Starcraft II Considered For Future Olympics - Page 21

On August 04 2012 09:08 0123456789 wrote:
Can't wait to hear some stories of SCII players at the Sex Olympic Village.

http://espn.go.com/olympics/summer/2012/story/_/id/8133052/athletes-spill-details-dirty-secrets-olympic-village-espn-magazine

On August 04 2012 10:10 publicenemies wrote:

Bisu gonna be getting all that ass

On August 04 2012 17:11 xSilverx wrote:
lol so much hate on that..... I would defenetly want to see starcraft on the olympics! I will spread the word and forece everyone to join for the cause of Auir!!! Seriously? i thought everyone here wanted starcrafft to get bigger?, if it´s bigger then more prises and events, and more money for the pros ofc

On August 03 2012 09:09 Fischbacher wrote:
This is never going to happen for StarCraft II and not for years and years for e-sports in general. Here is why:
To get into the Olympics, the first step is to have an International Federation with affiliated national federations in many countries across most (if not all) continents. The International Federation must be of significant importance - essentially for StarCraft we would need a KeSPA-like organization but that has worldwide jurisdiction. Not something I foresee happening anytime soon. The closest thing to an international body eSports has is the International eSports federation (IeSF) but they couldn't even get South Koreans to take part in a tournament they organized in South Korea. For the records, the IeSF is currently recognized by the Olympic Council of Asia but not by any other branches of the Olympic moment.
Second step is to get said International Federation to be recognized by the IOC (International Olympic Committee) as the proper governing body for the sport. For this to realisticly happen you need about 50 national federations across 5 continents.
Third step, you need at /least/ 100 national federation across 5 continents to even be eligible to apply to become part of the games. The restriction is much lower for the Winter Olympics, but as the Winter Olympics require the event to take place on ice or snow eSports is not eligible.
Fourth step, petition the IOC's executive board to be shortlisted as a potential sport. This process is actually a huge hurdle. For 2020, the shortlisted sports are Baseball/Softball, Squash, Roller Sports (Roller blade speed skating), Sports Climbing, Wakeboarding and Wushu (modern Kungfu). Some sports like Bowling and Chess have been trying to get over this hurdle for years with no success.
Fifth step, hope and pray one of the current 28 sports gets dropped.
Sixth step, hope and pray your sport replaces on of the sport(s) to get dropped.
Seventh step: wait seven years until your sport is held at the Olympics for the first time.

Oh, and there is the issue of gender equality. No new event can be added if it isn't gender inclusive. Beyond all other issues, including the lack of a credible IF and the fact that eSports is arguably way too volatile to be included into a quadrennial event, the lack of female competitors in eSports really would hurt any bid. Essentially unless we get to a situation where 30-50% of credible programmers are female any bid would need to include female-only events in equal number to male-only events, and the extremely shallow tallent pool of such events would probably tank any bid anyway.

Point is, if we see eSports at the Olympics it won't be for at least another 20 years, if everything goes absolutely perfectly. Going perfectly includes:
1. a credible eSports federation that has real power over MLGs, IPLs, KeSPA, Gom, et cetera sometime two years ago.
2. a sudden and dramatic rise in the number of quality female progamer and either a. female progamers becoming regular challengers and winners in big eSports events or b. a near-equal number of female-only events to coincide with the number of current de-facto male-only events.
3. A regular world championship organized by the credible eSports federation.
4. Inclusion into the regular Asian Games (indoor Asian Games is nice but pretty much meaningless) and Pan-Am games.
5. eSports programmers being subject to regular and random out of competition and in competition drug testing (yes, requirement to even be considered for the Olympics, no matter the sport).

Also, an eSports bid would probably need to be for eSports in general, with events being "categories" of games that would be filled by the most popular game of the quadrennial that fits into the category. That's the only way to get arround how volatile eSports is. So essentially at every Olympics there could be a specific number of events for RTSs, FPSs, racing games, MOBAs, fighets, et cetera but those slots might be filled by different games every time.

Did I mention it's not happening anytime soon, if ever?


The horses do get medals at the Olympics :-P

On August 04 2012 16:53 OneOther wrote:
Starcraft is not a sport -> It takes multitasking skills and handeye coordination -> No physical skill such as in basketball or soccer -> But chess is a sport -> Chess is more difficult -> Starcraft is not a sport.

This discussion has been done over and over and over.

In my opinion, putting Starcraft in Olympics is an absurd idea. For one, the truth is that it simply does not take as much mental or physical training/strength at Olympics sports no matter how you get around it. Archery? Have you tried shooting an arrow? It's a very difficult sport, just because they are not sprinting at full speed does mean otherwise. Secondly, where the hell do we draw the line? Tetris? Call of Duty? Halo? NBA 2K12? Not just video games, what about rubix cube? Jenga? These all take skills and training. Just because it takes certain skills does mean it qualifies as a legitimate sport, let alone for the Olympics. Aren't the Olympics supposed to display the peak of human physical capability, bred through countless hours of training and raw talent? I mean, as much as I love Starcraft, come on now - I feel like we are arguing just to argue about it because you can pretty much make a point for how anything can qualify as a "sport." It's just dumb.