Why Commercial Video Games Can Enhance Elite Athletes Physical Play

Prior to coming to MIT to study with the Comparative Media Studies program and to be a research assistant with the Education Arcade, I worked with the Games, Learning, and Society program at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. My research was driven by my interest in how the athletes at the University of Wisconsin were using commercial games to enhance their training. I wanted to point out some reasons why sport video games have many qualities that make them ideally suited for learners.
Sport video games are primarily thought to be strictly a form of entertainment, despite the self-reported use of such games for training purposes by some athletes, such as NASCAR drivers (Rosewater). My interest is in the potential for such games to be used by athletes as a designed experience and tool for learning, while still being a form of entertainment.

Professional racecar drivers and professional coaches are starting to use commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) sport games as tools for training. As Carl Edwards explains, “…a video game helps you get the rhythm down, helps you find a place where speed is made up and speed is lost. “ Whenever he has to drive in a place where he regularly has trouble, such as Martinsville in Virginia or Bristol in Tennessee, he’ll spend a couple of hours in his trailer with the game. “It’s the same motor inputs going in and the same timing.”

Joe Paterno, the 82 year old coach at Penn State is a great example of a coach using the game with his athletes. Every season he is reported to give incoming players a cartridge with the new seasons plays on it. Joe Paterno is known for his ability to teach and adapt to younger players. This level of adaptation and a willingness to teach is especially significant when you consider that Joe Paterno doesn’t even use a computer.

While sports video game players are undoubtedly having fun while learning, they are far from passive recipients of either entertainment or educational services. In fact, a great deal of the training potential of these games derives from the fact that users play as both coach and player, making team decisions and executing individual player moves, play-after-play. In that way, they gain such opportunities as the ability to determine the plays, which they might not experience as a player on the field. Similarly, they get to try out different moves while simulating play or are able see the same play from different angles, in a perspective they would never experience in reality. Sport video games also provide the opportunity to perform many moves you couldn’t perform physically. As a consequence, the athlete’s understanding of the sport becomes both broader and deeper.

Also of note is how much time even elite athletes are devoting to playing these games. In 2007, the Wisconsin Men’s soccer team averaged 4.8 hours playing soccer video games during the soccer season and 6.7 hours playing soccer video games during the off-season.

An important advantage enjoyed by the collegiate or professional users of the sports video game is that they are able to play avatars that simulate actual members of his own team, that is, avatars with the same stats as their real life counterpart on the player’s team. As Diego*, the University of Wisconsin soccer player tells me, “I don’t know any athletes that are in the game who don’t usually play as themselves.” Not only is the athlete playing with a virtual double of his real team, he can play against an opposing team with virtual characteristics that match those of his real life opponents. This enhances the learning experience as well as the fun. If the athlete knows he is going up against a particular team, he can play a game against a team with stats equal to those he will go up against, and he can play it alongside statistical replicas of his real team members, in a stadium with weather conditions that replicates the real one in which their physical games are played. These commercial off-the-shelf sports video games are thus able to teach players, even as they are having fun, in large part because of the enculturation and social team play that naturally happens when highly skilled athletic teams play their sports virtual counterparts.

The sport video game is designed to be a fun activity; key characteristics that make it fun are its realism and the opportunity it provides to take on roles one can’t in real life. This safe environment or sandbox (Gee), where learners are put into a situation that feels like the real thing, but with risks and dangers greatly mitigated, means players can learn well and still feel a sense of authenticity and accomplishment. Sport games help to teach and motivate players while allowing them to make mistakes and experiment.

There are a growing number of athletes who are already reporting enhanced physical performance from their virtual play. By recognizing and studying the value of sport video games as training tools, we can help all athletes fully realize the potential of these simulations for training.

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*name changed to protect players privacy