I don’t know why this popped into my head, but I was thinking about the debate last year regarding whether or not E-Sports should be considered as a sport in the same vein as baseball, football etc. Thinking about it more, I came to realization that for high level competitive play, e-sports should be considered a sport if we look at some other popular sports in the world.
The Argument:
The debate as to whether or not competitive level video game playing or E-Sports can be classified as a sport and give the participants the same rights and privileges as other sporting events rested on one point that critics kept saying last year: “Video games are a competition.” Meaning that someone is not physically exerting themselves but instead the focus is on the screen. A sport by their definition is where people are exerting themselves physically against another person/team.
And the critics are right by the fact that you don’t tune in to a League of Legends tournament to watch a bunch of people in front of a computer typing and clicking very fast. However there are two parts of this argument that I want to bust, starting with the so call lack of physical exertion.
Game Training:
It’s a common misconception that video games are only about relaxing and something that doesn’t require much effort and there are a lot of games that would qualify as relaxing, especially the social game market. However, the games that we are talking about that would qualify as sports are anything but: Fighting games, strategy games, MOBAs, FPS, etc. These are games that require a high level of physical and mental commitment to achieve professional or E-Sports level of play.
Fighting games are both physically and mentally demanding when we’re talking about grand master play
Mastering a fighting game or getting your hand/eye coordination down for a FPS is very demanding and so is the amount of practice needed to attain that.
Just as there is a mental side to learning plays in football, there is the preparation needed by competitive gamers.
But the big point is the fact that many people consider poker a sport and that is very much against the common definition of what is a sport that critics of E-Sports claim. Someone mastering a game like Hearthstone has to put in the hours of commitment when it comes to fine-tuning decks, strategies and understanding the psychology at work. The other part of this critique is that the focus is on the game screen action and not on the person playing and this is where I had my epiphany on the topic.
Third Party Assist:
Video game competitions are obviously not about the person playing as we talked about in the sense that you’re not tuning in to watch people at a computer or game console. But the point is that there is one category of sporting events that also doesn’t have the athletes as the focus: Racing.
Racing is another event that has been debated in the past as to whether or not it can be classified as a sport with similar reasons as video games. Many people see it more about the car performance rather than the driver and that the drivers are simply doing something that most of us do for either leisure or for work.
But in my opinion, racing can be classified as a sport for the same reasons that video games can be. First is that the use of a car/video game doesn’t depreciate or downplay the skill of the person competing. Professional race car drivers train to be the best just as football teams or E-Sports players. Having the best car doesn’t mean anything if you have a rookie driver who can’t get around the track just like having the most expensive computer won’t help a MOBA player if they can’t master the game.
The best games that could be classified as sports are ones where the equipment, IE computer/gamepad is just a means to perform and let the person show off their skills
Secondly is that the car is a third party device that the driver uses to compete in the same way that a golfer uses a club or an E-Sports player uses a gamepad/keyboard and mouse.
The car isn’t competing but the person operating it is and the same thing applies to E-Sports. I know that some of you are probably getting ready to ask about horse racing since we are dealing with two competing factors obviously (the horse and the jockey,) but that is out of my area of expertise.
In my opinion as the definition of what’s considered a nerd or nerd culture has changed, now is the time to redefine what a sport in today’s market and culture is.
Rebranding Sports
The problem that this debate is based on is the very definition of a sport but as we’ve talked about, sporting events have evolved thanks to a lot more fields in the last two decades. This is why I feel that we need to reclassify what is a sporting event in light of the fact that it’s not just about the mainstays of football, baseball, soccer and basketball.
Sporting Event: A competition where a person/team is performing at a high level of mastery in their field against another person/team
The point of competing in a sporting event is that you are watching people who are experts at their chosen profession and it’s the skill involved, not the equipment they are using that is the point of the event. Everyone is training to be the best and the amount of time and dedication needed to reach that point is what should be admired.
As E-Sports continue to grow among gamers, we’re still waiting for that mainstream push onto major networks. The DOTA 2 broadcast was a good first step and hopefully is a sign that someday competitions like EVO and MLG can be enjoyed on one of the ESPN variants or even prime time on a major network.
