Jeremy Liew has an interesting post up today about fantasy sports as asynchronous MMOs, which was itself spawned by an article in early November by Charles Hudson about fantasy football as casual games for men. I’m not a fan of watching sports and don’t play fantasy sports but I get some of the appeal, and while I wouldn’t classify fantasy sports as an MMO (I’m a traditionalist - if there’s no world representation, it’s not an MMO) I think Jeremy and Charles are right insofar as they serve the same purpose and have a great deal of similarity.

Charles talks about a few of the game mechanics that make fantasy football work so well for men (it’s a multi-billion dollar industry as well):

  • Simple game mechanics - If you understand how the NFL works, you can play fantasy football.
  • There is a good combination of luck, skill, and strategy. Skill comes in working the waiver wire, doing your homework before the draft, and staying on top of who’s emerging during the course of the season… However, there’s a lot of luck involved - you can’t control who gets injured and how long they’re out.
  • The time commitment is manageable (unlike other fantasy sports) - You can basically manage a fantasy football team in a few hours a week… The beauty of fantasy football is that almost all of the action takes place in about 24 hours per week.
  • Fantasy football is a social experience - Go to any sports bar on Sunday and make an offhand comment about one of the players on your team. Guaranteed you’ll get at least a few other folks at the bar who have a rooting interest in one player or team. Because the rules for fantasy football are fairly universal, two players in separate leagues can often have a good conversation around fantasy football in general.

He’s bang-on, I think, but he leaves out one huge factor: story. Whenever people tell me they don’t understand the appeal of spectator sports I sum it up for them that single word. Though they’re not for me, people who are really wrapped up in a particular sport and, usually, a particular team are very into ongoing stories that evolve from the activity in and around the sport.

When I think of the sports moments that stick in my mind they are all wrapped in a very strong story. For instance, the 1980 US victory over the heavily-favored Soviet ice hockey team in the game called “the Miracle on Ice.” I’m sure it was dramatic based on the play alone but I don’t remember any of that. I remember feeling, at 8 years old, like this game represented the forces of good against evil (one is allowed to indulge in over-simplification when one is that age), and that somehow a defeat for the Soviets was some kind of tangible payback for the evil they’d done my father.

Think of other monumental sports moments: Jesse Owens embarassing Hitler at the ‘36 Olympics, Jackie Robinson signing with the Dodgers, Michael Jordan’s entire career, virtually every big fight Muhammed Ali fought in (Cassius Clay vs. Sonny Liston and Ali vs. Foreman in “The Rumble in the Jungle” come to mind), and so on. They’re all powerful because of the stories that back them.

My point is that sports contain, to those who keep abreast of what’s happening, an astonishing myriad of stories, and your hardcore sports fan is, in effect, watching a soap opera with a cast of thousands, spanning decades. Further, they’re not just watching them. They’re participating through retelling the stories and discussing them with friends or strangers at the bar, by playing sports video games, and of course, by playing fantasy sports.

It all makes for a massive, coherent (if uninstantiated) world with rules, players, guilds/teams, and plenty of story. MMO players would be wetting their pants with joy if the stories in their favorite games evolved at the same pace they do in sports.