Week 04 - How to Sport?

Outlined in Macklin and Sharp’s, Game, Design, and Play chapter two, “Basic Game Design Tools” are 10 tools recommended for designing games: “skill, strategy, chance, and uncertainty; decision-making and feedback; abstraction; theme; storytelling; and context of play.” While most would assume these tools are only useful when designing video games or other basic forms of play such as folk games, it has been shown that they are used widely in sports as well.

For example, a roller derby is a roller-skating contact sport with, traditionally, all female teams. The dictionary defines the sport as follows: “a team skating competition on roller skates, held on a banked oval track,” but this definition doesn’t quite break down the entirety of the game outside of the game space, the track, or movement type, the skates.

Though a roller derby is much more, the core of the game being built upon by the opposing teams’ strategies and skill. Both five-member teams consist of a jammer, whose goal is to score points by lapping the other team and is indicated by a star on their helmet and four blockers who skate counterclockwise on the track, their goal being to interrupt the other team’s jammer and help their own. It is played in short rounds called jams.

However important other tools are, the “degree to which a player has mastered an action within a game” or skill is arguably the most important in sports (Macklin and Sharp). This is grown through constant  practice but is also enhanced by strategies thought out by the playing teams. Strategies and plays in roller derbies can range from how to help break the other team apart so one's own team can get their jammer through to how to position oneself to skate faster. Strategy and skill coupled by uncertainty are very important tools not only in roller derbies but many sports.

Uncertainty on the surface may seem to be unimportant, even a hindrance, but upon further examination it looks to be a catalyst for fun when it comes to sport games like roller derbies. It can create interesting plays and “can lead to unpredictable events in a game” like someone falling over on a derby track and blocking their own team’s jammer, giving the opposing team an advantage (Macklin and Sharp). While this isn’t good for one’s own team, it helps the game be fun by generating competition and tension, the enjoyment catalyst for most sports.

With greater examination, decision-making and feedback are also heavily relied on within sports as players try to “understand a game’s state” (Macklin and Sharp). On their chosen field or track, players need to make quick decisions and relay back this information to their team so they can move cohesively. The opposing team’s need to do the same in response, the constantly flowing feedback a tango where only one team can leave the dance alive. For example, in roller derbies, a team may decide to let the opposing team’s jammer pass for a better opportunity in the future if they are not in a position to properly protect their own jammer. This decision could provide the opposing team with the idea to begin to move faster, where then the original team’s jammer may then decide to move faster and surprise the other team. Of course though, this is only one of many outcomes, which is why providing and responding to feedback and decisions can be so important.

While I may have used roller derbies as my example, these and many other tools are very important in sports like football and soccer, where the way people think can be the difference between loss and victory.