‘White digital footballers can’t jump’: (re)constructions of race in <i>FIFA 20</i>

Drawing on the quantitative datasets of Electronic Arts’ FIFA 20 top 100 players and their qualitative descriptors, paper addresses following: (1) How do ideas race manifest influence digital worlds? (2) football simulations (games) disrupt or reproduce racialised stereotypes logics found within in social world? (3) does playing video games contribute to users’ understandings sport. This paper, first in-depth study its kind, provides new empirical insights into presence ‘natural athlete’ discourse operative that underpin White Black player performances 20. We conclude is a site for potent experiential socialisation myths, where gamers come know racialized other sport through feeling differences procedurally generated natural athlete quite literally controllers.