Virtual Sports are electronic games that generate visual feedback on a display device. Inspired by real sports these games originated from fantasy sports that were drawn using paper and pencil. The use of computers has transformed these fantasy sports from being mostly played by a group of friends or acquaintances in a local community to potentially being anonymously played from around the world.
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The first time Virtual Sports were used on a computer was in 1961, in an early form of fantasy baseball coded for an IBM 1620 computer by John Burgeson. It allowed two teams to play one another using random number generation and player statistics to determine a game's outcome, including a play-by-play description. The game was coded for a computer with only 20 KB in computer memory and was entirely self-contained. Today, due to modern motion capture technologies and state of the art software agents very complex sports animations can be created. A good example of this would be the animations created by Electronic Arts for the FIFA video game series or by Globalbet for Virtual Football . Virtual Sports are emerging as a growing form of on-line entertainment. These games have paper-based histories going back almost 40 years but the move to networked, computerized games have made them easier to set up and play. With the growing number of business interests surrounding these games, there has emerged a greater competition for big names in the business.
Virtual Football
Virtual Football refers to a computer generated sports that involves virtual players kicking a ball to score a goal. The most popular of these sports worldwide is Globalbet’s Virtual Football, more commonly known as "virtual football" or "virtual soccer". Betting on Virtual Football is in fact, the same thing as betting on a football real event with the advantage that instead of waiting full 90 minutes for the outcome and then waiting a week to place another bet on your favorite team, you can do it every 90 seconds.
Virtual Cockfighting
Virtual Cockfighting refers to a computer generated sport of cockfighting. The game was developed by Hong Kong based Edge Gaming Limited and has proved very popular with countries in South America and Asia.
Virtual Sports vs. Real Sports
Playing virtual sports doesn’t require having up-to-date knowledge of the real world sport. Without knowing who is injured or who is likely to be in the starting lineup each week, a player can play without fearing to lose because lack of knowledge. Because virtual sports blend gamesmanship with spectatorship, their success impacts not only the companies providing them but also the original sport itself. Instead of only caring about the games involving one or two favorite teams, players are interested in the results of many games. By being indirectly involved in so many games, the spectators of the sport are now more immersed and engaged. This results in a higher number of viewers and thus higher revenue from advertising for the televising networks. Anything that changes the desires of the spectators has the potential to change the sports themselves. Consider how television has resulted in changes to the rules of the major sports with television timeouts in professional and collegiate football, shot clocks in professional and collegiate basketball and illegal defense rules for professional basketball are just a few examples.