In a store filled with various video games, teenage boys will invariably choose the sports genre. Ahmed Hamdi sees why Two teenage boys enter a dark room inside a net cafe. As they sit in front of a television connected to a PlayStation, a young man asks them which video game they would like to play. They answer the question with a question, asking him about the newest one he has. "This question usually refers to the soccer video games," says Mustafa Kamal, a supervisor at a net cafe. Kamal has been in the same job for about a year and can't remember the last time a teenager asked him for an action video game. "Most of them play soccer and some like wrestling while other genre video games become dull when they become out-dated." Supporting Kamal, a 27-year-old worker at a small video game store, Youssef Magdi, expressed frustration over what he called "involuntary losses" meaning that he has to put many categories of video games up for sale even though they do not really get sold. "You can't have a video game store that has only soccer and wrestling," Magdi says. "I'm not saying that other types don't sell but the ratio of selling between sports video games, be it soccer or wrestling, and other types, is like 10 to one if not more." "That's because they continue to be exciting in the long run," says Ahmed Hossam, 16, a high school student. "Action video games for example always have a specific number of missions; once you're done with them, the game could be thrown away. In sports games you can finish a season and start another, play with a team, then play with another and so on," Hossam said. "Sports video games never lose their excitement until a new version comes out." Agreeing with Hossam, Youssef Gamal, 14, says two reasons make sports video games more attractive than other genres. "In most video games, especially those based on movies or action video games, you have to win to proceed, but in sports video games you can continue even if you lose, so you won't have to replay the same mission over and over until it gets boring," says Gamal. "The second is that sports video games allow you to recreate reality, meaning that if your favourite team loses a match against its rival, you will find it satisfying to beat the opponent with your favourite team in a PlayStation match." If you enter that dark room inside most net cafes, you will rarely see a PlayStation that still works with CDs. Most PlayStations now in net cafes work with hard disks since they are more economic. Hard disks carry dozens of video games and among this number you will probably find soccer video games that were released from 2005 up to soccer games of the current year. You will also find wrestling video games of the same time period as soccer. "I have four TV sets inside the PlayStation room and every time I enter I feel like I'm in a stadium or an arena," said Mohamed Tewfik, owner of a net cafe. "It's always soccer or wrestling. I've never seen a James Bond video game, for example, on any screen." The attraction of sports video games has also spread to the world of computers. The famous soccer video game series, FIFA, might not be the first choice of PlayStation lovers but it has a huge fan base among those who like to play games on their laptops and computers. "Despite the action, video games do sell well when it comes to PC video games, and FIFA still tops the charts," said Magdi. "Maybe the absence of a good wrestling video game for PCs gave the action ones the opportunity to sell better than they do at the PlayStation market, but still, in a country that adores soccer like ours, soccer games can't be beat," Magdi added. Superiority and imagination. With these two words Nagia Amin, a psychologist, summarised the reasons sports games can easily get through to teenage boys. According to Amin's research, it is normal that teenage boys are attracted to games like soccer, wrestling and car racing. "That's because in these kinds of games they find the opportunity to prove their superiority over their friends," Amin said. "They also imagine themselves in the place of the player or wrestler especially because teenagers have a fertile imagination and that gives them a sense of joy." PlayStation mania has reached levels far beyond normal, according to Amin. "Research has proven that in some poor areas teenagers prefer to spend the 50 piastres they get from their parents to buy food on a PlayStation game and just starve the rest of the day," she said. "And some teenagers prefer to play sports games on PlayStation instead of actually playing real sports in reality."
