Colin McGowan over at the Guardian raises the question of whether videogames can ever get sports right. His primary target is on sound glitches with the commentary, but his criticism runs deeper.

So when Alan Smith praises a striker’s poise after the ball has flown over crossbar, he shouts ‘You’re playing a videogame!’ at the gamer, which is jarring and irksome when one is ensconced in the pseudo-reality a close Fifa match creates. These infrequent glitches in sound design are emblematic of the futility of the task at hand. No matter how stellar a sports title is, it can never be correct. Portions of the map will always be blurry. The team at EA Canada gathers its instruments each year and sharpens a few of these blurry patches, knowing they will fail to sharpen others. 

Gowan seems to think it’s a fool’s game (pardon the pun) to every perfectly replicate a sport. That there will always be something wrong. What’s interesting is that Gowan never states that these games shouldn’t exist, or shouldn’t try. He even seems to praise EA Canada’s Sisyphean efforts. 

[via]

– Filipe Salgado