A Striking Story

Kyle Hazelwood, Kevin Cox, and Joseph King

This isn’t your typical bowling story; for our project, we are going to discuss why bowling games have seen an increase in popularity since 2019, when the first bowling game was launched on the PlayStation 3. Bowling games are beginning to grow more popular, even though they don’t generate as much revenue as the top sports games such as Madden and NBA. Therefore, because of their disparity in popularity, we must compare bowling games with other sports games in regards that aren’t influenced by budget. It’s also important to note that the incredibly young age of the Professional Bowling Association (PBA) video games influences their popularity, when compared to their contemporary, who wield nearly two decades of experience.

In the last two years alone, PBA games have been added to multiple gaming systems including the Xbox One, Playstation 4, and PC. You are able to download some on your mobile device as well. One truly significant separation it has from games like NBA and Madden is the representation of female athletes in the video game. Women have been represented quite well in the PBA games, although there aren’t a lot of female bowlers in the game, it is a start to something that created popularity via inclusivity. You have the option to select a female bowler in the game if you would like to, you do not see this in other video games. There are no women involved in baseball, basketball and football, and if they are it is because they have their own league to play in. However, the NBA 2k series did begin to promote WNBA starting 2022, a full three years after the first PBA video game featured female athletes. This, alongside an increased awareness of the PBA as a valuable professional sports league and myriad other reasons are why we believe and want to discuss how and why the PBA video games are important to the future of sports games and will grow in popularity.