Can "e-sports" = real sports?

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Dr.Sean

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Video games are either an art or a sport. They can't be both, they must be one or the other. I pick art.
 

Owyn_Merrilin

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Imperator_DK said:
Assuming chess and backgammon, which rely on strategy and skill rather than on having a physical dimension, can be considered "sports", then Virtual Football or Counter Strike could as well.

Of course, the term sport might not be particularly appropriate to use about chess. A more accurate description of it would perhaps be a "game" that can be played equally competitively and require as much training, skill, and devotion as any physical "sport" would to succeed in.

So I'd go with "game" for non-physically minded competitions of skill and ability (digital or IRL), "sport" for physically minded competitions of skill and ability, and "competition of skill and ability" as the catch-all definition.

...although there really isn't any clear definition of what exactly separates "games" from "sports", certainly not in layman's terms. It's called the Olympic Games after all.
All sports are games, but not all games are sports. The difference is athleticism. We wouldn't even be arguing this if Wikipedia hadn't once again posted some minority opinion like it was generally accepted fact -- in this case, on the article about chess. If you check the talk page, they're still debating whether they should call it a "sport" or not, and it's just a quirk of Wikipedia's verification process.

Their article on sports has a definition that is much more in keeping with the actual meaning of the word.

Wikipedia said:
A sport is an organized, competitive, entertaining, and skillful activity requiring commitment, strategy, and fair play, in which a winner can be defined by objective means. Generally speaking, a sport is a game based in physical athleticism. Activities such as board games and card games are sometimes classified as "mind sports," but strictly speaking "sport" by itself refers to some physical activity. Non-competitive activities may also qualify, for example though jogging or playing catch are usually classified as forms of recreation, they may also be informally called "sports" due to their similarity to competitive games.
Edit: Fixed typo which completely reversed the meaning of my post.
 

w9496

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Personally, I don't consider any game that is played while sitting down and moving your arms every once in a while a sport. So for me, that rules out poker, chess, and videogaming, because there isn't much physical contest, if at all.
 

Zer_

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This year's League of Legends tournament attracted 10 million viewers. Just saying.
 

Kavachi

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Owyn_Merrilin said:
I say they can't be sports, but not for the reasons listed in the OP. A sport is an athletic contest; since games are not athletic, they cannot be sports. Think about it -- has anybody ever called chess a sport? At high levels, it's at least as competitive as pro sports, and it requires a lifetime of study and practice to get to that point. But nobody considers it a sport.
Chess is a recognized sport by the International Olympic Committee[3] with FIDE being the recognized International Sports Federation for chess since June 1999.[3][4][5][6] As a member of the International Olympic Committee, FIDE adheres to its rules, including controversially having doping tests.[7][8][9][10] The prospects of chess becoming an Olympic sporting event at some future date remain unclear. The naming of FIDE's team championship as the "Chess Olympiad" is of historical origin and implies no connection between this event and the Olympic Games.

That was a snippit from wikipedia.


(And to be fair, it is way more athletic than chess. Think of this: average apm of pro players is 300. They play for at least 6 hours in a tournament. You try having 300 apm (bliz time here) and continue like that for 6 hours. You will be exhausted.)
 

Kavachi

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w9496 said:
Personally, I don't consider any game that is played while sitting down and moving your arms every once in a while a sport. So for me, that rules out poker, chess, and videogaming, because there isn't much physical contest, if at all.
As I said in my other post: 300 apm average, playing for hours on end. It is extremely exhausting (and nearly every apm is necessary to do the actions you ahve to THINK about while doing such crazy hand acrobatics.)
 

Continuity

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There seems to be a lot of confusion, poor logic, and outright bullshit in this thread.

Lets look at some "legitimate" sports shall we: Snooker, fishing, Golf, Darts, Shooting, Lawn Bowls, Driving.

Some of these may require some degree of physical athleticism but on the whole not so much. Thus sport =/= must be physical.

So lets think about what these sports have in common:

1) Skill

2) Competition

3) Fuck all else.

Thus competitive computer games are very much a sport by any reasonable definition which also encompasses the above named sports.
 

Gigano

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Owyn_Merrilin said:
...
All sports are games, but not all games are sports. The difference is athleticism. We wouldn't even be arguing this if Wikipedia hadn't once again posted some minority opinion like it was generally accepted fact -- in this case, on the article about chess. If you check the talk page, they're still debating whether they should call it a "sport" or not, and it's just a quirk of Wikipedia's verification process.

Their article on sports has a definition that is much more in keeping with the actual meaning of the word.

Wikipedia said:
A sport is an organized, competitive, entertaining, and skillful activity requiring commitment, strategy, and fair play, in which a winner can be defined by objective means. Generally speaking, a sport is a game based in physical athleticism. Activities such as board games and card games are sometimes classified as "mind sports," but strictly speaking "sport" by itself refers to some physical activity. Non-competitive activities may also qualify, for example though jogging or playing catch are usually classified as forms of recreation, they may also be informally called "sports" due to their similarity to competitive games.
Makes sense.

Although language isn't necessarily set in stone, for now "sport" only encompass competitions with a physical element to them. Although for practical everyday purposes such linguistics of course matters little, and if there's some social recognition attached to "sport" which isn't (yet) found in "game", then calling it that in layman terms pose little trouble. Probably why "e-sport" was coined as the standalone term for it despite it being grouped in with games anyway.
 

Owyn_Merrilin

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Kavachi said:
Owyn_Merrilin said:
I say they can't be sports, but not for the reasons listed in the OP. A sport is an athletic contest; since games are not athletic, they cannot be sports. Think about it -- has anybody ever called chess a sport? At high levels, it's at least as competitive as pro sports, and it requires a lifetime of study and practice to get to that point. But nobody considers it a sport.
Chess is a recognized sport by the International Olympic Committee[3] with FIDE being the recognized International Sports Federation for chess since June 1999.[3][4][5][6] As a member of the International Olympic Committee, FIDE adheres to its rules, including controversially having doping tests.[7][8][9][10] The prospects of chess becoming an Olympic sporting event at some future date remain unclear. The naming of FIDE's team championship as the "Chess Olympiad" is of historical origin and implies no connection between this event and the Olympic Games.

That was a snippit from wikipedia.


(And to be fair, it is way more athletic than chess. Think of this: average apm of pro players is 300. They play for at least 6 hours in a tournament. You try having 300 apm (bliz time here) and continue like that for 6 hours. You will be exhausted.)
That quote was the one I was talking about where Wikipedia lied by omission. Chess is not a recognized sport -- it's governing body is a member of the group of governing bodies that are overseen by the IOC, and it only got that much because the governing body of chess badgered them for years to let them in, so they could get some of that sweet Olympic publicity. Even then, the IOC considers it a "mind sport," something that, much like e-sports, is different from an actual sport. If you look up through the thread, you'll find the full quote from a Time magazine article, along with a link to the rest of the article.
 

w9496

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Kavachi said:
w9496 said:
Personally, I don't consider any game that is played while sitting down and moving your arms every once in a while a sport. So for me, that rules out poker, chess, and videogaming, because there isn't much physical contest, if at all.
As I said in my other post: 300 apm average, playing for hours on end. It is extremely exhausting (and nearly every apm is necessary to do the actions you ahve to THINK about while doing such crazy hand acrobatics.)
I'm geussing thats for Starcraft or something? That is an exception then, But since it's a strategy game, its meant to be kind of straining isn't it? I don't think that it would warrant e-gaming as a whole being identified as a sport.
 

Owyn_Merrilin

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Continuity said:
There seems to be a lot of confusion, poor logic, and outright bullshit in this thread.

Lets look at some "legitimate" sports shall we: Snooker, fishing, Golf, Darts, Shooting, Lawn Bowls, Driving.

Some of these may require some degree of physical athleticism but on the whole not so much. Thus sport =/= must be physical.

So lets think about what these sports have in common:

1) Skill

2) Competition

3) Fuck all else.

Thus competitive computer games are very much a sport by any reasonable definition which also encompasses the above named sports.
Except that everything you mentioned is infinitely more physical than videogames. Some of them may be slower paced and less likely to get your heart beating, but that's because they're lower on competitive pressure, not because they're less athletic. My heart started beating like a bass drum last night because I was afraid I wasn't going to make the deadline on an assignment for an online class. That doesn't mean homework is athletic.

As for competition, you do realize that "sport fishing" is based on an archaic meaning of the word "sport" which simply means "something done for entertainment" as opposed to "something done for subsistence," right? You can fish for sport and not be in any kind of competition.
 

mcpop9

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In my opinion, if you can make a living off it I consider it a sport. And quite a few of high level gamers are sponsored to the point that they survive off it.
 

Johnny Impact

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Owyn_Merrilin said:
I say they can't be sports, but not for the reasons listed in the OP. A sport is an athletic contest; since games are not athletic, they cannot be sports. Think about it -- has anybody ever called chess a sport? At high levels, it's at least as competitive as pro sports, and it requires a lifetime of study and practice to get to that point. But nobody considers it a sport.
Actually I *have* heard chess referred to as a sport.

On the one hand that's complete bosh. On the other hand I don't consider it any more ridiculous than referring to golf as a sport. Requires enormous technical proficiency and a lifetime of practice, yes. Is it a sport? Sorry, no. The word sport simply cannot be applied to any activity which involves absolutely no running or jumping, no time limit, and no physical contact. Golf is a hobby, not a sport.
 

Keava

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It comes down to how you define sport. If you go by the most basic definition than no, video games can't be sport because they don't have that athletic requirement.

But then humanity came up with something called "mind sports" that include things like chess, professional bridge, poker or any other board or card game you want. On that basis you could include some eSports as legitimate sport.

The definition of sport evolved over years, like it or not. The requirement of athletic component is just thing of of ancient perception of the topic, but as long as given activity is based around organization, competitive nature, entertainment and requirement of strategy as well as commitment it can be classified as sport.
 

The Wykydtron

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I consider competitive Chess a sport and people play competitive Poker, so yeah theres no reason video games can't be considered a sport.
 

Duskflamer

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Eclectic Dreck said:
At the end of it all, the difference between a sport and a game is that to excel at a sport means to invite endless suffering while in a game it simply means dedication to a leisure activity that extends well beyond what an amateur could manage.
You try playing Starcraft for 100+ hours a week and tell me that you're enjoying every single moment of it. Everyone who plays a sport professionally gets some level of enjoyment from playing the game, or else they never would have played enough of it in the first place to discover that they had enough talent to play professionally, but it does require that they dedicate a large amount of time to practice past the point that anyone could call it enjoyable. The same thing goes for professional video games. Everyone starts playing it just for fun, but if you want to play professionally it requires hours upon hours of practicing past where it's fun, and while it doesn't require the same physical endurance that professional sports practice requires, but I would argue that the mental endurance needed to maintain focus while practicing is far greater than what a sport requires, so it evens out in the end.

The only difference between Physical-sports and e-sports is that one is mostly physical and the other is mostly mental.
 

Continuity

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Owyn_Merrilin said:
Except that everything you mentioned is infinitely more physical than videogames.
By infinitely more of course you mean slightly more, as in having to standup or move very slightly.... I don't think your point really holds.

Owyn_Merrilin said:
Some of them may be slower paced and less likely to get your heart beating, but that's because they're lower on competitive pressure, not because they're less athletic. My heart started beating like a bass drum last night because I was afraid I wasn't going to make the deadline on an assignment for an online class. That doesn't mean homework is athletic.
Now I really don't know where you're going with that, but I must say darts and lawn bowls aren't athletic at all but they can be very competitive.

Owyn_Merrilin said:
As for competition, you do realize that "sport fishing" is based on an archaic meaning of the word "sport" which simply means "something done for entertainment" as opposed to "something done for subsistence," right? You can fish for sport and not be in any kind of competition.
Perhaps, but this is also a modern usage of the word sport, all the sports I mentioned in my original post are officially recognised as sports. Hell I think even chess is recognised as a sport. Sport these days means simply something that is competitive and involves a certain amount of skill.

I think its abundantly clear that sport may involve athleticism but by no means must contain athleticism.
 

Kavachi

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w9496 said:
Kavachi said:
w9496 said:
Personally, I don't consider any game that is played while sitting down and moving your arms every once in a while a sport. So for me, that rules out poker, chess, and videogaming, because there isn't much physical contest, if at all.
As I said in my other post: 300 apm average, playing for hours on end. It is extremely exhausting (and nearly every apm is necessary to do the actions you ahve to THINK about while doing such crazy hand acrobatics.)
I'm geussing thats for Starcraft or something? That is an exception then, But since it's a strategy game, its meant to be kind of straining isn't it? I don't think that it would warrant e-gaming as a whole being identified as a sport.
Yup, I meant starcraft/starcraft 2, sorry for not mentioning :)