Week 04- Sports Games Intro

The game I learned about when watching Mr. Animate is called Association Football. In the United States it is called soccer, while the rest of the world simply calls it football. Mr. Animate explained the basics of the game and its end goal. When it comes to the types of play utilized, I believe it used cooperative and competitive play, skill based play, and experience or chance. 

When it comes to the basic parts of the game each part can be simplified. The overall goal of the game is to kick a ball into the opposing team’s net more times than your own, while trying to defend your own. Moving on from this, Mr. Animate explained that there are two teams consisting of eleven players each. The players can use any part of their body, except their arms or hands, to move the ball and try to shoot the ball into the opposing team’s net. The exception to this is the player known as the goalkeeper, who can use his hands but must stand within a rectangular area near their goal to do use. The goalkeeper’s job is simply to prevent the other team from scoring by kicking, heading, punching, or etc. the ball away from the net. The team that wins a game of football, or soccer, is the one who has scored the most amount of goals within a 90 minute time frame. 

After conducting my own research, football is an amazing worldwide game. It is a very competitive game, but it is also very cooperative. Even the best players in terms of skill need help in order to win games. Everyone wants to be the best but each player helps one another. It can also be so incredibly competitive that the smallest of teams always have a chance to beat the biggest teams, the more skilled teams, the more financially secure teams. In the GDC video, sports are filled with drama “because the stakes are higher” and in many ways they are. As the GDC video also acknowledges sports tend to have a lot of money and fame invested into it. As such many players pour their physical, mental, and emotional beings into the sports and they have no “save button” to undo a mistake or redo a part they failed at. Video games tend to allow for redos which takes away from its drama. This is very prevalent in soccer as the most popular sport in the world.