Fight Night Round 2: Mediating the Body and Digital Boxing

Abstract

This article addresses Leonard’s (2006a) call for inquiry into virtual sport by exploring how Electronic Arts’ Fight Night Round 2 (2005) inscribes the boxing body into the digital game. This article qualitatively analyzes the text of the game in order to consider how it deals with the immateriality of bodies in new media as it translates them into digital space. By focusing on the game’s avatar creation system and control set, I argue over and against the freedom proclaimed by theorists about new media that Fight Night Round 2 positions users within a hegemonic masculine subjectivity. The essay concludes by addressing how this positioning speaks to the significance of this mediation for boxing as the game positions users in relation to the sport.

Skirtboarder net-a-narratives: Young women creating their own skateboarding (re)presentations

“…Blair et al, 2009; Bury, 2005; Consalvo and Paasonen, 2002; Passonen, 2005). Cyberfeminists’ (feminists critically examining the Internet) early engagement is due in part to the ability of computer-mediated communication to circumvent and render irrelevant physical markers of race, gender, sexuality, ability and age (Baerg, 2008; Barlow, 1996). This ‘dream of disembodiment’ produced debates about the potential of this transformation to allow women new forms of freedom.…”

Is it in the Game? Reconsidering Play Spaces, Game Definitions, Theming, and Sports Videogames

“…Similarly, Consalvo et al (2013, p. 3) draw attention to the work of Darcy Plymire (2009) on how sports videogames remediate the televisual, Lauren Silberman (2009) on athletes who play videogames, and the significant work of Steven Conway (2010) who, among other things, provides a detailed analysis of the videogame and players of Pro Evolution Soccer. Of course, Consalvo et al’s short list is far from exhaustive, and I could certainly suggest that the work of Baerg (such as 2007, 2008) should be included in any account of early work on this subject; however, what Consalvo et al do highlight is that (at least up until that point) there had been very little written on this subject.…”

Digital Hoops History

“…Stein's (2011) appreciative review of All-Star Baseball 2004 for its engagement of baseball history, particularly its inclusion of Negro League players as playable characters, appears as one of the few contributions to an academic discussion of this area. Scholarly research into sports video games themselves appears scant as well with limited contributions to knowledge about the sports game text (Baerg, 2007(Baerg, , 2011Conway, 2009), sports game fans (Baerg, 2008;Crawford, 2005, 2005b, Crawford & Gosling, 2009, and the industry (Paul, 2012). For the most part, research on the sports video continues to represent ''a barren wasteland of knowledge'' (Leonard, 2006, p. 393).…”