Research for my paper

The one game that I found that will help me with my final project/paper is Madden, which seems really obvious considering I'm studying how roleplaying and social realism play a large part in what would otherwise be looked at as a generic, general audience sports game.

The first article I found to help me was by Sami Yenigun, entitled "How Madden NFL's Business Lineup Helps it Win Big." What is useful fromt his article is that it observes how Madden appeals to it's audience through it's use of constant updates and realism. The game builds upon the NFL logo and business by incorporating real player heights, stats, weights, and so on. What it then mentions is the fact that fans are immersed in this kind of stat explosion because it allows them the chance to have football year round. More than that, it's not just a passive form of football, it's a completely interactive, hands on form of football in which a fan can take part rather than watching from at home or in the stands. It also delves into how Madden and the NFL help each other through their constant advertisements, because if one succeeds, then through correlation, the other does too. They feed off each other, thereby bringing about the social realism aspect of the game.

The second article I found was by Alexander Galloway called "Social Realism in Gaming." The article focuses on how games mimic the real world, but perhaps not always through realistic-ness. The likeness and similarity through looks and aesthetics would be considered realistic-ness, while realism would be considered how closely the game can mimic actions and procedures that would take part in the non-virtual world, the example used was the Sims. In the Sims, the game characters and locations aren't necessarily realistic looking, being very pixelated and simply rendered, so to speak, but real life actions can be initiated, such as ordering a pizza, or sleeping. Then, there are games like  Socom, which looks very realistic, but, speaking in general again, most people don't take part in secret missions, killing terrorists and defusing bombs, so it's not based very strongly in realism. I want to use this to discuss how Madden can act as a "fantasy" game in a very broad sense, because, while player likeness is used, the fields are created to look like the real thing, and so on, the game itself is not based in a kind of "realism" because most people will not wake up every Sunday and go out to make a million dollars to play a game of football. That's where the roleplaying aspect I alluded to will be brought in.

The third article I found was "The Ideal Self at Play: The Appeal of Video Games That Let You Be All You Can Be" by Andrew K. Przybylski. This article is more straight forward than the others, as it studie the behavior and reasoning behind why people play video games, with a specification on the aspect of video games acting as a more ideal self. That's where Madden comes into play again. I assume, and this is my opinion, which I will need more evidence and support for, that most people play Madden because they have a fantasy of having made it to the NFL. There are very few people alive who will ever play professional football, but a game lets players act as their ideal self, the self that had the talent, time, and training, and made it to the largest of stages. More than that, it also allows a player to take on the role of their favorite team. Perhaps their team is terrible in real life, but in Madden, they can bring their favorite squad to success, to the pinnacle, thereby allowing them to influence more than just their ideal fantasy.