There is a stigma against sports games.
In truth all niche games and genres have a stigma attached to them, set by people who place themselves in boxes and only play games that define those very boxes. In other words 'stigma' is decided on by people who are on the outside, who are not active participants in that specific genre or niche. Stigma is imposed. This much is logical.

One common sentiment against those who mainly or only play sports games is that they are not considered 'gamers' in the first place. This is a hypocritical opinion, as it is 'OK' for people to only play MOBA's, MMO's, strategy games, RPGs or shooters. In other words all other genres except for sports games.
Yet whether you play Madden for 10 hrs a week or WoW doesn't matter, it is completely irrelevant what you play.

The strangest answer as to why some people don't play sports games is 'if I wanted to play _____ I would do that in real life'. This is to miss a crucial point of gaming, perhaps the most crucial point of all.

This point is that all games are about role-playing, of taking on a fantasy role, of enjoying another world.
Whether it is as a bus driver, world-war II soldier or wizard is irrelevant to this truth.
Sports games are no different, yet too many people don't seem to acknowledge this basic fact.
In some games you take on the role a single person, as in tennis, racing and golf games.
In others you take charge of a team and hopefully lead them to success, as in Madden, FIFA and NBA.

This team-building experience is no that different from what you get in an RPG or strategy game.
You are presented with a set of units with different skills and attributes, your goals is to lead them to victory.
The only difference is the arena that the events take place in, the tools used for progression/success and the rules that limit what you can and cannot do in the game.

In single-player sports games you do the same role-playing as you would in any other single-player game.
Its about the fantasy of being a pro tennis player, race driver or golfer.
Just because I play a hitman in a video game doesn't mean I want to, or can, do that in real-life.
Its the same with sports games: you are playing a character you can't be in real life.

I often gets asked what the whole point is, don't I get bored with sports and sim racing games ?
My answer is that each championship or tournament tells a story, it has a narrative.
This narrative is built by your successes and failures, and of what transpired during those events.
'In this race I almost won against Vettel', 'in that match I managed to just beat Nadal' and so on.

This idea should be familiar to people who enjoyed Dark Souls.
Just as each enemy encounter in Dark Souls is a unique moment in time so is every lap in MotoGP, every offensive attack in NHL and every serve in Top Spin. Its a brand new scenario, a new opportunity to succeed or fail.

Because you can play sports and sim-racing games in so many different ways, you have the same variety as you would with an RPG or strategy game. You have an abundance of teams with different skill sets, different cars and vehicle settings, and different strategies and tactics to employ. There's also the randomness of the AI.

Then there's the most tangible reason of all: the gameplay mechanics.
Sports games as a genre offers more technical or mechanical variety than any other gaming genre.
Most FPS games have very similar mechanics, as do most RPGs, strategy games, action games and MMOs.
Playing Madden is very different from playing a Tiger Woods game or NHL.

The mechanics of a sports game can be as addictive as that of other genre.
Just as there are people who play Dark Souls for the combat, in other words for the mechanics and what you can do with it, there are people who play sports games for the 'mechanics and what you can do with it'.
Soccer games are a good example of this.

Lastly, as with any other gaming genre people play sports games for different reasons.
There are those enjoy them because they are competitive people, which is no different from those who play MOBAs or Pokemon. There are those who play them for the immersive experience and the role-playing aspect, which is no different from people playing "regular" games for the very same reasons. And there are those who enjoy them simply because the mechanics are addictively fun and challenging, which is no different from people seeking the challenge of games like Dark Souls. In reality its probably a combination of all these things.

All of this is common sense to me, but I wanted to get my thoughts into print.

Note: I am extremely slow to answer any questions, I have so little time during the week, and what I have I would obviously rather spend on playing games or doing other fun things, so don't take offense.

...I have VR soccer 96 on here. :)

Ummmm, ditto. :D

I was a fan of FIFA series, WWF (WWE) series, and various Boxing games. I abandoned sport games 10 years ago. I still like them, but I'm not a hardcore fan like the past.

Like you said, what you write seems very much like common sense and I find it much more baffling that this is something that has to be explicitly stated - as apparantly there is a stigma against sports games, or worse, people who like and play sports games? I'm not saying this isn't true, but in any case it's news to me.

If I'd have to make a guess, to me it sounds like something silly to do with either PC vs console 'wars' or the nerds/geeks vs jocks stereotype, in other words nothing a rational human being would seriously get involved in, except for trolling, shit and giggles. :P

Anyway, I myself hardly ever play sports games, not because I'm opposed to them, but because I'm mostly interested in stories and fanciful settings and exploration, and for me personally sports are too mundane a setting to keep me interested for long and a series of failures and successes is not enough of a story for me to enjoy. That's just me though, I'm also not that much into strategy games and MMOs and whatnot, which doesn't mean I can't have a bit of fun with any of these genres once in a while, too, and neither that I disrespect players who are passionate about them. It's just not my cup of tea, in the long run I have more fun with other genres.

I'll admit that sportsgames can be as good as any other game and stigma or not they are quite popular.
That said I never feel the urge to play them these days but I had a lot of fun with soccer and Olympic wintergames in the past.
Racing games are a bit different as it's an overlapping genre, NFS Underground would never qualify as a sports game but Formula 1 games can be and they're not very different.

Sports management sims are as good and intricate as other building/civilisation sim.

Playing a match against a friend is much more entertaining for me than playing against a computer. The only exception for me are ice-hockey games such as the EA's offerings.

You omitted the one complaint I've heard most of all about lots of sports games, notably those from EA: They release the same 7 goddamn games every year, and expect people to pay full price for them. And people do! Ah, no. You can't treat "sports" as a single genre on par with, for instance, FPS. If that is the way you look at it, you'll have to either narrow it down to a single sport, or compare it to a genre with the same type of definition, namely one of theme rather than one of mechanics. Try comparing the "sports" genre with the "sci-fi" genre and see where that gets you. Talking about varied gameplay mechanics in sports games is somewhat meaningless anyway, since two different sports by definition have different mechanics. In essence, you're comparing apples and oranges.

All that said, I have no problem with people playing sports games. I don't like them myself, but since I play what I like, others should play what they like.

Far be it from me to try and minimize the importance of your childhood nostalgia, but allow me to share a bit from my own youth ;-)

As far as I'm concerned, when it comes to motorcycle games, there is only one king: ElastoMania.

This was a shareware game from the year 2000, and was actually the Windows version of an earlier DOS game called Action Supercross. The concept of the game is simple. You control a guy on a dirt bike, and have to navigate a series of levels in side-scrolling 2D. Each level has a number of apples that you must pick up, and the finish "line" is marked by a floating daisy (yes, it's kinda weird). The bike is very light and very low-powered, and has the most ridiculously elastic suspension imaginable. The game uses a very cool physics model which, once you get used to it, makes everything feel very natural. Through the judicious use of acceleration, braking and shifting your weight backwards and forwards on the bike, as well as mirror-flipping the bike (in order to ride in the opposite direction) you must navigate 54 increasingly complex levels in as short a time as possible. If the riders head collides with the scenery at any point you die and have to start the level again.

Have a gander at this speedrun video: http://youtu.be/J0N4iLn4GEw

You probably need to have played the game and felt the physics of the bike in order to truly appreciate the insane level of skill displayed in the video, but it should give you a good idea of what the game is like.

Golf games are good,but rare these days since the Links series......

What a sight tinyE racing in BMX races,now there's a laugh...

people can enjoy whatever games they like to play

I actually do feel there is a bit of a positional bias against sports games in general by gamers who gravitate more towards the "hardcore" genres like RPGs and FPS. I think this can easily be seen in the number of sports games available here at GOG... ie, almost none other than a bunch of racing games and a couple soccer (football) titles.

On that topic, I do wish there were more of a resource for good old sports games. There are a lot of excellent sports-themed games out there that sports fans as well as non-sports fans enjoy, and I think it's an untapped area. Maybe GOG just needs a few more sport-enthusiasts within the ranks to help start the movement internally. :)

Just a little listing of sports-themed games I've quite enjoyed for their gameplay mechanics and fantasy/role play elements, and the sports elements were just window-dressing:

* Power Pro Yakyu (Japanese baseball game that mixed RPG and lifesim elements)
* Hot Shots Golf Series (fun for everyone, even non-sports fans)
* Golden Tee Golf (nice swing mechanics and a relaxing way to spend an afternoon)
* Virtua Tennis Series (fun gameplay and interesting world/quest mode)
* Super Punch-Out! (just pure classic, fantastic gameplay)
* Tony Hawk Pro Skater Series (Good quest-based exploratory gameplay and point multiplier system)
* Out of the Park Baseball (super in-depth stat geek and management role play heaven... ok, maybe this one requires a love of baseball to get into...) This is the most common negative I've read written about people who buy/play sports games. While sometimes it is just people basically paying full price for roster updates, in other cases there have been significant changes and improvements made to the game. It's just a marketing gimmick and a proven path to profits for companies that make these games. As a person who buys/plays sports games myself, I never subscribed to the idea that I had to buy the game every year -- in fact, I usually only purchased new updates if they were offering something significantly new. I also was able to save significant amounts of money by buying the previous season's release and just enjoying that for several years.

There's also probably a bit of the aspect of licensing fees that go into the yearly fee, as the major sports leagues in the world are giant corporations and will also always charge what the market can bear.

Well, since your people gave us the greatest BMX movie of all time starring Nicole Kidman I won't point out that Excitebike is just regular MX.

But I will say that tinyE's assessment is correct. :P

Sort of knew that,never saw the movie..