« PREVIOUS ENTRY
Neolithic Britons had a 1 in 14 chance of being violently mugged
NEXT ENTRY »
A better wall plug

Why don’t Americans like soccer? In the current issue of the Weekly Standard, Frank Cannon and Richard Lessner write an acerbic takedown of soccer in which they sneer at various conventions of the sport, such as the fact that it requires the use of the head to bonk the ball — an act “contrary to all human instinct,” the writers aver, which is why sensible games like football or hockey encase the athletes’ heads in helmets. They also argue that “any game which prohibits the use of the hands is contrary to nature.”
Deliberately hissy stuff, so as you’d imagine, pro-soccer bloggers reacted by angrily calling Cannon and Lessner ignorant, cultural-isolationist boors who just don’t get it.
But here’s the thing: Cannon and Lessner do make one extremely interesting observation about soccer. Soccer matches rarely end in high scores, they point out, and the proportion of gameplay that draws near either goal is smaller than in many other sports. As they write:
These infrequent occurrences in which the soccer ball approaches the end zone — where goaltenders wile away their time perusing magazines, trimming their fingernails or inspecting blades of grass — rarely result in a shot on goal. Most often the ball ends up high over the goal, missing everything by 20 or 30 feet. These “near misses” typically send the fans into paroxysms; TV announcers scream themselves hoarse. Then the players mill about the field for another 20 or 30 minutes or so and the goaltenders return to their musings before the ball returns, like Halley’s comet in its far-flung orbit, for another pass in the general vicinity of the goal.
Mostly soccer is just guys in shorts running around aimlessly, a metaphor for the meaninglessness of life. Whole blocks of game time transpire during which absolutely nothing happens … It’s like gazing too long at a painting by de Kooning or Jackson Pollock. The more you look, the less there is to see.
Sure, they make their point snarkily. But they’re quite right that game design reflects the national soul. Americans are predisposed to enjoy games where the rules encourage lots of scoring. Soccer wasn’t architected that way, so Americans don’t like it. Baseball, basketball, and football, in contrast, were designed to allow for lots of scoring — and they are thus huge hits in America, a country obsessed with toting up manichean victories.
I seriously doubt Cannon and Lessner are even aware of the existence of ludology — the philosophy and design of play. But they have nonetheless illustrated precisely why ludology is such a powerful way to understand national cultures, and the differences between Americans and Europeans. It also helps you understand why the writers are so damn snarky, and their critics so correspondingly nasty: It’s because ludology is one of the most gut-level, passionate areas of philosophy, and play is so central to our identities. People can be tepid about whether or not they like a book or a movie. But nobody is is wishy-washy about play. A game either totally rocks or totally sucks, and there is no phase transition between the two.
(Thanks to Arts and Leisure for this one!)
I'm Clive Thompson, a writer on science, technology, and culture. This blog collects bits of offbeat research I'm running into, and musings thereon.
Currently, I'm a contributing writer for the New York Times Magazine and a columnist for Wired magazine. I also write for Fast Company and Wired magazine's web site, among other places. Email or AOL IM me (pomeranian99) to say hi or send in something strange!
Teleportation, the last battle, and the Creator talks: How the world ends inside an online game
My latest Wired magazine column: Troll taming at Whitehouse.gov
Apparently NASA is filled with Joss Whedon fans
Incredibly weird, inch-wide single-celled creatures discovered rolling across the sea floor
In praise of the 3-hour game: My latest Wired News video-game column
» visit the Collision Detection archives
March 25, 2009 » 05:10 PM
I had to ask! I was investigating getting DirecTV for my new office when I saw this pop-up window …
March 22, 2009 » 08:54 PM
““From an acoustical perspective, music is an overstructured language, which the brain invented and which the brain loves to hear.”” - Basics - In One Ear and Out the Other - NYTimes.com
March 20, 2009 » 04:48 PM
“No wonder young people find mainstream journalism uninviting; it would almost be more frightening if they embraced what passes for news today.” - The Death and Life of Great American Newspapers (Page 2)
March 19, 2009 » 01:12 PM
Printing The NYT Costs Twice As Much As Sending Every Subscriber A Free Kindle
March 18, 2009 » 08:44 PM
“Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell.” — Edward Abbey” - Via Thor Muller’s twitter stream.
» see all of my photos on Flickr
ECHO
Erik Weissengruber
Vespaboy
Terri Senft
Tom Igoe
El Rey Del Art
Morgan Noel
Maura Johnston
Cori Eckert
Heather Gold
Andrew Hearst
Chris Allbritton
Bret Dawson
Michele Tepper
Sharyn November
Gail Jaitin
Barnaby Marshall
Frankly, I'd Rather Not
The Shifted Librarian
Ryan Bigge
Nick Denton
Howard Sherman's Nuggets
Serial Deviant
Ellen McDermott
Jeff Liu
Marc Kelsey
Chris Shieh
Iron Monkey
Diversions
Rob Toole
Donut Rock City
Ross Judson
Idle Words
J-Walk Blog
The Antic Muse
Tribblescape
Little Things
Jeff Heer
Abstract Dynamics
Snark Market
Plastic Bag
Sensory Impact
Incoming Signals
MemeFirst
MemoryCard
Majikthise
Ludonauts
Boing Boing
Slashdot
Atrios
Smart Mobs
Plastic
Ludology.org
The Feature
Gizmodo
game girl
Mindjack
Techdirt Wireless News
Corante Gaming blog
Corante Social Software blog
ECHO
SciTech Daily
Arts and Letters Daily
Textually.org
BlogPulse
Robots.net
Alan Reiter's Wireless Data Weblog
Brad DeLong
Viral Marketing Blog
Gameblogs
Slashdot Games