“I Never Saw Him Play but We Were the Best of Friends for Years”

“More thirty somethings remember the name of Tonton Zola Moukoko than the name of the bloke who sat next to them at school”—The power of pseudosocial relationships

In the highly mediated world within which we live, sport has become a pervasive element within many homes (Horne, 2006). Consequently, the pictures of sport in our minds and the performances of sporting figures are framed by their media presentation (Griggs, Leflay, & Groves, 2012, 2013). This is as equally applicable to the coverage of the performance of a player during a football match watched on television, where camera angles are selected and commentary is consumed, as it is to the statistical presentation and performance of the same player on a computer game (Weiss, 1996). The combination of more than one textual narrative, that is to say that of computer games and that of football, is referred to as intertextuality. Developed from the worlds of linguistics and semiotics (see Bakhtin, 1981; Kristeva, 1980), intertextuality is a common feature of many media forms such as novels or films, where the understanding or decoding of a text may make reference to, or necessitate, the understanding of another text (Allen, 2000). It is suggested that greater intertextuality is particularly apparent in these newer forms of media (Marshall, 2002). In what Kinder (1991) has called the entertainment super system, characters, plots, and images, both fictional and real, move fluidly across various different media forms (Billings & Ruihley, 2013; Turkle, 1995). As the main themes, structures and in-game mechanisms of the CM/FM series are drawn directly from the world of professional football. The intertextuality of the game has been a key feature since its inception (Crawford, 2006). This intertextuality is further both blurred and reinforced by the behaviours of gamers who create further texts by interacting with each other discussing the aspects of the game such as players and tactics in encyclopaedic detail, resulting in a context which is representative of a convergence culture (see Jenkins, 2006). Weiss (1996, p. 109) challenges us to reflect on such interactions, “you may be surprised just how many sports figures you can name. You may be even more surprised to realise how much you know about each one and how much time you spend thinking about and talking about them. A relationship with sports figures you have never even met shows there is a significant and pervasive culture pattern in modern societies, and people spend more and more time on such relationships.”

Weiss (1996) goes on to explain that investment of time and resulting attachment to unmet media figures in many ways is like those of actual social relationships and refers to these relationships as pseudosocial, where interactions concerning such figures are often used to fills gaps in the individual’s actual social world.

However, such vivid experiences that transport people into other worlds and provide a narrative for conversation are not the exclusive preserve of CM/FM gamers. Indeed, they characterise all forms of media consumption such as when we watch and become consumed in a play at the theatre and we move out of the real social world and enter into an artificial world of vicarious social experience (Berger & Luckmann, 1966). Typically, the relationship between the actor and the viewer has been referred to as para-social (Horton & Wohl, 1956), where a distance between the two are clear and the boundaries between their engagement is demarcated. To again use a theatrical explanation, “the transition between realities is marked by the rising and falling of the curtain. As the curtain rises, the spectator is ‘transported to another world’, with its own meanings and order that may not have much to do with the order of everyday life. As the curtain falls the spectator ‘returns to reality’, that is, to the paramount reality of everyday life by comparison with which the reality presented on the stage now appears tenuous and ephemeral” (Berger & Luckmann, 1966, p. 25).

Contrary to theatrical example here, when the curtain falls, or more accurately the computer is switched off, the reality of CM/FM may well not appear tenuous or ephemeral. Although Crawford (2006) reminds us that, in his empirical study on CM/FM gamers, interviewees never forgot they were playing a game or ever believed that they were actually managing a football team. The pseudosocial relationships apparent within particular CM/FM blogs suggest that stronger bonds exist. Within media interactions, this is most readily explained by the concept of identification.

Based on psychological theories of identification such as Freud (1940/1989) or Wollheim (1974), identification with media characters may be usefully defined as an “imaginative process invoked as a response to characters presented within mediated texts” (Cohen, 2001, p. 248). Identification is typically fleeting and can vary in intensity (Wilson, 1993). While in the process of identifying, the audience member ceases in their real-world awareness and temporarily, though frequently, adopts the perspective of a specific character (Cohen, 2001). During this process, such moments of identification result in vicarious experiences for the participant. These may take various forms such as experiencing things we cannot, or have not yet had the chance to, experience in person, such as management of a football team (Gentile, 2000; Spinda, Wann, & Sollitto, 2012). Central to the concept of identification is that the reader adopts the characters’ goals, comprehends plot events in reference to these goals, and experiences the feelings that result from the interaction of these goals and the events that take place (Oatley, 1994). Such experiences can lead to a psychological merging (Oatley, 1999) or attachment, in which the audience member comes to internalise shared goals within various narratives. Given the time that gamers invest in playing and in endeavouring to succeed in CM/FM, in Crawford (2006) and from personal experience it is easy to see why gamers identify with the players who achieve the shared goals (both literally and metaphorically) that lead to success (Spinda et al., 2012). These personal experiences appear at their richest when expressed within CM/FM blogs, and it is to these sites that this case study now concerns itself.

Method

This article draws upon the analysis of text contained within online blogs. The interpretation of data which exists within blogs is an emergent form of sociocultural analysis that serves to represent the narrative lives of gamers in an online context. Fayard and DeSanctis (2010, p. 383) describe these online spaces as places that provide “an opportunity for people to exchange information via group discourse around a common topic or theme.” The multiple discourses contained within highly personalised online commentaries offer a colloquial account of gaming experiences, often contextualised through various achievements (or otherwise) within the game itself. The lucid reflections that are contained within these musings provide a rich source of data for analysis in regard to pseudosocial relationships.

The practice of researching Internet postings has been attributed to broader online research sometimes referred to as “netnography” (Kozinets, 1998). As the Internet has grown, research using what are commonly referred to as computer-mediated communication (CMC) has expanded considerably (see Garcia, Standlee, & Cui, 2009; Hine, 2000; Langer & Beckman, 2005; Markham & Baym, 2009), including forums, blogs, chat rooms, and social networking sites (McKee & Porter, 2009). Studies that seek to harvest contributions to these various mode of “asynchronous” CMC (in that they do not occur in real time; see Lawson, 2004) as sources of data have termed the specific method of collection as list mining (Till, 2006, p. 939). To date, this technique has been predominantly used in medical and health-related fields (Eysenbach & Till, 2001).

Early research in this field has leant towards the viewpoint that it is “not necessary to explicitly seek permission for recording and analysing publicly posted messages because it is akin to conducting research in a marketplace, library or other public area, where observers are not necessarily expected to obtain informed consent from all present” (Smith, 2004, p. 230). Furthermore “the archived responses of individuals may be construed to be matters of public record, and few ethical considerations apply when the records of these responses are used in research” (Pace & Livingston, 2005, p. 35).

Although the use of these online messages maybe ethically sound from a research perspective without the need to obtain informed consent (for a detailed discussion on ethical practices in this field see Griggs, 2011), blurred notions of what might be deemed private require sensitive consideration (Elgesem, 2002; Hewson, Yule, Laurent, & Vogel, 2003; Lange, 2007). In accordance with Elm Sveningsson’s (2004) analysis, the sites from which the data were gathered here had a low level of privacy, as registration or subscription was not required to gain access to the information, and no visible codes of practice mitigated against its use. In accordance with best practice in netnography, as with Smith (2004) and Griggs (2011), this study endeavoured to respect the privacy of the individuals as much as possible by removing all personal identifiers from the data.

The CM/FM games enjoy a “sizeable following” on the Web (Crawford, 2006) and thus there is no shortage of data to consider. Blogs were selected for inclusion within this article based upon their relative popularity within an Internet search for the terms “football manager blog” or “championship manager blog.” Investigation of the search revealed that the top five search results possessed blogs that had a specialised section dedicated to CM/FM blogging. Data extracts were then harvested in their entirety from each of the five blogs with the postings making up a total of 19,305 words of data.

Inductive open coding was used by analysing each line of text and allocating content to particular themes (Biscomb & Griggs, 2012; Griggs & Gibbons, 2012). A total number of nine different themes emerged from coding the entirety of the data. Further review concluded that some themes were sparse in content and these were combined and recombined in order that themes were thought strong enough to report. Repeated rereading and analysis of the data led to the themes being grouped together into axial codes (Strauss & Corbin, 1990). By the end of the process, three robust axial codes or themes were developed, and these form the basis of the discussion.

Discussion of Findings

Thematic coding revealed that the three strongest codes that emerged from the data were that of “loyalty and friendship,” “paradoxical intertextuality,” and “nostalgic recollections.” These will now be discussed in turn.

Theme 1: Loyalty and Friendship—“Michael Duff…He Was One of the Good Guys”

Bloggers commonly reported their playing habits and in particular the players who they would always buy not only each time they played the game but in each subsequent version of the game they owned. Although there are many examples, two such stalwarts were Ronaldinho and Michael Duff.

In Championship Manager 1998/99 it was pretty much a law that on your first (virtual) day in your new (virtual) office you had to pick up the toothy Brazilian genius [Ronaldinho] from Gremio. Hello goals, hello trophies.

Once you got him [Michael Duff] from Cheltenham, usually for as little as £24,000, you knew you wouldn’t need another first-choice right-back for the best part of 15 years…He was one of the good guys, too: even when he was playing for England…he never asked for more than around 12 large [thousand] a week. You could fine him four weeks in a row for no other reason than you’d had a bad day at work and had nobody else to take it out on…he wouldn’t complain. This was sort of the bloke [man] you’d be happy to see go out with your sister.

The attachment formed to various players is not only reflected in the loyalty shown to specific players but also in how this loyalty is somehow repaid by performances on the game. The attachment is thus reinforced by the internalised shared goals of both the gamer and the characters within it (Oatley, 1999). One of the most heartfelt recollections was a bloggers relationship with Belarusian international Maxim Tsigalko.

Sadly, I never had the privilege of seeing Tsigalko play in the flesh, but I feel that I know him intimately. We were the best of friends for years; everywhere I took my talent and my managerial sheepskin overcoat, Tsigalko was right there beside me.

Such sentiments are reflective of a strong pseudosocial relationship (Weiss, 1996) in which the blogger suggests that he and the character were the best of friends for years having virtually spent a significant amount of time together. Although one can only speculate how much such figures are used to fills gaps in an individual’s actual social world, what is clear here is that the loyalty and friendship extended to Tsigalko is in every sense real, as he has never lets the blogger down. When a point of separation has been identified between gamer and the game characters, these have occurred at a level of intertextuality.

Theme 2: Paradoxical Intertextuality—“Ibrahima Bakayoko or ‘Baka-joke-o’”

As indicated, the intertextuality of the gameplay and professional football has been a key feature of CM/FM since its inception (Crawford, 2006). Blogs continue to highlight this aspect with comments made referring to both a player’s real-life performances and their virtual performances.

[Freddy Adu] he’s an American international and plays for Philadelphia Union. By any objective standard, he’s been very successful, but Championship Manager’s ridiculously high bar ruined Freddy for all of us.

What this statement alludes to, which emerged as a significant aspect of these comments, were the paradoxes that resulted from detailed comparisons. In most cases, this concerned the veneration of players who in real life had achieved modest success.

Whether you were Manchester United or Montrose, Howie would improve your team tenfold. Pulling strings in the centre of the park and weighing in with a considerable number of goals. In an alternative universe Howie had the career Frank Lampard has had. In this universe he left Partick for Glenafton in 2005 and is now playing non-league.

I can’t remember how he [Tsigalko] first appeared on my radar, but once he did, my experience of Championship Manager would never be the same again. In his prime, Tsigalko single-handedly fired Sunderland to promotion with 62 goals in all competitions…In reality, he wasn’t a complete flop…But he never managed to eclipse that unforgettable season on Tyneside.

His [Tsigalko] Wikipedia page contains almost as much reference to his Champ Man heroics as his actual career.

The Derby midfielder [Tonton Zola Moukoko] could be picked up for next to nothing and would soon become the most vital cog in your team, but in real life his career has fallen to such depths that he doesn’t even have a Wikipedia page. He does however, have one Facebook appreciation group devoted to memories of his CM exploits.

The last two data extracts also serve to further confirm the pseudosocial relationships that gamers have with certain players (Weiss, 1996). In reality, information may well be shared socially by many using Internet sites such as Wikipedia and Facebook, which concern real-life information. Here, gamers are referring in one instance to the lack of a real Wikipedia page for one player yet in another indicates how on a real Wikipedia page most of the content refers to their virtual exploits.

Where perhaps the paradoxical intertextuality was at its strongest was when the typical virtual and real dichotomies were reversed. By that it is meant that the player is first discovered as a CM/FM superstar with a real-life expectation that they may go on to achieve the same on actual grass. The common example repeated across numerous blogs relates to the Ivorian international Ibrahima Bakayoko.

Every so often, a Premier League club would make the most outrageous left-field signing and you twigged [realised] immediately that the manager in question was a massive Championship Manager nerd. In 1998, that manager was Everton’s Walter Smith. Like the rest of the CM universe, he knew that Ibrahima Bakayoko was a guaranteed goal-getter…The only problem was a slight discrepancy between Ibrahima Bakayoko the man and Ibrahima Bakayoko the computer-generated character. The latter may have been worth the £4.5 m which Everton paid for him; the former certainly was not.

Incidents of paradoxical intertextuality have not been reported elsewhere in gaming literature perhaps thus far because of the dominance of the American-led market and the need to uphold a particular brand image for the athletes who allow games manufacturers to use their names (Keller, 2003; Roy & Cornwell, 2003). Paradoxical intertextuality is perhaps also something of an inevitability in CM/FM as, possibly due to its incredibly large database, obscure players with very average statistics can be bought and trained to then experience notable improvements and subsequent virtual success. Such extremes are less likely to occur in reality and, because of the narrower databases of other sports games, this is less likely to occur in those environments also. What is clear is that when players are successful on CM/FM ,they are fondly remembered, evoking nostalgic recollections.

Theme 3: Nostalgic Recollections—“Tó Madeira—The Greatest Player Who Never Lived”

Every blog viewed contains names of legendary players who have graced the CM/FM landscape. Here, screenshots of player statistics are presented often with a story of their legendary achievements. An example is shown below:

Men whose upper lips remain defiantly stiff at funerals go a big rubbery when they remember the time he [Tonton Zola Moukoko] banged in two [scored two goals] in the last four minutes to overturn a 1-2 deficit at home to Grimsby in the Champions League semi-final of 2014-15. His success and reliability took man-love to new, twisted levels of absurdity.

Thus far, individual sporting memories (whether real or virtual) have attracted little academic attention (Griggs et al., 2012), but the tone of many of the blogs for players once known and now lost is rooted within nostalgic memories (Stewart, 1993). What researchers have referred to as “reflective” (Boym, 2001) or “private nostalgia” (Healey, 1991) has generated memories that are ideal vehicles for providing widely understood and “tellable” stories that have become deeply embedded into a specific culture (Snyder, 1991). By some margin, the best example of such nostalgic recollections across many blogs was the legend of Tó Madeira.

Madeira was capable of 30, 40, even 50 goals during the 01/02 version…[but] he was deadly and then he was gone. The greatest player who never lived.

Madeira was a “one season wonder” and therefore could only privately be recollected by bloggers who had played the 01/02 version of the game. Furthermore his prowess could not be shared in subsequent seasons as he was removed in subsequent versions of the game, hence his immortalised status. The circumstances surrounding Madeira’s brief appearance on the game are also explained on multiple blogs.

To produce a game like Championship Manager or Football Manager, requires a worldwide scouting team to accurately create a player database. One such scout was António Lopes, who reported on the Portuguese team Gouveia. Lopes had actually once played for the youth Gouveia’s youth team, but had stopped when he went to study in Coimbra. Seeing a chance to immortalise himself, Lopes used his access to the CM database, to create a fictional Gouveia player to whom he gave the pseudonym′ Tó Madeira′. Lopes′ creation was a striker with brilliant ratings and was the must-sign player on CM 01/02. When Lopes′ mischief was detected, the fictional Madeira was dropped from future versions of the game.

Recollections concerning the likes of Tó Madeira refer to players who have not appeared in CM/FM for over a decade, but the fondness for how they are remembered reflects significant identification with these virtual characters that have resulted in vicarious experiences for the bloggers (Wilson, 1993). A strong sense of attachment to specific historical events and the individuals located within this narrative has frequently been associated with deeply emotional, positive personal moments (Bellelli & Amatulli, 1997; Boym, 2001; Dann, 1994). The strength of relationships demonstrated across all the blogs suggests that deeply emotional, positive personal moments include winning virtual football matches.

Summary

The data contained within blogs sourced for this case study have detailed a number of commonalities in the ways which people consume football management games and the outcomes that are familiar from these experiences. The CM/FM bloggers often spoke of their long-term engagement with the game and the subsequent loyalty that they develop with particular players. The apparent friendships and reflective experiences that then emerge within the discourse of blogs, evidence the blurring of online and physical realities—the intertextuality of the experience which is most clearly represented by the passionate community which plays the game.

Many games, across all platforms (PC, console or otherwise), develop a following of fans from the communities which play them. With the advent of collaborative “web 2.0” technologies that allow online user-generated content, and the subsequent proliferation of opportunities to interact within communities, the ways in which we consume the game and develop particular “player narratives” change. Changes in gameplay interactions, and the evolving sophistication of the game interface itself, have led to a more personalised experience which, it appears, can often transcend boundaries of reality. These developments augment the ever-growing depth of the statistical database and provide additional layers of interaction through which the game is lived. The simple act of now being able to load your own profile picture into the game serves to place yourself at the heart of the game and thus blurs these boundaries further. Such features contribute to the emotional attachment gamers develop towards both the game and the individuals created within it.

“In FM land” was a comment made by numerous bloggers, in consideration of the disconnect between one reality and another. Bloggers appeared conscious of the multiple realities that are at play here but still consistently spoke of memories and experiences where they placed themselves in a new experience. The process of identification (Cohen, 2001) was readily evident throughout the data, in the ways in which players appeared to immerse themselves in a new reality where they could adopt the characteristics of their chosen managerial hero. The relationships that emerged as a result were indicative of those described in the literature as being pseudosocial (Weiss, 1996).

There appears evidence of a collective identity and culture, which emerges through online forums (Fayard & DeSanctis, 2010) that transcend various experiences of CM/FM; many bloggers note similar emotions across comparable interactions with popular players both in the game and in reality. Crawford (2006, p. 510) speaks of the “cult” of CM/FM, which results in experiences that are drawn upon “as a resource to fuel conversations and social interactions, not only around these games but often around associated themes such as discussions of football” in the real world. We contend that it is the blurring of such boundaries, which leads to the emergence of pseudosocial encounters.

Digital games contribute to our sense of identity and life narratives, recognising that such issues are fluid and never become separated from everyday lives (Gosling & Crawford, 2011). The development of pseudosocial relationships over time and the identities that are formed through such a process often appear to leave the CM/FM gamer with a binding affinity towards their managerial persona—an “artificial world of vicarious social experience” (Weiss, 1996).