Games | Game Design | Game Studies. Gundolf S. Freyermuth

hands but rather with one’s feet originated in prehistoric times as well as antiquity and continued through modern European times via Celtic cultures, as they maintained some independence from the Christian, game-hostile Middle Ages:

“All appear to have played large-scale and often riotous ball games in large open spaces with innumerable participants divided into two teams trying to get the ball to a particular place with few formalities or restrictions.20 […] Often the games were played between two parishes or villages, the ball carried across the open fields between them.21 […] It was certainly violent enough for deaths and injuries to be recorded.”22

The historical process through which SOCCER found its modern form began in the British public schools of the 18th and early 19th centuries, especially at Rugby and Eton. Athletic activities in general and SOCCER in particular played a prominent role in both Rugby and Eton’s curriculum as well as in the establishment of their self-image. In order to enable tournaments, a successive codification and standardization of rules had to be set in place, first within schools and then between different schools. In a second step SOCCER burst from the upper-class and upper-middle-class world of these schools into broader population groups: “Almost from the moment of its codification football was colonized by the British working classes as both players and spectators.”23

In Great Britain, the homeland of industrialization, the popularization of SOCCER followed the examples set by sports like horse racing, rowing, boxing, or cricket, which were already entrenched in the aristocratic and merchant classes: first agreement by different clubs on common rules and procedures, then formation of leagues, and then establishment of regional and national championships. The important standardization of the ball—its size, material, and quality—occurred in 1872.24 The role of the field referee was introduced in 1881, though he only attained his current function in 1898.25 In 1882 the goal gained a crossbar, in 1892 a net.26 Since the mid-1880s amateurs were slowly replaced with paid professionals despite standing bans on the practice. At the start of the First World War around 5,000 professionals earned their living with SOCCER.27

In the context of this professionalization of the most popular sport of industrial culture, the medialization of SOCCER took place as well. A first step consisted of—as it did already in the modern medialization of the theater—the construction of specialized buildings that allowed ever-larger numbers of people to follow the game from a variety of perspectives which were at least tolerable. Within a few decades these novel soccer stadiums in Great Britain reached and exceeded the capacity of the previously largest entertainment structure in human history: the Roman Coliseum with its 50,000-80,000 seats. The 1907 completed stadium in Glasgow, for example, then the largest in the world, could house over 120,000 spectators.28

Concurrently, various attempts were carried out to make soccer games, or at least their final scores, available to those who could not be there in person. Since the 1880s important results were transmitted via telegraph to faraway cities in order to announce them in post offices, restaurants, and bars.29 SOCCER newspapers and magazines sprung up and reached ever-higher circulation numbers. For example, the weekly newspaper Scottish Referee, founded in 1888, circulated 500,000 copies in the first decade of the 20th century, at a time when Scotland had around five million residents.30 In 1907, the British Daily Mail published the first photos of soccer games.31

The crucial next step of this medialization resided in the live broadcasting of games. On the radio this took place for the first time in January of 1927, three weeks after the founding of the BBC.32 And so SOCCER arrived in tertiary mediality. The first transmission via television, again through the BBC in an experimental broadcasting operation, happened only a decade later in September 1937.33 In the founding years of television, the 1950s and 1960s, SOCCER and television entered into a symbiotic relationship—at least in Great Britain and continental Europe: Next to the transmission of game and entertainment shows as well as the broadcasting of motion pictures, SOCCER decisively contributed to television’s status as the new defining medium of the era. Vice versa the integration of sports into tertiary mass media through live-broadcasts, announcements in news programs, and special sport shows ensured that SOCCER went from being a proletarian participation game of British provinces to a global game that excited all classes and was experienced by the majority of humanity as spectators.

With the rise of analog-electronic and then digital games since the 1960s, SOCCER inevitably migrated to this medium as well. The first electro-mechanical soccer game CROWN SOCCER SPECIAL came out in 1967.34 Many other arcade and PC games followed. The decisive breakthrough of SOCCER into virtuality, however, occurred only with soccer manager and soccer simulator games starting in the 1990s. Of these ANSTOSS—DER FUSSBALLMANAGER (1993-2006), FIFA INTERNATIONAL SOCCER and FIFA (since 1993) as well as PRO EVOLUTION SOCCER (since 2001) were the most successful. Of the diverse incarnations of the FIFA series alone, Electronic Arts sold over 100 million copies, by their own account.35 In this way digital soccer games ushered in a new phase of massively active participation, which was no longer played out in reality, but in virtuality. SOCCER seems to be transforming anew from a spectator to a player sport. Whoever enters a living room today and sees people in front of an HD screen cannot—at least from some distance—immediately discern whether a match is ‘running’ and being ‘watched’ or if the supposed spectators are playing the game themselves.

      QUATERNARY MEDIALITY:

      FROM SPECTATOR TO PLAYER

When Harry Pross presented his taxonomy of mediality a half-century ago the development of the digital transmedium—especially in the context of European culture—was hardly predictable. In this respect his theories need to be expanded and even partially corrected to account for our current situation. Tertiary media required, as Pross recognized, technology on both sides of the communication process. But with regard to digitalization, the tertiary broadcast and reception technology need to be defined more clearly. The analog mass media radio and television allowed merely the transmission of fixed and standardized works in one direction: from a few producers or broadcasters to many consumers or receivers. Those watching and listening could not ‘send back.’ They were, therefore, incapable of interacting with those offering the content nor with the offered content itself or with other listeners or viewers. Therefore, Pross’s definition of tertiary mediality has to be expanded beyond the current perspective in respect to the fact that the technology used for broadcast media is principally one-way technology. It does not empower the receiver with any sort of responsive or interactive capability and, vice versa, hinders the broadcaster and the content being broadcasted from receiving any responses.36

      In the course of digitalization yet another mediality came into being that uses technology on both ends of the communication process, yet has back channels at its disposal—whether this potential for interaction is placed at the user’s disposal or not. For also under the conditions of digital production and distribution the creators of linear audiovisions follow the tradition of film and its artistic