Sport gaming: Scoring the balls of success but how?

How do Sports Games win our Hearts and influence us to play them in real life?

Whether your sporting poison is football or tennis to racing or wrestling, what keeps us coming back for the sports genre? Why is competition so greatly carried across through these games? With games such as FIFA, WWE 2K19, Wii Sports and Need for Speed. To find out one story of a tennis player who was influenced through his fondness of sport to join the gaming world and become a fan of the sport genre. The first question I had for Mr. Josh Cozens was why? especially why the specific games he did play which was Smash court tennis pro tournament and Grand Slam Tennis. This was Mr. Cozens first question.

What made you play games such as smash court tennis pro tournament and grand slam tennis?

This is what Mr. Cozens replied.

I love to play competitive sports games such as smash pro and grand slam tennis as I am extremely competitive, and sports games bring that out of me more than any other game. Especially at that time when I was younger I was extremely competitive with my older brother and we loved to play loads of sports games and those two were our favourites at the time. We both played lots of tennis but because he was a few years older than me and there was an age difference we could never play tennis against each other in real life so playing video games was away to compete against each other really and it did get messy at some points.

Bit of brotherly love and a drive for competition brought Mr. Cozens to the world of sport games. A lack of being able to play tennis for real also added to the want to play the games. I remember that I was terrible at football growing up and sports in general so I too did the same with my older brothers playing mainly games such as FIFA. I also got very heated when playing sports games with my brothers as I would more than often lost. Whilst reminiscing the past the next question I had for Mr. Cozens was one about why he became a tennis player for real? perhaps through the games he played?

Do you believe that playing these games influenced your decision to become a tennis player?

This is what Mr. Cozens had to say.

I would say it was the other way round. At that time when I decided to take tennis more seriously almost everything, I was doing at that time revolved around the sport. And so even in my free time at home I would still be doing this that involved tennis such as watching tennis and playing video games

Perhaps having that need for sport is needed to be there already for you to be interested in the sports genre? Or do you think I am wrong here? Perhaps all you need is a rainy day to get the urge to play some FIFA or tennis games. I personally would play these types of games if I had my brothers there and there was a big fat rain cloud ruining our after school days stopping us from playing football together however there was always the video games. The next thought I had on my mind was one more closer to the gamers world rather than Mr. Cozens.

Why do you feel that sports games such as Tennis or Football have such a huge success rate amongst gamers ?

This is what Mr. Cozens said in return.

I would say that sports games have such a high success rate is probably quite similar to the reasons I’ve mentioned already. People interested in sport love to compete and video games., especially now being more online based, makes it very easily accessible to compete against friends. It is also much more in the persons control when playing a video game as when playing a sport in real life can be very hard to perform so in a way it allows for people to perform a sport to how they would want to perform it for an example some people love doing tricks on FIFA.

Is It the competitive needs and desire to win that truly has the draw to the sports genre? Is it showing off that you are indeed skilled and that your friends have nothing on you in the sports genre? Is it because those who dream to become sports stars have to work hard to become so and just want that feel of stardom through being good at the sports games they play? I kn ow personally I feel that when I win a match on FIFA or win a wrestling match on WWE I certainly feel great a buzz of excitement.

The sports game genre certain ly has made a huge splash since its invention what with the first ever game being created was a sports game. Pong. I have certainly tried my hand at pong and I loved it first time I tried kept wanting to beat my opponent often didn’t however. This could be the attraction right? the feel of success when you finally win. Carrying on I wanted to know from Mr. Cozens what his thoughts were on how sports video games influenced gamers to do more in terms of real life sports. this is what I asked.

Do you think that sports games should be more interactive against like with the Wii to encourage sports in society?

This is what Mr. Cozens relayed to me.

I would say yes it would be a good idea to make games more interactive there is kind of something similar to the WII out recently something called virtual reality which I love the look of I am sure that more interactive sports games would encourage and inspire more people to try out the real thing in the real world however in my experience there are other more major issues that would need addressing to encourage more participation in sports such as expense and accessibility

Virtual reality and the Wii certainly did help with interactivity when it came to the sports genre however did it influence gamers to try the sport out for real perhaps, perhaps not? It Is true that video games alone will probably not convince the gaming world to take up tthe sports they play. This is because sports unfortunately do cost to take part in and also are not openly available to everyone as the accessibility is rather lacking. However not to leave this on a bad note I asked Mr. Cozens one last question about what the future of the sports genre has to offer. It went a little something like this

What do you believe will be the future for the sports genre of gaming?

This was Mr. Cozens honest opinion.

That’s an interesting question as I really don’t know what I would say is I think we will see this increasing demand for online content in the sports gaming industry and there will be  

More demand for online content may be coming our way indeed. I would be so inclined to believe that the sports genre could take virtual reality and run with it expanding vastly superior VR games and I have no doubt that the sporting genre will continue to grow and bring success along with it. What are your thoughts send them over to me. But for now keep scoring goals and winning cups. We are indeed the champions of the world.