Sport and Video Games – a welcome contribution, but with notable blind spots

Egil Trasti Rogstad
Nord University, Norway

Sports video games are still an underexplored area in academic research compared to other types of digital games. In Sport and Video Games, Łukasz Muniowski addresses this gap with a thematically rich and accessible discussion of the connection between sports and sports games. Focusing on titles that simulate “real-life” sports — such as FIFA, Madden NFL, NBA 2K, Football Manager, and Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater — the book argues that sports video games act as “a unique interface between virtual worlds and our real-life social worlds.” Through six chapters, Muniowski examines the genre’s history, the influence between “real” and virtual sports, narrative structures, and issues related to race, nationality, gender, and sexuality.

The opening chapter, “History of Sports Video Games”, highlights key titles and trends, from Tennis for Two (1958) through Pong (1972) and John Madden Football (1988), showing the shift from niche entertainment to yearly big-selling games. This brief but insightful overview emphasizes how quick release cycles both push and limit innovation. Chapters 2 (“How Real Sports Influence Video Games: Simulation”) and 3 (“How Video Games Influence Real Sports: Gameplay”) present the main ideas. The first examines realism through athlete likenesses, broadcast-style presentation, in-game branding, and rules, while the second looks at influences going the other way, including sponsorship, fan engagement, predictive analytics, and character crossovers into sports entertainment.

Muniowski’s writing is clear and engaging, making the book accessible to readers from different fields.

Chapter 4 (“Career Modes in Sports Video Games”) explores how narrative structures and progression systems influence player experience, including notable examples like Spike Lee’s NBA 2K16 storyline. Chapters 5 (“Race and National Identity in Sports Video Games: Beyond Flags and Colors”) and 6 (“Gender and Sexuality in Sports Video Games: How Sports Video Games Became More Inclusive”) focus on representation, specifically addressing race, nationality, gender, and sexuality. These chapters are among the strongest in the book, challenging stereotypes, industry pressures, the delayed inclusion of female athletes, and the ongoing dominance of male-centric norms.

Muniowski’s writing is clear and engaging, making the book accessible to readers from different fields. His thematic organization ensures each topic is explored thoroughly, and including identity politics in the discussion sets this work apart from more technology-focused treatments of sports games. However, some editorial and content choices limit its overall scope and flow. The lack of a concluding chapter also leaves the reader without a unified summary or future-focused reflection.

A notable aspect of the book is the author’s choice to omit discussing online aspects of sports games “at least when not necessary to do so,” framing online gaming as a source of “corruption” that turns play into labor. While this is a thought‑provoking and potentially valid position, it also means that a key aspect of modern sports games is left unexamined, where online play dominates player involvement and even feeds back into professional sports culture. For instance, the ongoing integration of sports games into the Olympic movement through the planned Olympic Esport Games in 2027 and the circumstances surrounding this are entirely missing, despite their relevance to the book’s theme.

Similarly, excluding racing games because they are “a specific subgenre” overlooks, in my opinion, their growing and increasingly complex connections to motorsport. As Witkowski et al. (2023) demonstrate in their study of motorsports’ rapid integration with online competitive gaming during the COVID‑19 pandemic, professional drivers across disciplines—from Formula 1 and IndyCar to the all-female W Series—turned to high-fidelity sim racing platforms as competitive arenas, training tools, and brand-building opportunities. The pandemic made especially clear how sim racing could sustain athlete visibility, engage fragmented online audiences, and even reshape professional identities. Against this backdrop, leaving racing games out of the analysis seems like a missed opportunity to explore another vibrant form of sport–game convergence, one that is already influencing both competitive practice and the cultural economy of motorsport.

It would also have been interesting if the book had addressed exergames or active video games—titles like Zwift or Just Dance, where players must engage in physical activity to play. This is a rapidly growing segment with clear connections to real-world sports, not least because it raises complex questions about performance enhancement, anti-doping measures, and cheating detection. As in traditional sports, these games can serve as arenas for competition with significant stakes, where fairness, regulation, and athlete health are essential concerns. Including this perspective could have further enriched the book’s exploration of how sports and video games intersect, particularly in contexts where the digital and physical worlds are closely linked.

Overall, Sport and Video Games is a welcome and well-written contribution to the growing literature on sport and digital media. Its thematic depth, critical engagement with representation, and accessible style make it valuable for scholars of sport, game studies, and media studies, as well as industry professionals. However, the decision to sideline online play and omit entire subgenres, along with the absence of an integrating conclusion, makes the book feel narrower than it could—and perhaps should—have been, given the broad scope of the topic.

Copyright © Egil Trasti Rogstad 2025