Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

Virtual sports are symbolic representations of embodied, expressive, and “real world” athletic experiences. These sports can involve complete “out of body” practices wherein participants “play” a sport without exerting their bodies in a traditionally athletic way (i.e., a sports video game), or more embodied performances involving physical activity in a simulated sports environment (i.e., athletic movement in a modified sports setting like a cyclists’ wind tunnel). Centrally, virtual sports involve human beings as either real or represented athletes in a technologically enhanced setting. Although certain ludic activities might be considered representations of sport (e.g., “touch” football, “pick up” ice hockey, or go-kart racing), virtual sports are those that place either embodied or computer generated athletes in simulated sports spaces. Virtual sport has, by and large, escaped sociological scrutiny. Nevertheless, three types of virtual sport are ripe for investigation. First, and perhaps most commonly, virtual sports abound in home and arcade video games. Through the advent of home entertainment systems in the 1970s and 1980s such as Atari, Intellivison, Collecovision, and Vectrex, sports video games became a staple of both popular and youth cultures in North America. From the 1980s onward, game players have competed in virtual sports ranging from hockey to basketball to hunting ... log in or subscribe to read full text