Part 2: Wal-Mart

The first woman I talked to was named Steffy, a young mom 30-35 years old. I began asking her softly about video games and then gradually, more specifically, sports games. Steffy explained that being a fan and/or being an active player of the sport affects how compelling the game is to a specific individual; her sister is a huge football buff and embraces Madden to the extreme. Steffy, never being a fan of the sport, never got into the game.

I found it very interesting that the love of the sport had a direct effect on the love of the game.

The next person I talked to was named Adam, a ‘self-proclaimed’ gamer. What I found very interesting about Adam was that being part of the ‘gamer culture’ was a way of expressing his own self-identity. Within 15 seconds of talking to him he stressed his gamer pride and continued to develop on this pride throughout the entire conversation. It was an interesting experience to gain a perspective on sports games from a gamer who expressed an intimate connection with most types of video games, excluding sports games.

Adam explained that there is a major cultural divide between ‘gamer-gamers’ and ‘sports-gamers’. ‘Sports-gamers’ do not tend to define themselves as gamers. For 'sports-gamers' the video games are more of an accessory to their current lifestyles. Adam closed by expressing that he and his gamer friends do not fully understand why sports games are so compelling. He brushed off this genre by saying ,‘They just change the line-ups of characters each year.

I found it interesting that for a 'sports-gamer', video games work with their current personal culture, where as a ‘gamer-gamer’ creates an entire culture and lifestyle from the selected video games.