What sports video games have in common with fanfiction

Finally I saw challenger this week. It was immediately included in my personal ranking of the great modern sports films (as well as a gripping, delicate romantic drama). The film uses the existing strong narrative structures and character archetypes in sport to create a compelling story – the washed-up talent, the fading star, the phenomenon who never got the seemingly predetermined chance at fame.

And as is my way, I bought the relatively new tennis game TopSpin 2K25 immediately after that I returned to my roots as a (very bad) tennis player in my youth. In a surprising turn of events, the way I played changed TopSpin right after I saw challenger felt like I was writing fanfiction – and I realized that without realizing it, I had been doing fanfiction in my own way for years.

In the character editor, I decided to make my tennis player one of the three main characters in the film. Forget the boys — challenger‘ The most compelling star is Zendaya’s Tashi Duncan, a former teen phenom whose knee went out during a college game, ending her promising professional career before it even began. But what if I could rewrite that story? What if her knee injury wasn’t quite so catastrophic and she had a second chance?

In my version of Tashi Duncan’s career, her knee injury still happens, but a full recovery is possible. My save file starts in my head at the beginning of this process, when she enters the tour at a low rank and regains her confidence and control of her body while learning how to play this game. I put some kinesiology tape on her right knee and otherwise I tried my best to style Tashi the way she looks in the film (I have limited clothing choices this early in my career).

I am at the beginning of my career and I am having a great time. After a disappointing loss in my first match (as Tashi had got used to using her knee again and I had got used to it, TopSpins controls and play patterns), I bounced back with a surprise win in the first round of my next tournament. Next up: an opportunity for revenge on the player who beat me in the first game.

I never considered myself a fan of fanfiction – I don’t blame anyone who likes fanfiction, I just never understood what was so great about it. But when I was my Tashi Duncan in TopSpin: Sports video games are often just a form of fanfiction.

When I realised that, my whole history with sports games came together. I’ve played so many of them this way. In Football Manager, I always have a specific goal because the game has no natural win condition – maybe it’s to make Norway the leading football nation in the world, or to get tiny Boston United into the Premier League. In NCAA Football 14I created a parallel universe where North Texas is a top national team. In the Out of the Park Baseball and Baseball Mogul franchises, which allow you to start a save file at any point in baseball history, my favorite save files are (1) breaking down racial segregation in baseball from the beginning and reenacting careers with Negro League legends like Josh Gibson and Cool Papa Bell, and (2) picking up with my beloved Dodgers in 1989 and reliving their horrific slump in the ’90s when I went to those games as a kid.

One of the most exciting new features in NBA 2K over the last decade was the new Eras mode, which lets you replay the NBA’s most important historical periods. Want to see what would have happened if Larry Bird and Magic Johnson had been teammates, not rivals? You can. Want to see Michael Jordan play his entire career with the Wizards, not just the bitter end? Go for it!

Even the way I played these games as a kid fits with this new understanding of these games for me. Instead of trying to come up with a unique narrative or storyline like I do today, I would simply create self-inserts of myself into these games. Maybe I’m a star quarterback in Madden, or a 7-foot-tall center in NBA Live, or a baseball player who could actually hit a baseball – you know, fantasies. (Apologies to my former teammates on the Blair Blazers JV baseball team.) I added myself to my favorite stories… It’s just that these stories aren’t purely fictional.

This, in turn, changes my relationship with real-life sports. I have a special affinity for the athletes who feature prominently in my save files, and it’s especially fun to watch the development of young real-life players that I’ve seen grow up in the fast-paced, race-to-the-future world of sports video games.

Sports games don’t have the pre-determined narratives that many other games have. Instead, you create them as you play. Like fanfiction, these games allow you to dream about how things might be different than in real life or in a fictional story that draws you in. I can’t actually participate in the professional sports leagues I follow in real life, but at home I can create and enjoy new narratives that are adjacent to those worlds and that I’m a part of myself. And I’d be lying if I said I haven’t hosted fake press conferences about my team where I’m both the interviewer and the interviewee.

Anyway, back to my save file. Will Tashi Duncan (fingers crossed) eventually take home her own career Grand Slam instead of having to witness the career of her clearly out of it husband? Can she reclaim her place at the top of the tennis world? I’m going to find out and I can’t wait.