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Sports & Recreation Sociology Of Sports

Playing to Win

Sports, Video Games, and the Culture of Play

edited by Thomas P. Oates & Robert Alan Brookey

contributions by Andrew Baerg, Meredith M. Bagley, Michael L. Butterworth, Perri Campbell, Steven Conway, Cory Hillman, Luke Howie, David J. Leonard, Michael Z. Newman, Thomas George Power, Renne M. Powers, Ian Summers, Sarah Ullrish-French & Gerald Voorhees

Publisher
Indiana University Press
Initial publish date
Jan 2015
Category
Sociology of Sports, Television & Video
  • Hardback

    ISBN
    9780253014993
    Publish Date
    Jan 2015
    List Price
    $99.00
  • Paperback / softback

    ISBN
    9780253015020
    Publish Date
    Jan 2015
    List Price
    $34.00

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Description

In this era of big media franchises, sports branding has crossed platforms, so that the sport, its television broadcast, and its replication in an electronic game are packaged and promoted as part of the same fan experience. Editors Robert Alan Brookey and Thomas P. Oates trace this development back to the unexpected success of Atari's Pong in the 1970s, which provoked a flood of sport simulation games that have had an impact on every sector of the electronic game market. From golf to football, basketball to step aerobics, electronic sports games are as familiar in the American household as the televised sporting events they simulate. This book explores the points of convergence at which gaming and sports culture merge.

About the authors

Contributor Notes

Robert Alan Brookey is Professor of Telecommunications at Ball State University where he also serves as the Director of Graduate Studies for the MA program in Digital Storytelling. He is the author of Hollywood Gamers: Digital Convergence in the Film and Video Game Industries (IUP, 2010).

Thomas P. Oates is Assistant Professor of American Studies and Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Iowa.

Editorial Reviews

In taking on a number of dfferent kinds of topics, Brookey and Oates have assembled a collection that encourages the reader to think beyond any singular way of examining sports games.

American Journal of Play

Essays complement one another and, taken together, provide a comprehensive overview of important considerations in a field that is only beginning to be researched in depth. . . . Recommended.

Choice

[W]hat is particularly unique about Playing to Win: Sports, Video Games, and the Culture of Play . . . is that it offers a critical assessment of sports video games at a time when such an assessment is necessary, given the convergence of gaming and sports culture.

International Journal of Sport Communication

Numerous avenues of inquiry worthy of closer investigation are offered in this book. As such, this work is a useful contribution to this burgeoning field of study.

Library Journal