I think what we need is a game show, where contestants play the ridiculous games like the paddling canoe and snowboarding and whatnot when they have little to no idea how to play the game, and have cash prices for those that win. I mean, if they can bring "hole in the wall" to TV, why not video games. I could see people watching that because you have a few good elements:
A: People making fools of themselves
B: Activity you can watch
C: Competition
D : Crazy announcer
They have it in Japan don't they? I forget what it was or is called.
The problem with including physical activity is that what sports are already considered sports that have little to no physical movement?
Archery? You pull back a bow string and release your fingers. One could think you could work up a bigger sweat playing an FPS.
Ping Pong? My wife and I talk about this every time the olympics come around because she doesn't think there's enough movement to consider it a sport.
Target Shooting? Isn't pulling a trigger similar in activity to clicking a button?
Where's the line drawn in physical activity that determines sport or not sport? Chess you move your whole arm and fingers when you're moving a piece, so there's physical activity in it. We can't just make up a boundary when there's so many activities that aren't clearly on one side or the other.
There remains a pretty wide chasm between the physical athleticism required for even target shooting or archery and chess or FPS aiming. I'm trying to find something closer to a gray area but it's not coming to me.
Dude, I live in Virginia and I flew to Belgium last year so I could see the Belgium Grand Prix. I most definitely think it's a sport, but it's doesn't fit nicely into the category of "ball" sports (baseball, football, soccer) where individual athleticism is more important than equipment.
F1 is a real whole team sport. Mechanics design the car, the clubs fund it, and the drivers race 'em around the track. Equipment is just as important as personal skill. It's one of the reasons we're seeing Button/Barrichello leading this season while Team Scuderia Ferrari is unranked.
So how does F1 racing provide an effective counter to my argument, then?
It takes a lot of physical prowess to play a violin concerto, and there are certainly competitions for it.
But the more important component of 'sport' is that it's a GAME with a WINNER. That's a far more central component of the definition than the physical element.
/edit: or to put it more clearly, body building competitions are judged. Violin competitions are judged. Games are not usually judged, they are refereed. Someone might need to do more situps to win a beauty pageant than they might need to do to win a CS tournament, but only the tournament is a game.
Sports are made up of games, so video games (and card games) are a better fit than skill/beauty competitions.
Dude, I live in Virginia and I flew to Belgium last year so I could see the Belgium Grand Prix. I most definitely think it's a sport, but it's doesn't fit nicely into the category of "ball" sports (baseball, football, soccer) where individual athleticism is more important than equipment.
F1 is a real whole team sport. Mechanics design the car, the clubs fund it, and the drivers race 'em around the track. Equipment is just as important as personal skill. It's one of the reasons we're seeing Button/Barrichello leading this season while Team Scuderia Ferrari is unranked.
So how does F1 racing provide an effective counter to my argument, then?
There are a lot of arguments going around, and you quoted my tree with BloodySloth, so I'm not 100% sure which argument you're talking about.
I generally disagree with the notion that a sport has to be "all physical." F1 supports this - though the drivers are in good physical shape, their physical prowess alone does not win the day.
And if you accept that, that's all the argument really requires. Gaming at a professional level requires exceptional training that contains physical elements (ie, hand/eye coordination). Is the body put under the same strains as auto racing? No, but then neither are baseball players.
I didn't say a sport is all physical. It just has to be a central part of the competition (as someone else said, the fact that it is a competitive event with a clear winner is also, obviously, a key element). As mentioned eariler, there's a reason racing is separated into "motorsport," but even then, I would say the driver is the primary focus. Clearly, he couldn't do it without an enormous team behind him that probably deserves as much credit as the driver himself, but then, boxers have a team of highly trained professional supporters as well. There are always background players, and, at the end of the day, people remember Schumacher, not the mechanics, engineers, yadda yadda yadda.
I'm aware that, at a certain point, there is a blurring of the lines. This happens with everything. Even in real life, if you look closely enough, there's a blurring between animal and plant, matter and absence of matter. That doesn't mean that the distinction is inconsequential. Hand-eye coordination is key in games, but I don't think that counts as "physicality" enough for it to be considered a sport event. All sports feature strong hand-eye coordination, and then another layer of physical action over that.
For all the reasons that have been previously discussed, it defies logic to thing pro-gaming will ever be as popular as the big four sports in America. The absolute peak I'd expect pro-gaming to reach would be Professional Poker, but more likely bowling or billiards. It's a niche sport that gets an hour or so on ESPN 2 on Sunday mornings. The average person can't name anyone playing it or the major tournaments. Like poker, you might get the occasional sudden burst in popularlity for a couple of years, then fade back into obscurity. The best players will make a comfortable paycheck by playing in a large amount of tournaments, but most won't.
There's no shame in this, given how crowded the sports market in America is and how well-established, mainstream sports fail to really break into the mainstream. Even with golf, few people can name anyone currently playing aside from Tiger.
I assume it's for the ironic content? Surely you don't think that billiards and surfing are taken seriously as sports.
And shouldn't you be tracking down a cheap PC and playing some of the awesome games you've missed? You'll never fully appreciate Obsidian until then, Mr. "KotOR2 makes them 0-1 in my book".
I assume it's for the ironic content? Surely you don't think that billiards and surfing are taken seriously as sports.
And shouldn't you be tracking down a cheap PC and playing some of the awesome games you've missed? You'll never fully appreciate Obsidian until then, Mr. "KotOR2 makes them 0-1 in my book".
Nah, fuck PC gaming.
Also I love his post 'cause he's basically like "Yeah woo! Sports is about making mad money and fuckin' chicks wooooo!"
I don't care if people get paid to play games, they can do whatever they want.
MLG though? Run by assholes, they just buy their way into everything, and they ruin every gaming forum because they think their setup for a game is the One and True way to play the game.
They'll probably go down in a couple of years after getting busted cooking their books.
Also they let people quit high school and get paid by them. That's also going to get Congress on their ass.
I mean come on, PAX holds a semi-casual Halo 3 tournament and two MLG teams show up in full gear and proceed to wipe every team out and the final is between them. They already had their own fucking event in the city, and the prize at most was worth 200$. What was the point of that?
This is what's wrong with the gaming community. You wanna know why "games as sports" might never happen? Because we're cannibalistic.
No, I don't really wanna know why games as sports wouldn't happen, because it's a stupid fucking idea. Games aren't sports. End of story. They'll never be accepted as such, no matter how many broad definitions anyone pulls out of their ass or from the dictionary.
No, I don't really wanna know why games as sports wouldn't happen, because it's a stupid fucking idea. Games aren't sports. End of story. They'll never be accepted as such, no matter how many broad definitions anyone pulls out of their ass or from the dictionary.
And I'm sure narrow minded people like you said the same things about baseball and basketball and football and soccer and every other sport invented.
I can also stand watching RTS games more than MLG halo.
RTS games are closer to chess.
All MLG Halo is let's remove everything that's interesting, start everyone with the most boring gun, and our entire "Top 10" list for each week is just a bunch of multi kill streaks. Yay?
No, probably not. See, those things involve physical activity, moving around, mental and physical prowess. Not just one side of the spectrum.
High school's over, man. You don't have to try and justify your hobby anymore beyond that "you like it."
Haha that's right fuck those nerds am I right? Nothing that takes any mental ability ever becomes popular so better pump dat iron and shotgun some brews? hey u up for some halo lateR? After that we bros can go play basketball shirtless w00t
No, probably not. See, those things involve physical activity, moving around, mental and physical prowess. Not just one side of the spectrum.
High school's over, man. You don't have to try and justify your hobby anymore beyond that "you like it."
Haha that's right fuck those nerds am I right? Nothing that takes any mental ability ever becomes popular so better pump dat iron and shotgun some brews? hey u up for some halo lateR? After that we bros can go play basketball shirtless w00t
Bravo, it's like you've captured a photograph of my life, dipshit.
Also, learn to read. What I'm saying is that a sport, an actual sport, requires both physicality and mentality, not just one or the other. You think baseball is all about just being able to hit a ball hard or throw far? Do you think football is just about running into each other?
For all the reasons that have been previously discussed, it defies logic to thing pro-gaming will ever be as popular as the big four sports in America. The absolute peak I'd expect pro-gaming to reach would be Professional Poker, but more likely bowling or billiards. It's a niche sport that gets an hour or so on ESPN 2 on Sunday mornings. The average person can't name anyone playing it or the major tournaments. Like poker, you might get the occasional sudden burst in popularlity for a couple of years, then fade back into obscurity. The best players will make a comfortable paycheck by playing in a large amount of tournaments, but most won't.
There's no shame in this, given how crowded the sports market in America is and how well-established, mainstream sports fail to really break into the mainstream. Even with golf, few people can name anyone currently playing aside from Tiger.
I don't know why this isn't getting more attention. Myself, I agree with Dag completely.
Unbreakable is arguing just fine, because he's right. Gaming is not a sport, it's a competition. Sports require some sort of physical ability, and gaming requires none.
That said, Fyre was dead on with his assessment of MLG. They are cock sucking douchebags who can't get over the fact that their rules are not the one and true rules. "THERE CAN ONLY BE ONE!" does not apply to video games. One of my friends would be GoW2 online a lot and he'd pop into servers and tell people that they should switch their server rules to MLG rules because that's the official way to play. It wasn't until I told him to fuck off that he didn't knock that shit off.
Basically what I'm saying is, Fuck MLG.
Edit: Also, Dagrabbit is right. Professional gaming will, and in some cases has (see: Madden, Halo), reach the levels of things like Poker and Bowling, and that's a-okay.
Unbreakable is arguing just fine, because he's right. Gaming is not a sport, it's a competition. Sports require some sort of physical ability, and gaming requires none.
Body Building is a competition. Ice Skating is a competition. CS is scored by a set of rules that don't require judging, which makes it a sport.
Unbreakable is arguing just fine, because he's right. Gaming is not a sport, it's a competition. Sports require some sort of physical ability, and gaming requires none.
Body Building is a competition. Ice Skating is a competition. CS is scored by a set of rules that don't require judging, which makes it a sport.
Well there's more to "sport" than athleticism, in my opinion.
Gaming though, still not a sport. And it never will be, under any definition.
Unbreakable is arguing just fine, because he's right. Gaming is not a sport, it's a competition. Sports require some sort of physical ability, and gaming requires none.
Body Building is a competition. Ice Skating is a competition. CS is scored by a set of rules that don't require judging, which makes it a sport.
That is a lackluster definition which, as has been said already, covers everything from music performance competitions to seeing who can balance a spoon on their nose the longest.
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Unbreakable is arguing just fine, because he's right. Gaming is not a sport, it's a competition. Sports require some sort of physical ability, and gaming requires none.
Body Building is a competition. Ice Skating is a competition. CS is scored by a set of rules that don't require judging, which makes it a sport.
That is a lackluster definition which, as has been said already, covers everything from music performance competitions to seeing who can balance a spoon on their nose the longest.
Either way, since it used to be that team sports were considered to be the hilarious nancy-boy games that were for people who were too weak to physically win at sprints or lifting competitions -- and now we include a ton of sports into the big tent that are far more mental than physical -- it only makes sense to say that people used to have a pretty archaic and limited view of the word 'sport'.
To be a sport, you must follow both criteria, not one or the other. That being, a hard line scoring system without judges determining score, and athletic ability. Gaming, in most cases, has one of those, but it fails to have the other. Thus, not a sport.
There's also a third, personal, rule that I use and that it's you must be actively playing against someone. In other words, Golf? Not a sport. You're playing against the course, not the other golfers. Tennis? Sport! Bowling? Not a Sport! Playing against the lane, not the other players.
Posts
That's what I say!
I'd pay to watch other people do that competitively. I wouldn't pay much, though.
A: People making fools of themselves
B: Activity you can watch
C: Competition
D : Crazy announcer
They have it in Japan don't they? I forget what it was or is called.
But the more important component of 'sport' is that it's a GAME with a WINNER. That's a far more central component of the definition than the physical element.
/edit: or to put it more clearly, body building competitions are judged. Violin competitions are judged. Games are not usually judged, they are refereed. Someone might need to do more situps to win a beauty pageant than they might need to do to win a CS tournament, but only the tournament is a game.
Sports are made up of games, so video games (and card games) are a better fit than skill/beauty competitions.
This doesn't really have to do with anything but I thought I'd mention that it takes an amazing amount of strength to use a bow.
I didn't say a sport is all physical. It just has to be a central part of the competition (as someone else said, the fact that it is a competitive event with a clear winner is also, obviously, a key element). As mentioned eariler, there's a reason racing is separated into "motorsport," but even then, I would say the driver is the primary focus. Clearly, he couldn't do it without an enormous team behind him that probably deserves as much credit as the driver himself, but then, boxers have a team of highly trained professional supporters as well. There are always background players, and, at the end of the day, people remember Schumacher, not the mechanics, engineers, yadda yadda yadda.
I'm aware that, at a certain point, there is a blurring of the lines. This happens with everything. Even in real life, if you look closely enough, there's a blurring between animal and plant, matter and absence of matter. That doesn't mean that the distinction is inconsequential. Hand-eye coordination is key in games, but I don't think that counts as "physicality" enough for it to be considered a sport event. All sports feature strong hand-eye coordination, and then another layer of physical action over that.
I think BloodySloth makes an excellent point about hand-eye coordination with added physical conditioning or prowess beyond that.
There's no shame in this, given how crowded the sports market in America is and how well-established, mainstream sports fail to really break into the mainstream. Even with golf, few people can name anyone currently playing aside from Tiger.
i mean, c'mon, let's be honest with ourselves; all we really care about is money and women.
so by this logic:
pro-basketball / baseball / american football = awesome
pro-billiards / skiing / surfing = pretty cool
pro-bowler / darts / gamer = meh
I disagree with your premise. If all you care about is money and women, fine by me, but don't paint the world with that brush.
Yes, no professional player of anything actually enjoys the game, it's all for the chicks
I love this post for so many reasons.
KotOR2 does kind of suck.
Nah, fuck PC gaming.
Also I love his post 'cause he's basically like "Yeah woo! Sports is about making mad money and fuckin' chicks wooooo!"
Which I find entertaining.
MLG though? Run by assholes, they just buy their way into everything, and they ruin every gaming forum because they think their setup for a game is the One and True way to play the game.
They'll probably go down in a couple of years after getting busted cooking their books.
Also they let people quit high school and get paid by them. That's also going to get Congress on their ass.
I mean come on, PAX holds a semi-casual Halo 3 tournament and two MLG teams show up in full gear and proceed to wipe every team out and the final is between them. They already had their own fucking event in the city, and the prize at most was worth 200$. What was the point of that?
No, I don't really wanna know why games as sports wouldn't happen, because it's a stupid fucking idea. Games aren't sports. End of story. They'll never be accepted as such, no matter how many broad definitions anyone pulls out of their ass or from the dictionary.
High school's over, man. You don't have to try and justify your hobby anymore beyond that "you like it."
Billiards and surfing are taken far more seriously than gaming ever will be.
Yeah but.. that actually took .. being athletic.
GM: Rusty Chains (DH Ongoing)
RTS games are closer to chess.
All MLG Halo is let's remove everything that's interesting, start everyone with the most boring gun, and our entire "Top 10" list for each week is just a bunch of multi kill streaks. Yay?
Wheel of Fortune: Now a sport.
Haha that's right fuck those nerds am I right? Nothing that takes any mental ability ever becomes popular so better pump dat iron and shotgun some brews? hey u up for some halo lateR? After that we bros can go play basketball shirtless w00t
I know I chuckled.
Bravo, it's like you've captured a photograph of my life, dipshit.
Also, learn to read. What I'm saying is that a sport, an actual sport, requires both physicality and mentality, not just one or the other. You think baseball is all about just being able to hit a ball hard or throw far? Do you think football is just about running into each other?
It's not?
That said, Fyre was dead on with his assessment of MLG. They are cock sucking douchebags who can't get over the fact that their rules are not the one and true rules. "THERE CAN ONLY BE ONE!" does not apply to video games. One of my friends would be GoW2 online a lot and he'd pop into servers and tell people that they should switch their server rules to MLG rules because that's the official way to play. It wasn't until I told him to fuck off that he didn't knock that shit off.
Basically what I'm saying is, Fuck MLG.
Edit: Also, Dagrabbit is right. Professional gaming will, and in some cases has (see: Madden, Halo), reach the levels of things like Poker and Bowling, and that's a-okay.
Body Building is a competition. Ice Skating is a competition. CS is scored by a set of rules that don't require judging, which makes it a sport.
Well there's more to "sport" than athleticism, in my opinion.
Gaming though, still not a sport. And it never will be, under any definition.
And is irrelevant anyway.
To be a sport, you must follow both criteria, not one or the other. That being, a hard line scoring system without judges determining score, and athletic ability. Gaming, in most cases, has one of those, but it fails to have the other. Thus, not a sport.
There's also a third, personal, rule that I use and that it's you must be actively playing against someone. In other words, Golf? Not a sport. You're playing against the course, not the other golfers. Tennis? Sport! Bowling? Not a Sport! Playing against the lane, not the other players.
The point is there only to illustrate that spoon hanging is a hell of a lot *more* sportlike than anything with a judge making subjective decisions.
Including, for instance, boxing.