to the societal penetration and popularity of fantasy football (29.9 million people age 12 and above in the U.S. and Canada played fantasy sports in 2007).
Is fantasy football an electronic game? I guess that depends on your definition of electronic games. Fantasy football, like all fantasy sports, was originally played without computers and Internet technologies. The popularity of fantasy sports, however, was greatly propelled by the information age and the ability of networked computer systems to keep track of individual player statistics, calculate scores, mediate transactions, and emulate the game play of fantasy teams in a graphical manner. In Concentric Circles: A Lens for Exploring the History of Electronic Games, we at NCHEG define electronic games “broadly to include video games, computer games, console games, arcade games, handheld games, and toys that combine digital and traditional play.” Fantasy football surely meets these criteria, as it combines digital and traditional play in a unique way.
In the taxonomy of electronic games, it might be more accurate to classify fantasy football as an alternate reality game (ARG), or those games loosely defined as “an interactive narrative that uses the real world as a platform, often involving multiple media and game elements, to tell a story that may be affected by participants’ ideas or actions.” I have trouble thinking of any ARG that incorporates the vast amount of media that fantasy football does: magazines, newspapers, television, radio, multiple web sites that host the game mechanics or player resources, and mobile device applications. Surely the player actions influence the millions of story lines that make up fantasy football seasons worldwide, and surely this is an interactive narrative that uses the real world as a platform.
Fantasy football adheres to the basic design principles for ARGs in every aspect, yet very little supporting research or analysis of where fantasy sports fit into games taxonomy exists. A wealth of evidence leads me to believe that fantasy sports are the most successful and prevalent form of ARGs
As ARGs become more popular in the future, we at NCHEG will continue to look at the role of fantasy sports and other ARGs. How do we begin to collect and interpret this form of electronic game play when the media is distributed so widely? How do we interpret the game play and cultural significance when the very nature of game play by individuals changes the game itself? I would personally love to hear your opinions concerning the role of fantasy sports in the world of electronic games. Is fantasy football an electronic game? Is it an ARG? Is it a Role Playing Game (RPG)? Or is it a unique combination of all of these?
Dr. James Paul Gee Speaks on Gaming and Learning in the 21st Century
Posted by Jon-Paul C. Dyson - 09/15/09 at 10:09 am
Six years ago, James Paul Gee announced at the beginning of his book, What Video Games Have to Teach Us about Learning and Literacy, “I want to talk about video games—yes, even violent video games—and say something positive about them.” It was not quite as provocative as Martin Luther nailing his ninety-five theses to the door of the castle church in Wittenberg, but it was nonetheless a bold statement at a time when few scholars promoted the educational value of video games. Gee’s book not only declared that video games help players learn but articulated clear ways in which they do so.
Gee has continued to publish on the subject and is today perhaps the foremost scholar exploring the ways that video games promote good learning. We’re pleased that this Thursday, September 17 at 7:30 p.m., he will speak at Strong National Museum of Play (the home of NCHEG). In his talk, entitled “Gaming beyond Gaming,” Gee will examine ways gamers, especially girls and women, not only play games but “mod games, design things for games, write fan fiction, or design new rules of play.” This sort of participatory play, Gee asserts, is a hallmark of 21st-century learning. Don’t miss this chance to hear this thought-provoking presentation.
You can find more details about James Paul Gee’s talk this Thursday, September 17th here.
Hope you can make it!
NCHEG Has Acquired the Videotopia Collection!
Posted by Jon-Paul C. Dyson - 09/08/09 at 04:09 pm
I’m psyched! Today, the National Center for the History of Electronic Games is announcing that we’ve acquired the Videotopia Collection (you can read the official press release here). The 114 arcade games in this group include pioneers like Computer Space and Pong, crowd-pleasers like Space Invaders and Galaga, icons like Donkey Kong and Pac-Man, rarities like Tank and Time Traveler, racing simulation games like Sega’s Super GT, and landmark titles like Breakout and Tron. This unique group of arcade games represents the heyday of arcades in all its beeping, blinking glory.
Now that the museum owns the collection, we can extend the run of the Videotopia exhibit at Strong National Museum of Play through January 3rd, 2010! And we can continue displaying representative games from the collection on a rotating basis indefinitely.
Professionally I’m excited because this acquisition ensures that NCHEG will permanently preserve this revolutionary period in video game history. We’re grateful to the folks at the Electronics Conservancy who had the vision to build this collection initially when they created the Videotopia traveling exhibit. Since that exhibit came to Strong, tens of thousands of people have been reunited with old games they loved or introduced to them for the first time. Now these important machines will have a permanent home at NCHEG.
Personally I’m thrilled as well. Like so many people of my generation, I fell in love with arcade games the moment I saw them. But in my small town of 3,000 people, the local pizza place had the only game in town—literally. First it was Space Invaders, then later the pizzeria owners replaced it with Galaxian. My gaming opportunities were few. But not now. I have some tokens that are burning holes in my pockets, and now that we’ve acquired the Videotopia Collection I can’t wait to make up some lost play time.
Retro Arcade Gaming…in the Adirondacks?!?
Posted by Eric Wheeler - 09/03/09 at 10:09 am
My recent family vacation to the Adirondacks was a great respite from work, school, and the seemingly endless yard work that has consumed the better part of my summer. The weather was great—just right for a scenic boat ride on the lakes—and other than a marauding bear outside the inn in which we were staying (yes, a real bear), the trip was filled with quality family time, relaxing evenings, and great gaming.
Great gaming? This is not a concept normally associated with an Adirondacks vacation. However, CHEGheads are always on the lookout for cool gaming opportunities and, boy, did I ever find one in the most unlikely place.
An evening trip for ice cream in Old Forge, New York, brought the kids and me to the Adirondack Pizzeria, a small pizza shop on the main drag in town. As we ate our chocolate-vanilla twists, I noticed the neon sign above the arcade located alongside the shop. Inside was an unexpected surprise…
The arcade was filled with gamers on a warm Tuesday evening and their favorites appeared to be multiplayer shooters like Revolution X, Maximum Force, and Area 51. Sports games, NBA Showtime, for example, seemed popular, as were the simulator games located near the center of the room. There was a line for the popular skateboarding game Kick the Tail. I gladly waited and was pleasantly surprised when I executed a perfect double heelflip followed immediately by a frontside 360. Great game—and who knew I could skateboard so well?
But the real surprise wasn’t these more recent shooter and simulator games situated near the entrance, but rather the classic arcade games sitting unassumingly along the back wall of the arcade. Many of the iconic games from the late 1970s and early 80s were there, including Space Invaders, Ms. Pac-Man, and Donkey Kong. Several cabinets had screen and controller condition issues, but were a blast to play regardless. The mostly 30—something crowd near these games piloted F-14 Tomcats on Sega’s After Burner, sprinted and pole vaulted on Konami’s Track & Field, and the distinctive sound of Gottlieb’s Q*bert could be heard all the while in the background.
My young children weren’t nearly as impressed with these games as they were with the numerous redemption games located adjacent to my childhood favorites. No arcade would be complete without some variation of skee ball, and no child’s arcade experience complete without the inevitable disappointment that comes when children realize it takes lots (read as “
More than Dad is willing to pay for”) of tickets to win the big stuffed animal behind the counter. Their favorite game, interestingly, was a somewhat creepy redemption game called Feed Big Bertha. Bertha ate at least five dollars in quarters; a small price to pay for the fun the kids had throwing balls into her opening and closing mouth.
We all had a great time in this chance trip to the arcade. My kids left with a few small prizes they won with their tickets and I left with the high score on Ms. Pac-Man. Nothing better than running across some old classics.
Have you had an experience where you happened across some old arcade games in an unlikely place?
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