Fantasy Baseball: The Case for Competitive Fandom

The authors propose the concept of competitive fandom to describe the learning, play, and engagement of fantasy sports. Competitive fandom draws together contemporary research on fan cultures and game design and game communities to describe the interaction present in fantasy sports. Fantasy sports g...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Games and culture 2008-07, Vol.3 (3-4), p.286-308
Main Authors: Halverson, Erica Rosenfeld, Halverson, Richard
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Communities
Competition
Consumers
Experts
Games
Learning
Sports
Subcultures
Citations: Items that this one cites
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Summary:The authors propose the concept of competitive fandom to describe the learning, play, and engagement of fantasy sports. Competitive fandom draws together contemporary research on fan cultures and game design and game communities to describe the interaction present in fantasy sports. Fantasy sports games require a combination of fan culture practices and gamers' skills and habits of mind. Fandom becomes competitive when the knowledge acquired in the fan domain is transformed into strategic information to guide play in a new kind of game. This combination of frames helps describe the kinds of knowledge and motivation required to play fantasy sports and how such participation sparks further learning. Through analysis of individual game play within the context of the league community in which fantasy team owners play, the authors aim to understand what and how people learn from playing in competitive fandom settings and the implications of these findings for the design of learning environments.
ISSN:1555-4120
1555-4139
DOI:10.1177/1555412008317310