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Is Playing Video Games (Professionally Even) A Sport?
TheLizardbones
Member CommonPosts: 10,910
I was reading Cracked, and came across this article:
5 Petty Arguments You Won't Believe Have Scientific Answers (Page 2)
Item #2 on that page talks about whether or not Golf is a sport. Basically, the players need training, including aerobic training, or their game suffers when they reach their anaerobic threshold.
Playing video games professionally does require training, but will a game suffer if the player has a weak cardio system? Will aerobic training improve a gamer's ability to play long term game sessions? If so, it seems that Gaming can be classified as a sport, not just in the technical sense, but the classical sense.
What do you think?
Poll below just for grins.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
Comments
Upon first glance, I wouldn't consider it a sport any more than I'd consider chess a sport, but upon looking it up:
sport (sp
Jet Li, thinks so, as stated in is 2013 Interview about the Mount Hua invitational.
"If poker card games and chess both have the players sitting down and are considered sports, why not virtual gaming as well? There are 2 kinds of sports, 1 physical and 1 mental. There is no good reason to debunk virtual gaming as a sport, and I believe the participants of such virtual PvP events have the same mentality as physical athletes."
mmoculture.com
I think the key factor in deciding if something is a sport is, it has to be a test of skill and the outcome can't be decided by something random.
Cards are were it gets really fuzzy, because it is random but it's not decided by one hand. Being lucky tends not to hold up after a few hours of hands. The final outcome however can be decided through randomness between the 2 players who played with the most skill throughout the night.
Games that have too many RNG decide the outcome are just games. To be an E-Sport it has to be up to the players skill. Of course, we defined mmos once, and game makers now call anything with more than 2 players an mmo. I'm sure e-sports will become anything with pvp in it one day.
I would be willing to bet Jet Li is in better shape than anyone on these forums, and he's also a national Wushu champion in China. He's also been involved in some game development over the years, so I'll say I agree with him. :-) Plus he could probably punch a hole in my chest too, so I probably wouldn't disagree with him regardless.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
folks, its a marketing gimic, that's it, not a vast conspiracy to make us all obese and nearsighted.
i have never heard, in english at least, chess or poker referred to as a sport. perhaps Mr Li's translation skills are a bit off. or ... he's being fed an advertising line by the makers of Wushu.
"There are at least two kinds of games.
One could be called finite, the other infinite.
A finite game is played for the purpose of winning,
an infinite game for the purpose of continuing play."
Finite and Infinite Games, James Carse
Watching some of the Top-Tier StarCraft players I'm going with yes. I can barley Imagine how many calories someone rocking 300+ APM is burning through. Those guys are insane. They are insane to watch, and us mere mortals can't even come close to competing.
When I was in shape I could dunk, I wasn't half bad at baseball either, but never in my life could I be even CLOSE to what those guys pull off.
Now you have
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Mind_Sports_Association
I understand why people conflate sport and athletics - athletic competitions have been referred to as sport for a long time. It's just "sport" doesn't necessitate athleticism. http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/sport
There are various definitions and while a sport can be a physical competition, but it encompasses pretty much all recreation which has some interactive element.
Are e-sports athletic events? No. I would say they require extended duration of concentration, focus and awareness and that they require training/practice to perform at the top level, but I wouldn't say that they're athletic events.
Also of note, physicality is a weird thing, we have generally limited the concept of physicality to large movements (running, jumping, swimming). But smallers muscles, such as those in the fingers, are not considered physical movement in the realm of sport for many people. But the difference between a pro-gamer and a regular gamer is probably just as vast as the difference between a pro-athlete and someone who plays pick-up games on the weekends. It's not as obvious, but it requires plenty of fast twitch movement as well as high levels of coordination.
I will also say that even the most pro-e-sport gamers are very amateur as e-sports is still in it's infancy. If/when it become a more advanced form of sport, you will have farm teams, official trainers with coaches (it's done a little bit here and there, but imagine the same treatment a football team receives for a MOBA team). The difference will continue to expand.
I'm not a pro-gamer (or even aspiring to be one) so don't this as me trying to legitimize something I do because I don't compete. I don't have the time to dedicate to it and even if I did, the money isn't very good unless you're really one of the top top people.
Sooo, you think he is lying and does not believe Esports are real. Do you know Mr. Li?
Gaming is not a sport, neither is chess.
Both should be in the olympic games since they are both GAMES.
Racing, be it a marathon or the 100y dash, is not a game, it is a sport and should be removed from the olympic games.
Words, whatever they mean today either mean no dictionary has the right definitions or no one uses them correctly. People need to stop deforming words in an attempt to glorify themselves because their lives are too pathetic to have anything of value to look up to.
Boycotting EA. Why? They suck, even moreso since 2008.
Do you know... marketing?
Boycotting EA. Why? They suck, even moreso since 2008.
Is world class chess a sport?
Is the US Poker Championship a sporting event?
What about the US Open 9-ball Billiards Championship?
No. I don't think any of these are sports as such but they are legitimate competitions. They are contests based on games. Games that involve at least some skill can be a legitimate basis for a competition and video games are among them. When the competition become big enough and is followed by a portion of the public then often even competitors of games will have sponsors. That is, they will become professional. Leagues will form. Their will be rule making bodies. A lot of the same structures as with sports. But that doesn't make it a sport. It makes it, more generically, a competition.
So can someone be a professional non-sport competitor? Absolutely. They have been around for a long time.
All die, so die well.
No. It's a game, not a sport.
Gamers want it to be called a sport because it's an ego trip. They know telling a random person that they play a "professional sport" is much more socially acceptable and respected then saying they play "professional video games".
There are certain queer times and occasions in this strange mixed affair we call life when a man takes this whole universe for a vast practical joke, though the wit thereof he but dimly discerns, and more than suspects that the joke is at nobody's expense but his own.
-- Herman Melville
I refuse to answer a question in a poll where the creator is intentionally trying to be funny.
And what is this muffins crap? Is it the new 'cool kidz' internet trend or something? I've been seeing it a lot.
I've been a long time supporter of muffins. I'm not sure why it's spreading across the internet, but if it is, then it must mean that my support of muffins was a good decision.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
Baseball isn't a game? Football isn't either? A lot of sports are games, so I'm not sure I understand what you're trying to say.
Yeah, you're right. But, there is difference between real and virtual, you know.
awesome, of course.
"There are at least two kinds of games.
One could be called finite, the other infinite.
A finite game is played for the purpose of winning,
an infinite game for the purpose of continuing play."
Finite and Infinite Games, James Carse