Week 05 - Sports Games

This week we focused on building and fixing games that represent sports. While our game, Dice Hockey, did not really represent the sport of Ice Hockey, reading Sharp's chapter made me realize that it is a lot harder to encapsulate a sport into a simple game. He talks about how three games work but also fail to fully show the culture and skill of a sport, like how in Sports 3, you start as a person who can't skate, yet after the tutorial (and still trying to figure out the controls) you are a pro that the other pros respect and encourage (Sharp, 164). Now I am not a person who watches nor plays sports video games (except Mario Kart, but I won't get into that) so thinking of a game for this was a bit difficult until I remembered that I obsessed over the Playstation 3 Sports Champions for one summer in my freshman year of high school. This game allows you to perform in sports like archery, beach volleyball, disc golf, etc. It was designed for the Playstation Move system and was not the most popular thing in the world. A big problem in this game was pretty similar to Sports 3, where you got a tutorial and then you were thrown into a tournament, and your player was one of the best. (Spoiler alert: I was not). You had to continue to refine your skills with the glitchy, at best, move system while other characters continued to beat you. Another thing was that you would win a medal once you did win, but you were unable to upgrade your items, unlike how in the real world, typically you would spend time getting better equipment through either purchasing it or representing brands. This did not happen. One thing it did do well was that with the move system, you had to have the correct movements and posture for each sport. For example, in the archery game (my favorite) you had to hold yourself and the "bow" int the correct position by holding your non dominant hand in front of you and your dominant hand, holding the movement tracker, was positioned as if you were pulling the bow's string back. You would click a button to release the arrow, but to get a new arrow, you had to reach back, get it from your quiver, knock it into the bow, and then pull back again. It was a lot of work, but it did make you go through the typically realistic motions you would have to do if you were doing archery in the real world. The other sport options in the game were the same way. Overall looking at the game, it functioned the way you would typically move in a sport int the comfort of your home and without the business end of competitions and the sport. Of course all games have their limitations, they are video games after all, but looking at the playability aspect of those sports, it worked well, the culture of those sports though? Absolutely not.