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This article considers the social importance of sports-themed video games, and more specifically, discusses their use and role in the construction of gaming and wider social narratives. Here, building on our own and wider sociological and video games studies, we advocate adopting an audience research perspective that allows for consideration of not only narratives within games but also how these narratives are used and located within the everyday lives of gamers. In particular, we argue that sports-themed games provide an illustrative example of how media texts are used in identity construction, performances, and social narratives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article develops and expands on earlier work of the authors, which posits the idea of considering gamers as a (media) audience—enabling parallels to be drawn with wider literatures and debates on audience research and media fan cultures. In particular, drawing on some illustrative examples from qualitative research (funded by the British Academy) into the everyday lives of gamers, this article suggests that the concept of ‘‘scene’’ (borrowed most notably from music fan studies) allows us to understand how gaming and game-related narratives are located within the ordinary and everyday lives of gamers but take on greater significance within certain physical locations. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]