Can "e-sports" = real sports?

[Aikayai]

Sport is a poorly defined word. Between American and British English they mean slightly different things, with American English emphasising the need of physical exertion but not including physical activities such as Jogging as a sport. The British English definition is broader, with the majority of physical activities being named sports but also include mental sports. Even Domino's is classed as a "sport".

I'd say e-sports need their own definition. Watching competitive gaming has its merits of entertainment much the same way as athletic activities, however playing these competitively takes a whole new approach to preparation. Mental endurance for example requires different preparation than physical endurance.

The only thing holding back competitive gaming now is the lack of discipline. Many athletic sports have rules that are adhered to whereas competitive gaming has little structure, even in "professional" tournaments. If players turn up late for example, the game is delayed rather than cancelled. This usually disrupts broadcast times. If we want people to take "e-sports" seriously, problems like this need to be addressed and the players themselves enact disciplines which will give it some foundation. Then it can be called a "sport".

 

[Eclectic Dreck]

You try playing Starcraft for 100+ hours a week and tell me that you're enjoying every single moment of it.

I don't actually need to tell you this because I never claimed anything even remotely close to this. More to the point, you give an extreme and isolate example for a specific game requiring a dedication bordering on insane and assuredly unhealthy. At 100 hours of game "practice" per week, that leaves 8.5 hours per day to do everything from sleep (and, according to doctors, you'd actually want to spend all of that time doing exactly that), eat, bathe, socialize, etc. Not even the most dedicated professional athletes at their prime would consider such an absurd training schedule for any length of time. More to the point, my fundamental argument remains true: that what you have demonstrated is a level of commitment to a leisure activity that an amateur simply couldn't meet.

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.

I never said they didn't. But, the difference is that, when training for an athletic competition one is required to suffer physically (e.g. pain, exhaustion), mentally (dealing with pain, psychological stress of competition, etc), and emotionally.

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.

It really doesn't. While there are plenty of sports for meatheads, there are countless examples where one's mental capacity is of equal importance to their physical ability. Fencing for example is often referred to as a game of physical chess with good reason; it is a game of bluff and counter-bluff acted out in the flesh. Physical skill matters but at high levels the bout is won and lost because one fencer was able to force the other fencer to make more mistakes. Most classic martial arts fall into this very category. It doesn't matter if you can deliver a brutal uppercut as a boxer if you can never land that punch squarely.

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

While I disagree with your basic premise regarding physical sports (in certain cases), I'd also say that the difference between physical and mental competition is both important to note and incredibly significant. Yes games can be as competitive as a sport; this does not make it a sport except by the loosest definition. Fundamentally, every sport is a game but not every game is a sport. There is no shame in this distinction. Chess and Go have managed to go thousands of years without being widely considered a "sport" and their appeal has not waned.

 

[Togs]

Eh.... "e-sport" to me is the wrong word for it, as there not sports- SC2 for example has more than a few chess like elements and chess isnt a sport but it is hella competitive and skill based.
There needs to be a better word for it, but search me if I can think of one.

 

[BanicRhys]

Given that our species is moving away from physical strength being the most important characteristic of a person and towards intellectual strength. I would argue that in this day and age e-sports are more of a "sport" than athletic sports.

 

[RedEyesBlackGamer]

I wouldn't consider them sports. I look at sports as something that involves physical athleticism. Basketball,football,soccer,etc.

 

[Tich]

Personally I find the name sport misleading because a lot of people then refer to the traditional sense of a sport. And e-sports definetely deserve a name of it's own. Specifically because it is so different from traditional sports but at the same time bears some resemblance to it.

Just to point out, I'd rather watch an exciting game of Starcraft II then watch any traditional sport. And very much the "e-sports" have become very spectatorheavy during the expansion of the internet. SO it's a growing medium and as such it needs to destinguish itself from sport. Much how like video games need to distinguish themselves from movies. And then be able to stand up on it's own.

 

[Something Amyss]

I recently had this argument with a competitive Team Fortress 2 player. His basis was that video games are a "skill" every bit as skillful as any tangible competition. You practice, you play, you win or you lose.

I felt otherwise, my reasoning being that the amount of dedication and endurance needed to be good at a game is very small compared to the kind of effort needed to become good at a physical sport. Even the extreme cases such as Korean Star-Craft the effort is simply playing a game for a extreme amount of time. Games are designed to be "fun" to play and keep you engaged. A sport is a competition, you can enjoy playing it, but its not specifically designed to keep you hooked as a player.

Also most fundamental gaming skills are universal,how many ways can first person shooters be reinvented? Strategy games? The same basic concepts are nearly universal. If you try to apply (American) Football skills to Basket Ball it doesn't work. You can't have a rugby team play Soccer (Rest Of The World Football) and except them to competitive. In Video games you can take a Call of Duty player and put him in Bad Company 2 and he'll still get along realitively well.

Now I'm not saying Games don't take skill. That would be a incredibly ignorant assumption. You have good players and bad players, if you compete in MLG or Game Battles you have practice, so yeah it works kind of like a sport. But over all effort put into it doesn't really match the effort needed to perform in a real life competition. Be it physical like a sport, or mental such as Chess.

There are games significantly more complicated than chess. However, I'm curious as to what Chess specifically has that video games do not, competitively speaking.

ONe can argue the lack of physical involvement, especially exertion, but that alone does not diminish the competitive value of =video games. And while the average shooter doesn't have the sort of mental input needed to rival chess, MMOs and strategy games largely have a root IN chess for exactly that sort of reason.

 

[Pyramid Head]

No. And since one word posts are absolutely forbidden, here's a picture of a dog in a hat: