Whenever I find a new favourite television show, I watch each episode fairly rapidly. It's not unusual for me to watch a 22 episode season within a week, even with 60+ hours put in at work and other activities.

My latest find is one I never thought I would watch – Friday Night Lights.  I've heard rumblings about this for several years now, about how it's one of the best shows of the past ten years, possibly ever. But I was always hesitant to check it out, because of a few words people kept repeating – "it's a football show".

I hate football. I hate all sports in general. Being part of a football culture is extremely frustrating, especially when people assume that you must back a team because, well, you're Australian, right? Wrong. I hate football, I hate everything to do with football and unless someone pays me I doubt I'll never attend another match as long as I live.

But Friday Night Lights has me hooked. It's a football show that isn't about football.

There's enough written about FNL elsewhere, and why it's of such high quality. This show is about middle and lower class America. It is about marriage. It is about death, about responsibility, about growing up and about dealing with betrayal. The first cue I had this show would hook me was that you didn't see a football game until well into the first episode.

Instead, you see a montage of homes in country Texas, many of them run down and certainly not McMansions of any sort. A player reminds his grandmother to take her pills – it is clear he is th man of the house at 17.  – another wakes up among a trove of bottles.

There is pain and brokenness here. Football is pretty much all these kids have, and it's repeatedly said they aren't the brighest of the bunch, except for a few. The camerawork is shaky, lots of close ups, and the music is pretty minimalist with lots of single notes played on an electric guitar to emphasise that sense of loneliness.

A big part of my attraction to this story is the casting of the two leads – Eric and Tami Taylor. Eric  is a fascinating character. A new coach, a family to take care of and scathing commentary from talk-back radio hosts. The entire town is watching him and commenting on whether he really has what it takes.

It's pretty true to life. I've lived in a southern Alabama town and they are obsessed with football. One particular scene I thought captured this well was when Eric and his daughter Julie go to pick up some dinner at a fast food restaurant. One of the patrons intimidates Julie – "have you packed your bags yet?", referring to a game Taylor lost the previous week.

I've been hooked since then and I'm looking forward to the next three seasons, savoring it while I can. It's a great show and if you love quality television you'll love it too.

Now I want to talk about video games.

Just as I hate sports, I hate sports games. Madden, NHL, AFL, all of them. I hate them. It makes no sense for me to play game versions of sports that I detest, although I've certainly tried. They never hook me, and there's a reason why – they're horrible emulators of real life.

I need to clarify that statement a little. I've been watching football games since the early 1990s, and of course there is no question they games have become much more realistic. It's amazing quite frankly, how good these simulators have become.

If you're a football fan, I can see why these games are so great. You get to trade the players – your favorite players – you get to call the plays. You are the coach, you are the star quarterback, you are the linebacker making the ultimate touchdown that wins the championship game. It's addictive.

I'm also really impressed with the cinematics of these games as well. The commentary is pretty top notch, and you really feel like you're watching an NFL game as you play. I can definitely see why people love it. In a way, these games have done a great job of emulating the real thing.

But they haven't done a great job in recreating the life associated with a football game.

One of the reasons Friday Night Lights is so great is because it makes you feel the pressure associated with winning. Because you live life with these characters, you see the intense pressure they are placed under by parents, teachers, strangers, radio hosts, and family members on why they need to win, and why they need to win big.

You see this permeated so much that it forces one young player from a poor family to start taking steroids in order to impress recruits, so he will eventually get to the NFL and buy a bigger house for his widowed mother.

I don't see that pressure in a Madden game. It's certainly fun, a great simulator. But I dont see any NFL game putting pressure on the player to win, which is supposed to be the ultiamte goal of the game. Isn't it funny that a game based around winning doesn't give you any pressure in order to do so?

My question is this – why has there never been a sports game with the same kind of emotional intensity as Friday Night Lights? Why has there never been a Madden game that has tried to create a narrative around playing?

What I am imagining is a mix between a player swap game and actual play simulated like Madden injected with narrative elements that affect your playtime.

A few thoughts on how this might work:

  • Such a game would see the player act as the coach. They are the one person that holds the overall team together, making the plays, keeping everyone motivated and managing it all. Instead of controlling each individual player, this allows for a wider scope of narrative and a much more interesting game. The stakes are much higher when you're the leader.
     
  • Whenever you play a sports game, you aren't always thinking about the game at hand. No, you're thinking about the test you need to take next week, or the pretty girl in the bleachers, or that snide comment your boss made the other day. These things weigh on people's minds and make them stressed, and affect their performance. Why does this never happen in a video game? It would be great to see this type of sports game incorporate elements of family life into playing. For instance, your ability to judge the game might be impaired, and you might start calling faulty plays.
     
  • You should also have the ability to mentor your team directly. If a team doesn't believe in the coach then they won't play as well. Having individual players like you more or less depending on your actions and conversations with them should affect their performance, similar to the system used in Dragon Age.
     
  • You should have to deal with scandals that your players involve themselves with. If you don't motivate someone enough, they might go off and do something stupid like take steroids, or assault someone, meaning they are suspended from play. You need to figure out a way to make your games work even though you might have some stars on the bench.
     
  • The player should have to deal with family life  as well. If you're spending too much time thinking about football, working on football, your family will start to feel neglected and that will eat into your play style as well.

I have no idea if such a game would even work, or if it even can at all. And I understand the complaints. Football gamers wouldn't buy it, and those who might aren't necessarily interested in football. There really isn't a market for this sort of game, and I doubt it would be any sort of commercial success. But that doesn’t mean it's not a good idea to at least try.

But I still think this is something worth exploring. Sports games have reached a point where improvements every year are really tweaks and small upgrades. To really take the genre somewhere new, narrative elements need to be applied.