Andrew Sha
Professor Phillips
English 151 B
25 December 2014
Sports with Video Gaming? The definition of sports is as of the following: (n) an athletic activity requiring skill or physical prowess and often of a competitive nature. This definition is outdated and you would not be able to use it in this generation. However, the key word in this version of sport would be "or". Video games have been talked about throughout the years ever since video games first came out. There have been multiple discussions about video games which can vary from "do violent video games contribute to youth violence" to "glitches in video games". Though, a topic that has been overlooked quite often is: Could you consider video games as a sports? More specifically e-sports (electronic sports). My answer to this question is that it can and will be considered as a sport. You may say that a sport is an activity that has to do with your body physically moving but take for instance chess. Chess is considered a sport by many people in Asia, Europe and even some in America; in fact, there is even an Olympiad for chess which is also the world's fourth largest sporting event (Chess24). And since there is an Olympiad, that means that the government recognizes it as a sport. A very popular video game that can be compared to chess would be Starcraft 2. Like chess, Starcraft 2 is very mentally demanding, and it is the most physically demanding video game to boot. I dare you to try and keep a constant 350-400 APM (actions per minute) for around 30-45 minutes (average Starcraft 2 match) while trying to outmaneuver your opponent and positioning your units around. Thus, the most accurate description of this game is like playing chess and Chopin (The Rise of the Professional Cyber Athletes 2014) at the same time but if you make one single mistake for both the activities, you lose. If you're confused, read the example below. An average chess game has 64 fields and each player will get 16 pieces to move around and think about where to move them; Starcraft 2 has 25600 fields and you start out with 6 units, eventually getting around 150 to 200 units. Also, in chess you have about 5 minutes to make a move while in Starcraft 2 you have about 0.2 seconds to make a move (Antares23 Should Pro gamers be considered Athletes? 2012 comment). The amount of reflex and coordination that it takes to play this game is both physically and mentally exhausting. For everyone who still considers sports having to do something with physical, I question you this: Why is poker considered a sport? Another thing poker has going for it, sports-wise, is that ESPN and the Fox Sports Network both cover it regularly (Lovinger 2004). Not just poker, but there are many other activities that are also considered a sport, some of which are the following: NASCAR, golf, archery, and shooting . The reason being is that there is a certain extent of skill and competition for the aforementioned to be a sport. The same goes for video-games where there are many competitions going on, examples like LCS (League of Legends Championship Series), The International (Defense of the Ancients 2 World Championship), CS:GO (Counter Strike: Global Offensive) Tournament, or Starcraft 2. There are millions of views from around the world for these competition, the highest of which being the LCS of 2014 with a whopping 32 million people! It even beats how many people viewed the NBA Finals and the BCS National Champion both of which only had around 26 million views, and MLB World Series which had a mere 15 million (usatoday 2014).
LoL (League of Legends) can be in comparison to volleyball. In a volleyball team, the players would have to work with your other teammates with split seconds decisions to even stand a chance against the opponent. Let’s say this: in a game of League, you and your team are about to have a teamfight and you must coordinate your attacks to completely demolish the other team. Your teammates set it