Enrique Perez

ITU – Game Theory

“Soccer computer games come from TV”

This paper consists of a comparison of the games 06 and FIFA 07. Specifically, I analyze how a play session of each title resembles a football match presented on TV, what leads to think that instead of simulating the sport itself, the football computer games tend to simulate the TV‐mediated presentation of football.

I would like to start off by depicting a game session of both games. I undertook a play session trying to have similar conditions so that the comparison could be better. I played FIFA 07 as the Mexican team called Club America against the Danish team Aalborg BK represented by the computer. During my PES 06 session, I played the Mexican National team against the Danish one.

Generally, both Pro Evolution Soccer 06 and FIFA 07 have the same flow or structure while going through a play session. I choose my team, see the logos and graphics about the skills and strengths of the teams, set up my line‐up and go to the stadium to start the action. The games transport me to the match with different images of the players, from the going out of the dressing rooms, and breaking lines, to their positioning and waiting for the whistle to kick the ball.

As the matches develop in both titles, common football actions take place; the ball is kicked from side to side, ball passes, offside’s, corner kicks, fouls, and of course, goals. There is also a middle time break and a 45‐minute based time counter. What I describe so far sounds very ordinary, but among all these football elements what is also possible to see is how all the incidents happening during the match are presented in a very peculiar way, through a series of “camera angles” or “camera shots” emphasizing actions and emotions altogether with many other TV‐based common elements.

When there is a goal there is a replay of the event, and if corner kick or goal kick, the view is from behind the player and then it switches to follow the ball to form a visual continuum for the gamer. When a player scores or is expelled the view is focused on reactions of the player that convey anger or celebration.

There is also a commentary voice discussion on what goes on during the match demonstrating an argot and passion proper of sport anchormen. Some graphics with the line‐up of the teams and statistics of the match also appear as they do when football is broadcasted on TV.

All these elements aforementioned just lead to think that the gameplay of Pro Evolution Soccer 06 and FIFA 07 is based and built on the presentation of football on TV. Conversely to old football computer games in which the gamer saw the field and the players in a very plain and uni‐modal point of view passing the ball, in these titles he faces an experience that emulates the act of watching a football match on TV; there is different views, graphics, and emotional elements of television.

The already pointed out connection of the soccer games’ gamplay and the TV leads to talk about the New Media term remediation , which refers to the incorporation or adaptation of previous existing media into new ones (Lister, Dovey, Giddings, Grant, & Kelly, 2003). In this case, I talk about how each game remediates with a play session a TV‐broadcasted football match. The two axes from which I perform this comparative study are the content, what is presented in the remediation, and the form, how the content is featured.

The first thing I will compare about the games’ TV remediation is the content. In a broadcasted match, the content is a real event in which humans play a game called football. However, in the case of both soccer games analyzed it is a simulation, a fiction context projected to be played as a game (Juul, 2005). According to Kayali and Purgathofer, sport games go beyond simulation to the translation or mapping of the sport into a computer environment (Kayali & Purgathofer, 2008). Specifically, they define 4 points of analysis that are worth considering in this paper as part of this study: rules, presentation, controls and course of action (Kayali & Purgathofer, 2008).

The rules in Pro Evolution Soccer 6 and FIFA 07 are the same as the rules seen on TV, since in the games and in the medium rules are strictly according to the nature of the sport. The only difference that is common to both games and in which they differ to TV football is that a play session can feature a lower strictness. Both games offer the possibility to choose if fouls are counted, if changes are allowed and so on.

As for the presentation of the sport as seen on TV, I found that Pro Evolution Soccer 6 and FIFA 07 have many similarities and a very few discrepancies. In the sense that the term “presentation” is used by Kayali and Purgathofer (Kayali & Purgathofer, 2008) as visuals and as the players’ looks and actions, I can mention that in both games everything is portrayed in very close way to reality, the players are identifiable with real football players, the stadiums are replicas of the real venues and even the fields feature some detriment standing out for their “realism”. I remember I identified many of the Mexican players represented in both games. Moreover, in both games the whole environments resemble very popular places, there is a lot of people, advertisements, flashes, etc.

Nevertheless, what goes away from the TV remediation and in which both titles differ are the preparations for each play session, the graphics and procedural steps a gamer has to perform in order to start playing. Choosing a team, a line‐up, a uniform and the venue are procedures that denote that the thing that is going on is merely a computer game and not a broadcasted football encounter.

Pro Evolution Soccer 6 features as preparation steps for a play session the graphical choosing of a continent, then choosing a team with the visualization of their skills based on a diagram that matches a pentagram. Then comes selecting the stadium and the side the gamer is playing before the game starts.

FIFA 07 has as preparation steps to a play session the selection of the clubs affiliated to the Football Federation. Logos of each club are shown along with their skills represented graphically by horizontal bars with a kind of ranking. Later comes the specification of the player session attributes such as the weather and even the uniform of the selected teams.

The course of action as seen by Kayali and Purgathofer (Kayali & Purgathofer, 2008) refers to the time evolvement and game flow. The theorists say that, conversely to reality, computer games have different time units or lapses, which also relates to the idea of the real matching fiction or fiction matching reality in order to work in a simulated world (Juul, 2005). In spite of this distinction, I would like to highlight the fact that play sessions of Pro Evolution Soccer 6 and FIFA 07 count with the same structure of a televised football match. There is first half, break, second half, extra times and penalties. The only difference I ‘d like to point out regarding this category is that the time speed is by default different in each game, implying that a play session in Pro evolution 6 would be shorter than the one from the other title.

The last outstanding point of a soccer game according to Kayali and Purgathofer (Kayali & Purgathofer, 2008) is the control, referring to the ruling of the gamer over the players and the team. In this aspect, Pro Evolution Soccer 6 and FIFA 07 present the possibility to perform actions that take place in a TV match, like tackling members of the competing team, fouling, and realizing ball shots of different length (Kayali & Purgathofer, 2008). However, the enormous difference between the games and the screened football is the power that the gamer has to dictate how to use the players to create the match. Moreover, both games present graphical tools that help control the game, such as the map in the lower middle of the screen representing the line‐up distributed in the field giving an idea of how to move the players.

The second part of this comparison of the games Pro Evolution Soccer 6 and FIFA 07 and their remediation of TV is the way the games present the content. As described before, in both games players go around kicking the ball, it is necessary to get the ball inside the goal, rules are followed according to the sport conventions and so on. But the way these actions are portrayed represent the biggest example of the games as remediation of the TV football matches.

When an offside takes place in Pro Evolution Soccer 6 and FIFA 07, or a goal kick, it is possible to see the player from behind, to have a more contextual point of view from which the ball will be passed. If I commit a foul my view of the situation is transported from a very general overview of the field to a close view of the referee taking out a card. These visual effects can be described as an emulation of cameras switching as seen on a TV match. In this way, norm‐based actions of the sport are maximized by TV traits in the video games.

The most notorious difference on how the views or “camera moves” are used between the two analyzed titles is with special kicks and passes. For instance, in Pro Evolution Soccer 6 if the goalkeeper or a player has to kick the ball, a goal kick or a corner kick, the “camera” is situated behind the player and when I input an action to perform the kick, the view switches and takes a few seconds to realize my inputted action, making it feel a bit disrupted. While in FIFA 07, when such kicks take place, the first view, that is the one behind the player, has more time‐dominance, and it switches to the general overview showing an immediate performance of my input, what gives the animation a feel of continuity from one “camera plane” to the other.

As mentioned with incidents concerning rules, content elements are also presented and constructed with a TV trait in both soccer games. When I scored I saw how my players were celebrating while my competitors were portrayed as feeling big deception. I could see the faces and all emotions from very close. As well, while playing with the Mexican team Club America, by chance I committed a foul with a player that is extremely popular in Mexico for being both a great player and an extremely rude person; then I got to see in a very close‐up way how my player was protesting for being expelled of the field and his kind of coursing faces. If it wouldn’t have been for the close‐up I had of the character’s expressions that the TV trait of the gameplay gave me, I would have never had found out this similarities to TV‐reality that the games offer.

A big difference that I noticed between the two analyzed soccer games due to the TV trait they use is the level of detail. In FIFA 07, with the close views I got of some players while celebrating a goal or performing a kick I saw on their clothing dirt that made me think of the way the game reflects the wearing of the team members by playing. I tried to find the same feature in Pro Evolution Soccer 6 but I couldn’t.

Some other elements that I distinguish as important ones as a clear TV remediation and that refer to the flow of the play session, the course of action according to Kayali and Purgathofer (Kayali & Purgathofer, 2008), are the sequences on which the game is presented and develops. At the beginning both Pro Evolution Soccer 6 and FIFA 07 have a view of the teams coming out of the dressing rooms, then they get in line and sing their national anthem (Pro Evolution Soccer 6), and the line‐up’s are presented graphically with the stadium as background, that is also seen all over, and everything is as seen on TV.

The visual structure of TV matches are also followed in the computer games with the use of replays after a goal, the commented highlights or summary of the plays in the middle and at the end of the play session, and the fact that the whole situation follows a time control represented graphically in a corner of the screen. I could describe the whole way that a play session develops as a recreation of happenings at a TV match: the camera shots, the emotions, the atmospheric sounds, the close shots to accentuate or emphasize the reactions of the players, etc.

The environment of a play session constitutes in both Pro Evolution Soccer 6 and FIFA 07 a representation of the soccer world through symbolic means proper of the TV medium. As I have described in this paper, due to the different views that the gamer gets during a play session of the soccer games, it is possible to identify emotions, details and even follow the whole development of the situation. Besides, many graphic elements and symbols that are represented and used exactly as they appear on TV during a TV match. Pro Evolution Soccer 6 and FIFA 07 recreate in their gameplay the vision of football as it is created on/by TV. There are just a few details in which it is possible to remember during a play session that the whole thing is a game and not a match, such as the preparation steps. After the analysis undertaken in this paper it has been seen that both games are strongly remediating television to create the way gamers experience interactively football. There is only a very few details that differ from one title to another on this TV recreation but basically both games are the same on their TV‐ based copying nature.

Bibliography Juul, J. (2005). Half ‐ real. London: MIT Press.

Kayali, F., & Purgathofer, P. (2008). TWO HALVES OF PLAY ‐ Simulation versus Abstraction and Transformation in Sports Videogames Design. Retrieved November 4, 2008, from Eludamos ‐ Journal for Computer Game Research: www.eludamos.org

Lister, M., Dovey, J., Giddings, S., Grant, I., & Kelly, K. (2003). New Media: A Critical Introduction. Glasgow: Routledge.

Games

Pro Evolution Soccer06. . 2006.

FIFA 07. Electronic Arts. 2006.