Description
Book SynopsisIf there is anything close to a universal game, it is association football, also known as soccer, football, fussball, fútbol, fitba, and futebol. The game has now moved from the physical to the digital - EA's football simulation series
FIFA - with profound impacts on the multibillion sports and digital game industries, their cultures and players. Throughout its development history, EA's
FIFA has managed to adapt to and adopt almost all video game industry trends, becoming an assemblage of game types and technologies that is in itself a multi-faceted probe of the medium's culture, history, and technology.
EA Sports FIFA
: Feeling the Game is the first scholarly book to address the importance of EA's FIFA. From looking at the cultures of fandom to analyzing the technical elements of the sports simulation, and covering the complicated relations that EA's
FIFA has with gender, embodiment, and masculinity, this collection provides a comprehensive understand
Trade ReviewIn this timely and much needed book, leading and emerging scholars provide new and necessary insights into a cultural phenomenon, that has always been more than just a game. By critically considering different aspects, and from perspectives,
EA Sports FIFA: Feeling the Game provides a detailed and thought-provoking consideration of the impact this game series has had on the nature of video games, sport, and wider cultural life. * Garry Crawford, Professor of Sociology, University of Salford, UK *
This is a book whose time has come. Through a careful multidisciplinary focus on the
FIFA video game franchise, the authors take up issues that range from the aesthetic complexities of digital play to forms of fandom, as well paying important attention to inclusion and gender. This collection offers a wonderfully rich engagement with one of the most popular titles around and is a must read for both sports and game scholars alike. * T.L. Taylor, Professor of Comparative Media Studies, MIT, USA *
This innovative and original collection of essays on the cultural significance of the videogame
FIFA emphasises the blurring of our digital and material worlds. This book helps explain why, for millions of people around the world, the simulated experience of
EA Sports FIFA series endures as a central aspect of diverse football and gaming cultures. For anyone interested in understanding the interplay between sport and videogames, and how this has transformed the mediatisation of sport more widely, this is an important collection. * Richard Haynes, Professor of Media Sport, University of Stirling, UK *
A much-needed multidisciplinary contribution * American Journal of Play! *
Table of ContentsAcknowledgements Dedication List of Contributors Warm-Up: "Football is Life" John Markoff (Journalist, USA) Pre-Game Raiford Guins (Indiana University, Bloomington, USA), Henry Lowood (Stanford University, USA), and Carlin Wing (Scripps College, USA) I. Attack 1. Ritualized Exclusion, Limited Inclusion: Virtual Representations of Women’s Football
Michael Pennington (Bath Spa University, UK) 2. Fine-Tuning Feel
Carlin Wing (Scripps College, USA) 3. Avatar Bodies That Matter: The Work of "Realism" in Gendered Representation
Mel Stanfill (University of Central Florida, USA) and Anastasia Salter (University of Central Florida, USA) II. Midfield 4. Microtransaction Politics in FIFA Ultimate Team: Game Fans, Twitch Streamers, and Electronic Arts
Piotr Siuda (Kazimierz Wielki University, Poland) and Mark R. Johnson (University of Sydney, Australia) 5. “Where There is Smoke, There is Fire …": The FIFA Engine and Its Discontents”
Henry Lowood (Stanford University, USA) 6. What the FUT?
Abe Stein (Sports Innovation Lab, MIT, USA) III. Defense 7. Playing with Oneself: Six Notes on Fantasies and Frustrations of Famous Footballers
Ranjodh Singh Dhaliwal (University of Notre Dame, USA) 8. Under Control: The Experience of Progressive Play in the Management Simulations of EA’s FIFA Series
Matt Bouchard (University of Toronto and University of Alberta, Canada) 9. “Let's Take a FIFA!": Football and the Free-time Practices of At-risk Youth Under Remand
Emma Witkowski (RMIT University, Australia) and Rune K.L. Nielsen (IT University of Copenhagen, Denmark) 10. Playing To Win
Christopher A. Paul (Seattle University, USA) 11. Playing Games with my Feelings or, Musing on Leeds United Football Club's FIFA 20 Decides!
Raiford Guins (Indiana University, Bloomington, USA) Post-Game Analysis Mia Consalvo (Concordia University, Canada) Bibliography Index
