EPTWhat seperates eSports from Sports? - Page 7
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SichuanPanda
Canada1542 Posts
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Barbiero
Brazil5259 Posts
On December 15 2010 08:16 SichuanPanda wrote: The reason is that playing video games builds one's mental capacity and thinking ability, and essentially the more one thinks the more one will question the authority figures installed in parents and schools. This is the primary reason that parents, schools, and governments alike are so quick to denounce video games on a whole, and eSports. The more one works their brain the more they will question the often completely insane decisions of authority figures in society and (likely what such figures fear even more) is that you will be able to prove those with lesser capacity wrong on a plethora of topics. Regular sports require a great physical aptitude, training to the point of muscle memory, and quick reaction times, but they rarely require the intense level of mental aptitude seen in eSports. The mental aspect in regular sports can sometimes reach such a level, but only for the best of the best (Michael Jordan, Tiger Woods, Wayne Gretzky - These type of players). The type of constantly demanding mental fortitude, that is seen in eSports and specifically StarCraft and that is required by any level of professional player is quite simply unequaled by any other traditional sport. Thats a shitload of conspiracy stuff. me likes. | ||
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ShangMing
Canada106 Posts
On December 15 2010 07:50 ashaman771 wrote: There are two necessary (but not sufficient) conditions for an activity to be a sport. -Competition -Physical Exertion Card games are not sport. Poker, Dominion, Magic the gathering aren't sports. Board games aren't sport. Monopoly, Chess, Tide of Iron aren't sports. Video games aren't sport. SC2, Halo, Quake aren't sports. Pub games aren't sport. Pool, darts aren't sports. Competition alone isn't sport. My friend and I trying to beat eachother on a math test isn't sport. Physical Exertion alone isn't a sport. Me running up 50 stories of stairs isn't a sport. Even activities that have both competition and physical exertion aren't sport. My friend and I trying to build a house fastest isn't a sport. Sport, as well as requiring competition and physical exertion requires the added dimension of cultural acceptance of the activity as a sport. SC2, Halo, Quake are competition. It takes skill, it takes practice, it's fun to play and watch, but a sport it is not. Being a relatively high rated chess player, I have to strongly disagree with you. I've done physical sports, chess and starcraft, and by far the most demanding physically and mentally is chess. You have obviously never sat down for 2-3 hour games, three times in one day--(and in fact, the top chess players are extremely physically fit) and nor have you seen how competitive chess is at the professional level. Due to your own inexperience, you label chess not a "sport"--I suggest you go do your research, because it fills both your initial criteria, as well as the cultural aspect. Of course, in North America there is barely any competition, but there are entire schools dedicated to chess in Russia, and chess clubs and tournaments all over Europe. | ||
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nK)Duke
Germany936 Posts
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sammler
United Kingdom381 Posts
On December 15 2010 08:16 SichuanPanda wrote: The reason is that playing video games builds one's mental capacity and thinking ability, and essentially the more one thinks the more one will question the authority figures installed in parents and schools. This is the primary reason that parents, schools, and governments alike are so quick to denounce video games on a whole, and eSports. The more one works their brain the more they will question the often completely insane decisions of authority figures in society and (likely what such figures fear even more) is that you will be able to prove those with lesser capacity wrong on a plethora of topics. Regular sports require a great physical aptitude, training to the point of muscle memory, and quick reaction times, but they rarely require the intense level of mental aptitude seen in eSports. The mental aspect in regular sports can sometimes reach such a level, but only for the best of the best (Michael Jordan, Tiger Woods, Wayne Gretzky - These type of players). The type of constantly demanding mental fortitude, that is seen in eSports and specifically StarCraft and that is required by any level of professional player is quite simply unequaled by any other traditional sport. This seems reasonable. I deem this our official response! | ||
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Barbiero
Brazil5259 Posts
On December 15 2010 08:27 nK)Duke wrote: With sports, you can get laid. Big misconception, I used to do sports and I didnt have a chance to get laid at all. Swimming just consumed too much of my time so I couldn't even get in a relationship or whatsoever. | ||
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Kimaker
United States2131 Posts
On December 15 2010 07:50 ashaman771 wrote: There are two necessary (but not sufficient) conditions for an activity to be a sport. -Competition -Physical Exertion Card games are not sport. Poker, Dominion, Magic the gathering aren't sports. Board games aren't sport. Monopoly, Chess, Tide of Iron aren't sports. Video games aren't sport. SC2, Halo, Quake aren't sports. Pub games aren't sport. Pool, darts aren't sports. Competition alone isn't sport. My friend and I trying to beat eachother on a math test isn't sport. Physical Exertion alone isn't a sport. Me running up 50 stories of stairs isn't a sport. Even activities that have both competition and physical exertion aren't sport. My friend and I trying to build a house fastest isn't a sport. Sport, as well as requiring competition and physical exertion requires the added dimension of cultural acceptance of the activity as a sport. SC2, Halo, Quake are competition. It takes skill, it takes practice, it's fun to play and watch, but a sport it is not. Come on now...the insane physical aspect of being able to move that quickly and with that much precision (SC2) would qualify as physical exertion. I mean, go watch some hour long TvT's from Proleauge, and you can see the sweat, POURING off of those guys. Maintaining that much speed and precision for so long is physically draining. Baseball has as much physical exertion as that. | ||
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TBO
Germany1350 Posts
On December 15 2010 07:50 ashaman771 wrote: There are two necessary (but not sufficient) conditions for an activity to be a sport. -Competition -Physical Exertion Card games are not sport. Poker, Dominion, Magic the gathering aren't sports. Board games aren't sport. Monopoly, Chess, Tide of Iron aren't sports. Video games aren't sport. SC2, Halo, Quake aren't sports. Pub games aren't sport. Pool, darts aren't sports. Competition alone isn't sport. My friend and I trying to beat eachother on a math test isn't sport. Physical Exertion alone isn't a sport. Me running up 50 stories of stairs isn't a sport. Even activities that have both competition and physical exertion aren't sport. My friend and I trying to build a house fastest isn't a sport. Sport, as well as requiring competition and physical exertion requires the added dimension of cultural acceptance of the activity as a sport. SC2, Halo, Quake are competition. It takes skill, it takes practice, it's fun to play and watch, but a sport it is not. Bridge officially is recognized by the IOC as sport... The definition of what sport is is just so incredibly arbitrary that I don't think any fruitful result can come out of this discussion (hell the word origin "desport" even just means "leisure"). I think a more useful discussion would be whether and to what degree e-sports share the positive aspects of traditional sports like Cross-Cultural Communication, Fairness, mutual respect etc. I mean I am really impressed by how positive the foreigners are being treated in Korea - Its hard to imagine a traditional sport where the majority of the audience will cheer for some foreigner instead of their own representative - in starcraft the personality and playstyle seem to matter more than the nationality while in traditional sports its moreoften other way around - I am guilty of that myself  | ||
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cplo
6 Posts
Video games are a hobby, not a sport, and calling them eSports just makes them look MORE nerdy in the eyes of the public, who think you are trying to make something traditionally nerdy sound cool (which is exactly what you are doing) | ||
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mprs
Canada2933 Posts
On December 15 2010 04:52 Bluetea wrote: eSports = electronic, on a screen usually Sports = IRL, using your body, etc. You know, I'd love to see a video game where I can play without my body... | ||
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mordk
Chile8385 Posts
On December 15 2010 08:39 cplo wrote: Parents arent the only ones who dont approve of it. Go ask anyone else, not in this gaming "scene", what they think of starcraft. They will think its really lame. Its not some generational divide, its that its just kind of....lame. Dont get me wrong, I love playing, but to compare it to football is ridiculous. The amount of training required to get good at football, and to stay good at football, is completely different than either Starcraft or Chess. Comparing them is doing a disservice to the actual athletes who spent so much time training (the training is much much harder than training for video games) and destroy their bodies. Video games are a hobby, not a sport, and calling them eSports just makes them look MORE nerdy in the eyes of the public, who think you are trying to make something traditionally nerdy sound cool (which is exactly what you are doing) Same argument, society makes the sport, go ask russian parents what would they think if their kid became a pro chess player, I'm sure they'd be the happiest parents ever. Just because you believe physical training is more valuable doesn't make it so. Collective thinking that it is is what finally makes it true. | ||
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SniXSniPe
United States1938 Posts
On December 15 2010 08:24 ShangMing wrote: Being a relatively high rated chess player, I have to strongly disagree with you. I've done physical sports, chess and starcraft, and by far the most demanding physically and mentally is chess. You have obviously never sat down for 2-3 hour games, three times in one day--(and in fact, the top chess players are extremely physically fit) and nor have you seen how competitive chess is at the professional level. Due to your own inexperience, you label chess not a "sport"--I suggest you go do your research, because it fills both your initial criteria, as well as the cultural aspect. Of course, in North America there is barely any competition, but there are entire schools dedicated to chess in Russia, and chess clubs and tournaments all over Europe. Chess is the most physically demanding? That is wrong on numerous accounts. Mentally, yes. Physically? No. And as for the "top players are extremely physically fit", this depends on what you mean by "extremely". Running 5-6 miles in one setting is not being "extremely physically fit". Benching/Squatting/Dead lifting you own weight is not being "extremely physically fit". What matters is the quality. | ||
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BeefyKnight
United States127 Posts
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Zaros
United Kingdom3692 Posts
Why should a battle of brain power be valued less than a battle of physical power? Probably coming down to a few factors: 1) Sports are hundreds of years old some even thousands and society has grew up with them where as esports as a concept is only 10 years old, you cant possibly hope to match 1000 year old traditions with a 10 year concept that has only really took off in 1 country (so far) 2) Viewability - sports do not soley depend on the graphical ability of computers and TVs, if you want to see a football match you can go buy a ticket and watch it in person and the TV technology has become basically perfected for sports. If you want to watch a SC2 match you have to go onto the computer and watch a stream, if it happens to be laggy your screwed. I dont think its to do whether you can't see the players or its hard to see whats going on because its not, ESL showed the players while they were playing in the global gamescom and GSL does it and im sure this will be added into many more tournaments, and to understand what is going on isnt that hard if you try. The viewability issue will inevitably improve as the rest of the world catches up with the broadband technology that korea has and with the gradually improvement of streaming technology this problem should gradually disapear. 3) Cultural stigma; the western world tends to have alot of stigma against gamers, such that they are lazy, socially inept and genrally quite boring. This infact is the complete opposite of the truth and proffessional gamers are some of the most hard working, socially active and entertaining people in the world (take incontrol for example) and not just the gamers all the commentators and other inspiring community members. As starcraft 2 grows and gets more coverage people will eventually realise that the genralisation is not the case and start to drop their stigma against gamers. Overall this is going to take time, its not going to happen in a matter of months but will be inevitably faster to take ahold of society than a traditional sport due to the massive and growing communications powers of the internet. So my final summary is that esports and sports are just different mediums of competition using differents aspects of ones life (brain power vs physical power) and i would advise to be patient and just watch as many tournaments as possible either in person or on the internet because thats whats going to attract media attention and growth in the scene. | ||
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ShamTao
United States419 Posts
At the moment, Starcraft is too inaccessible. People just see things moving across a screen. To know somebody is really good at starcraft you pretty much have to play it. Anybody can watch the 100m dash at the olympics and say "DAMN he's fast! He must train really hard to be able to run like that." Starcraft, not so much. | ||
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mufin
United States616 Posts
On December 15 2010 06:41 REM.ca wrote: Speaking from a very limited experience, marksmanship sports actually require a lot of physical training to keep the stabilizer muscles in peak condition for accurate shooting. I'm suprised this conversation is still going on. Even the community doesn't consider video games as sport...hence the invention and use of a different category: esports. If we really thought SC2 was a sport, we'd simply call it a sport instead of parading it as an esport. So the difference between sports and esports is that esports...aren't sports at all. We just call them that way because we're not satisfied with the label of "game". Mario Bros is a game...Farmville is a game....So many people devote so much time and energy into SC2 and it is so competitive that it can't possibly share the same category as those lame examples. So to better represent how we feel about SC2, SF4, CS, etc we created a new category for them that reflects the spirit of competition. And what's more competitive than sports? So esports makes sense in that way. However, as was mentionned earlier in this thread, physical activity is required for a game to fit the definition of a sport. That's just the way the word is defined. It doesn't mean SC2 is less competitive or less worthy of our time. The OP was very good at listing similarities between sports and esports that make the latter quite valid. Lack of physical activity DOES, however, exclude video games from the definition of sports. The same thing applies to poker, cards, chess which are all very competitive with high skill caps but are categorized as GAMES and not sports. So by definition SC2 is a competitive game but not a sport. It's still ok to call it an esport since that's a poorly defined word anyway. Personnally though I think esports is inadequate and kind of a clumsy terminology. tldr: esports are not sports...they're esports or games. ^^ This 100% People really need to stop getting so caught up in the whole "e-sport" vs "sport" business and take it for what it is; a name, NOT a definition. SC2 doesn't need to be a sport to be socially accepted and profitable. Competition is competition my friends and in the end people just want to be entertained. | ||
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kassi
United States290 Posts
But I think a bigger issue is the turnover in eSports. There are new games coming out every month, a new hit each year. In the general public's mind, there are very few computer/video games that can become worthy of a lifetime profession unlike football/soccer/hockey which will continue to exist. Parents don't want their kids to spend so much time training for something that may be just a fad. | ||
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ionlyplayPROtoss
Canada573 Posts
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Slasher
United States1095 Posts
User was warned for this post | ||
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Zergneedsfood
United States10671 Posts
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