View: session overview talk overview. This panel will explore the limits and margins of games by examining sports and how they can present useful edge cases to better understand how games work, how they can be designed, and the practices of play in and around games.
Sports have a number of features, from robust fantasy sports communities to sports analytics, that offer game studies scholars a chance to think about activities fundamentally linked to games while also being not so close to home that it can be hard to analyze them with a critical eye. Additionally, links between sports and games have been growing over the years, as esports and game streaming blend aspects of video games and traditional sports, like broadcasting play and the professionalization of play, together.
We believe that studying sports helps show the limits of games, even while the study of sport has typically lived on the margins of game studies. By analyzing elements of sport we can better understand how games work, how to facilitate engaged communities, and how to avoid some of the pitfalls sports have stumbled across as leagues and teams seek to balance compelling play with massive financial stakes.
Margins to Mainstream: Contextual contingencies of esports spectatorship as vehicles for gambling Florence M. Chee, Loyola University Chicago, fchee luc. How have local contexts of games, their players, and spectators intersected with sports paradigms, and what are the limits for instrumental, problematic, and idealized play? As discussions of esports and its international contexts have typically centered on the celebration of fandom and community-building, this study draws links between sports and game activities as they have evolved into sophisticated infrastructures of gambling in these intersecting spaces of play.
Otherwise prohibited through local laws, esports matches serve as something different, though recognizable through sports betting as akin to virtual horse races, NCAA matches, and de facto casinos. In this manner, the business models transpose readily to esports as entertainment and gaming such that it is unclear how games and gambling contribute to local economies distinctively and must be discussed on separate terms.
