Huddled into two groups, a handful of players stand ready within a clearly delineated arena. Perhaps there are goals of some sort marked out at each end, or a net running down the centre. There's probably a ball in the mix somewhere. The shape of a sport is immediately recognisable; something that videogames from Speedball to Windjammers and Blood Bowl to Rocket League have taken advantage of in order to invent sports of their own, set in fictional worlds that often revolve around that one game. Whether it's a dark future in which a brutal bloodsport helps distract from the dystopian reality or a modern society preoccupied with the battling of trained animals, in order for the fiction to make any sense, developers need to come up with the rules for a game that could feasibly hold the attention of an entire world, as the most successful sports do in ours.
Speaking to designers who've taken on this challenge, many tell us that their fictional sport game was the most difficult one they've ever made. Which raises an obvious question: why do it in the first place?
