Assistant Professor of Sports Management Joey Gawrysiak, Ph.D., and his ground-breaking research on the impact of sport video games on traditional forms of sport consumption, is creating a buzz in the sports and video game industries. In the process, Dr. Gawrysiak is becoming a noted leader at the forefront on this topic.
Gawrysiak defines traditional sport consumption as, “viewership, both in-person attendance and through some type of media, and participation.” He argues that this type of viewership is threatened by non-traditional sport consumption by players of sport video games. As technological advances occur in video gaming, the simulations of sport closely mirror their real-world counterparts. This pseudo-reality allows players of all demographics to craft their game experience to their own specifications, potentially fulfilling players in a way traditional sport cannot. This results in the growth of the sport video game industry and the popularity of sporting video games in society.
“There is a dearth of research on sport video games, especially as they relate economically to the actual sport product,” notes Gawrysiak. “Looking forward, my research will require participants to play sport video games, and then they will be studied to see what the effects are on their sport consumption. General theory must be developed first in order to establish a theoretical understanding of how sport video games, as a form of non-traditional sport consumption, impact traditional sport consumption. Once this theory is developed, it can be tested by larger numbers of participants in order to draw empirical data for use by scholars and practitioners.”
In the future Gawrysiak’s research will focus, “not only on sports as video games, but also on video games as sport.” He will do this by investigating the growing culture of national and international video game competitions. These competitions often have viewership numbers that exceed traditional sport products. Ultimately, Gawrysiak feels that, “video games will play a large role financially and culturally on the landscape of sport, both as non-traditional consumption products and as sport themselves.”