Starcraft II Considered For Future Olympics - Page 12

On August 03 2012 12:03 Vindicare605 wrote:


This is a poorly worded question.

In what way is shooting or equestrian sports physical activity?

Sure it requires training and practice to become a truly skilled contestant but so do e-sports.

By your wording of said question a huge number of events could be invalidated because they arent physical enough.

Who's to say that SC3 ought to be considered a different sport from SC2? Since the SC2 expansions will clearly be out before 2020, the people in this thread appear to be fine with calling them same sport as SC2 itself, so is it completely obviously the case that the differences in SC3 will make it a different sport?

Consider some athletic sport analogies. I'd say the introduction of the DH in American League baseball is comparable in magnitude to introducing new units and it completely altered the required skill sets for a number of players. Adjustments over time to the strike zone, height of the pitcher's mound, and ball composition are similarly comparable to stat alterations. You could of course make similar comparisons in other sports such as with the constant rule-changing in the NBA and NFL and their respective introductions of such game-changers the 3-point line and the 2-point conversion.

The strongest counter-claim, it seems to me, is that SC2 players more or less have to completely relearn the new game, and as the current BW pro transition is showing, it can take them quite some time to adapt. This is certainly a compelling difference, but there are a few challenges to it. First, this is nearly as true of the expansions as it is of the sequels, but everyone here seems fine labeling them the same sport. Second, there are limited comparisons even to this type of change in athletic sports. For instance, baseball's outlawing of the spitball ended the careers of many who thrived off of it (though most of these were grandfathered) and the DH rule can make certain inept fielders more or less completely incapable of succeeding in the National League.

In short, there might not be anything completely revolutionary in thinking of the chain of SCs as a single, continuous sport undergoing gradual changes but surviving through them, and perhaps we should adjust to thinking this way.