Videogaming - Spectator Sport?

Sports games - watched people play FIFA series on PS1 and PS2 and it did nothing as it was all roving cameras and rubbish action.

Brian Lara Cricket - the awkwardness of the players (on the screen) made it never acquire that realism to me - always a bit too jerky. PLus, it's a hard game, so it doesn't play very well.

ISS series - everyone of them has been something I've watched or been watched playing - the sense of realism comes from the fact that the game plays like a football match (repeated football magazine tests show that when proper footballers play in a bake-off between FIFA and ISS, ISS _always_ wins. The key is the gameplay - you get 1-0 wins and tight defensive matches where you just can't break through, just like real football and unlike FIFA where you get a 6-5 with 8 of those being overhead scissor kicks.

The latest ISS takes this to a new level - I watch the new one now then occasionally play the one I first played in 1998 and can't believe I thought it was dead dead real at the time. That's a common theme through most games - the increasing sophistication of graphics engines and AI and motion capture etc - but still, I distinctly remember thinking at the time how _real_ it felt.

Now, with the camera setting on 'far' or at least 'long' and sitting about 6 feet away from the screen, it's incredibly realistic, especially in an age of standing at the back of a pub to see a match on TV when the clarity of the resolution for the viewer is almost equalised. Again, the gameplay gets the rythyms of the game spot on, and the increasing difficulty of the new one (no more pay-dirt through-balls for you sonny Jim...) means that you need to plan your moves, and set up a formation and apportion player responsibilities to make the difference. You also are rewarded for practising in advance, which is very helpful for corners and crosses and keeper one-on-ones.

Given the work involved - not timewise, but more mental, as it takes about 1 minute to set a team up - it's a pleasure to actually then be watched playing it, and playing it well - crafting a goal through superior tactical knowledge etc and then executing it well - just like the training ground. Indeed, the more I think about it, just like the real thing. You practise basic skills to be be deployed as the situation demands. You also analyse opponents and deploy a counter to their play and tactics. These come together in the match itself, thus the satisfaction from success is 'a bit like' the snesation and emotion spoken of by footballers and managers after a win, where the pre-planning came good and directly contributed to the victory.

Obviously, there's a large degree of projection going on here; I can live out failed dreams of football stardom, or reinforce egotistical notions of tactical nous through this game. The key is the especial visual content of the game and the ability to plan and to play. The manager variants are ultimately very big spreadsheets; superb ones at that, but are ultimately nothing more of less than amazingly complex models. Whilst the totality of that inter-connectedness of the formulae that determine success of not is almost too huge to contemplate, it never really loses the idea that you, as player, are merely one random variable in a vast array of variables. However, even though ISS is equally mathematical, the centrality of the player and the perception that one's actions are the key variable takes this to a new level. This must ultimately be the prioritising of the visual as mechanism for generating the illusion of control; I see me practice, and I see me repeat those actions later, and the end result is similar = I am in control.

Anyway; such piss-poor Matrixesque reflections aside; all of this adds up (in my mind) to why I like watching and like being watched. Simply put - it's just like the real thing, but petite. In ISS pro, I've found the realism and immersing within the video experience that games have promised since they were created. Obv point to make is that the experience being recreated is the experience of watching football on TV, rather than the game itself, which for me personally, is a long standing wish. I remember those games in the mid-to-late 80s where one directed one's own 'films' and realised that the idea of controlling the medium was something I was keen to do, and finally, in ISS I can do that (albeit despite a large degree of denial - enter stage left the Mannoni formula for fantasy...)

But that's me; I think anyone who's played the game and likes the sport would tend to agree (and would obv like them to to make me less isolated in my mentalism). However, even non players have appreciated it; they appreciate the look of the game and the fact that they too think it looks like 'the real thing'.

Some qualifications - I think the strength of the spectator-game relationship is much enhanced by affection - watching one person play the game isn't anyone near as much fun to watch as watching two friends play each other - you get the interestedness that can elevant the direst dull game of football to something that you give a toss about. I also think one-player games aren't nearly so good unless the spectators are themselves playing or familiar with the game (having cooed over Metal Gear Solid and the heart-stopping aspects of it, it seemed to me to have a lot of realism for the player, but much less for the viewer, who, well, didn't seem to really too much of a toss as I did. But then why should they - it was my movie, for me, where the experiences elevating it to the next level, as it were, were only experienced by me).

Apologies - this has turned into a paean for the ISS series rather than the scopophiliac tendency within modern videogaming, and a rather rambling paean at that...

and now I'm wanting to play ISS again!

I don't think that Pro Ev looks particularly realistic, per se, the movements are just too fluid, too exact that there's no human irregularities and mistakes to remind me / shock me /trick me into thinking (knowing?) 'this isn't a computer game'. That is a really convoluted way of saying that the movements of the players are perfect. Plus silly things like no truly-analogue movement, jerkiness of action (ie awkwardness rather than imperfection) caught forever in the motion capture.

I can quite happily watch any sport game because I'm not so much watching the game as watching the contest between my friends and these sort of mini-interpersonal relationship squabbles (like 'free' fights or 'safe' arguments) are endlessly fascinating to me. (Beat-em-ups are counted as sport.) And (I know I know belaboured point) but the social aspect (the baiting, the ribbing, the laughing and jeering) are so much a part of playing the game.

I feel quite self-conscious when playing single player games (esp. ones where a lot happens but nothing really goes on, see: Ico, Mario, Zelda) because a) I'm jamming up the computer which could be put to better (ie two-player) use and b) I don't like, well I suppose I don't really mind, people watching me fuck stuff up (this reached its apogee with Super Mario World on the Snes, Tube World level 1 which I just could. not. complete. and was sending me into shivers of apoplepsy and right vile moods every time I tried to conquer it).

I don't know if I've said anything here.

To tell the truth I'd probably say I get more vicarious enjoyment out of video games than I ever have from playing them myself. I'm very bad at most games these days and it's simply too frustrating.

Happy enough for people watch me though. I'm having a big PS2 revival at j0e t0wers at the moment.

Vib Ribbon on the other hand I find oddly hypnotic as a spectator.

My exact thought down the line.

and that's not including the fun you can do by pulling off a corkscrew jump.

i dunno -- we had quite a good time instructing my friend on how to get to the top of the lighthouse with the sniper rifle...

Other games I just enjoy watching, especially multiplayer matches between friends (Dr. Mario!). Some of my fondest memories of middle school are nights of renting Street Fighter II for the snes with friends and playing winner stays on.

Puzzle games=dud as spectator games, because it always turns into "oh, if you just move that over--no, not that--just give me the damn controller!"

The best ones to watch, for me, are cars and one-on-one fighting. Mainly because I'm secretly a teenage boy, but I think it's less distracting when the spectator's just wincing from over your shoulder - with games that involve puzzly stuff or tigers jumping out at you from dark corners, you don't really want some moron shouting "no! circle button! it's behind you" when you're trying to concentrate.

As for DDR-type games, it's even more fun watching the spectators. There's a gang of Euromix obsessives at the Oriental City arcade, who stand behind whoever's playing the game and bounce along, staring intently at the screen, and they're somehow more entertaining than the person who's actually on the pad. Oriental City also has the Initial D streetracing game, which is an utter joy to watch because it's just like the anime, except with more CG animation. But terrifying to play, because mean fanboys stand behind you and snicker when you scrape along the barrier.

not that i've ever considered doing that mind you. my show had enough comments like, "fuck you, you fucking cunt!" or "hahaha eat it, bitch!" or "oooh! oooh! somebody's gettin' ass-raped by Armor King! Ah yeah!"

Done similar with Gran Turismo, taking turns at licence tests and races and so on.

FIFA - transient, easy, celebrity, production-line (I know, it's two words really), endorsements, official, superficial

Dave - I still standby my finest moment of computer game epiphany: when you score a goal in FIFA it feels like you've played it long enough, whereas when you score a goal in ISS it feels like you've played it well enough.