The Report Committee for William Norman LeMasters Certifies that this is the approved version of the following report: Representation in Action: An Overview of the Avatar/Attribute Relationship in Sports-Themed Video Games APPROVED BY SUPERVISING COMMITTEE: Kathryn Fuller-Seeley, Supervisor Alisa Perren Representation in Action: An Overview of the Avatar/Attribute Relationship in Sports-Themed Video Games by William Norman LeMasters Report Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of The University of Texas at Austin in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts The University of Texas at Austin August 2020 Abstract Representation in Action: An Overview of the Avatar/Attribute Relationship in Sports-Themed Video Games by William Norman LeMasters, M.A. The University of Texas at Austin, 2020 Supervisor: Kathryn Fuller-Seeley Representation in video games has thus far centered primarily on the aesthetics of a digital avatar. Using sports-themed video games, we can broaden the understanding of representation to include action or the ways athletes perform within any given game by analyzing attribute allocation, the primary method of avatar differentiation within the sports genre, and how digital bodies play a role in shaping an athlete’s real-world identity. Sports-themed video games are immensely popular with the big 3 franchises, Madden, FIFA and the NBA 2K series, routinely finishing among the best-selling video game titles year in and year out. Due to their popularity, scholars have turned some attention toward this genre of games although almost all articles pertain solely to the aesthetic representations of athlete avatars while comparatively few attempts have been made to breakdown the relationship between an athlete’s real statistics and how these statistics figure into the representation of their digitized body. My goal is to show why virtual athletes attributes matter by analyzing how an athlete’s digital body can play a iii role in their real-world identity by highlighting the cases of ex-NFL player Michael Vick and footballer Adebayo Akinfenwa. iv Table of Contents List of Tables ..................................................................................................................... vi List of Figures ....................................................................................................................vii Introduction .................................................................................................................1 Digitized Athletes and Attributes ...............................................................................4 Athlete Identification ..................................................................................................7 Methodology ...............................................................................................................9 MLB The Show 19 ...................................................................................................13 Michael Vick: Madden Icon .....................................................................................22 Adebayo Akinfenwa: Strongest Footballer in the World .........................................30 Conclusion ................................................................................................................38 References .................................................................................................................42 v List of Tables Table 1: Centerfielder Statistics by Demographic per 162 games 2016-2018 ..................16 Table 2: MLB The Show 19 Centerfielders Attributes by Demographic ..........................18 iv List of Figures Figure 1: SportsCenter Tweet ............................................................................................23 Figure 2: Tom Brady Response .........................................................................................24 Figure 3: Fan Duel Response .............................................................................................24 Figure 4: Kaleb Earles, former MiLB pitcher for Milwaukee Brewers .............................24 Figure 5: Comments from YouTube video “Playing Madden 2004 in 2019 – Running with Michael Vick!” by Old Gen Gamer ......................................................25 Figure 6: Fan responses to Akinfenwa from Reddit ..........................................................35 vi INTRODUCTION For my report, I seek to explore the representation of athletes’ virtual avatars within sports-themed video games through their attribute allocation, and to consider how their digital bodies shape their real-world identities. Sports-themed video games are immensely popular with the big 3 franchises, Madden, FIFA and the NBA 2K series, routinely ranking among the best-selling video game titles year in and year out. Due to their popularity, scholars have turned some attention toward this genre of games, although most of these articles pertain solely to the aesthetic representations of athlete avatars. Comparatively few attempts have been made b scholars to breakdown the relationship between an athlete’s real statistics and how these statistics figure into the representation of their digitized body. My main goal is to show why virtual athletes’ attributes matter by analyzing how an athlete’s digital body can play a role in their real- world identity. I do so by highlighting the cases of ex-NFL player Michael Vick and footballer Adebayo Akinfenwa. This research projects merges together key concepts from the video game studies and communication and sports fields. Avatar identification between a player and their in- game avatar has received considerable attention, though the term itself has been criticized for being too vague (Martey & Consalvo, 2011; Shaw, 2014). However, this relationship tends to be analyzed between a gamer and characters within fictional worlds. MMORPGs [Massively Multiplayer Online Role-playing Games] provide a particularly fruitful genre for study because of the level of control a gamer has in creating their in- 1 game identity. Sports-themed video games do not offer the extensive character customization found in the MMORPG genre, yet avatar identification is no less important to sports-themed video games. Part of the appeal of the sports genre is for gamers to play with their favorite professional athletes, identifying and creating bonds with the players they choose to play as. By sticking to an examination of athletes and sports-themed video games, we can further shed a light on avatar identification by examining how fans react toward the athletes they control within a digital space, and to a further extent, how these digital representations fit within an athlete’s career. Anderson and Raney (2017) have shown that simply being fans of sports can make people more accepting of off-the-field issues, such as domestic violence. This is due to a tendency for fans to overlook problematic behavior in favor of an athlete’s performance on the field. In sports, success tends to take priority over ethics, so as long as players continue to perform, they may be given a longer leash when it comes to socially unacceptable behavior. Fans and gamers routinely using athletes in their digitized form potentially can also shape real-world perceptions of these players which is why attribute allocation as a process should be critiqued; rating athletes positively allows them perform better in-game, making success easier and contributing to a gamer’s evaluation of an athlete despite the process occurring exclusively within the digital realm. Fantasy sports are a fitting comparison for reviewing how gamers view players with a history of abuse since these athletes become part of one’s fantasy team and their success on the field directly benefits the gamer’s own fantasy team. Yet, the identification that results between a gamer and their avatar is slightly different from how 2 that relationship functions with fantasy sports. Both are games and one could view the players that make up a fantasy roster as tokens or manipulatable pieces used to influence the game-state. In a video game, the actions of an avatar are directly controlled by the user whereas the success of an athlete in a fantasy sport is independent to the choices a manager makes. This direct control found within the video game medium is what leads to identification (Ng et al., 2019). Sports-themed video games also reflect the standards within a society in which the game is created. Often, sports are seen as a masculinized domain and women are barred from entry not only within the coaching field but as sports journalists as well (Laucella et al., 2017). This then gets reflected in video games as gamers do not have the option to use women as coaches, owners or players. In this way, gender biases get reflected in these games by portraying sports as a domain meant for men. As Srauy and Cheney-Lippold (2019) have shown, racial biases can also enter video games during the process of creating an athlete’s digital counterpart. To provide further insight into this process, it would be useful to evaluate athletes from a different sport to determine if the same sort of biases present in FIFA (International Federation of Association Football)1 are also found within other games within the sports simulation genre. To do so, I will rely on data from Major League Baseball and the official affiliated video game franchise MLB: The Show to investigate the relationship between an athlete, their