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Videogames Aim For Olympic Recognition
Chris Morris at CNN's Game Over column reports that there is a push on for possible representation of pro gaming at the 2008 Olympics. From the article: "Television networks are getting interested, too. NBC's USA Network will air a series of seven hour-long shows featuring Major League Gaming tournaments this fall. But financial and network interest don't earn a sport an Olympic berth; Just ask fans of golf, motorcycle racing and bowling - or, for that matter, baseball, which (along with softball) will be dropped from the Olympics in 2012. And the fact that video gaming is so technology dependent could be particularly damaging."
One thing Olympic sports have in common is that the rules of play don't change that much each cycle. Soccer is played on a flat field retangular field every time. The mass of a discus or javelin is always the same it was last time. Oh, and it doesn't matter who makes the balls, timing devices, or shoes used, those are interchangable sponsors that can change every cycle.
If there were to be an Olympic First-Person Shooter event, everybody would have to play the same sanitized game which wouldn't have any new maps utilize the latest whiz-bang technology. Imagine America's Army gone open source and stripped of American and Teriorist designations.
This is just not going to happen. Forget about it. Nothing to see here.
Making video gaming into an Olympic sport is silly. "Video gaming" is really more like a grouping of many, many distinct sports rather than one sport. What games would be played? How would records be kept? How could you have a "world record" in videogaming? Presumably, the games we play now are vastly different from the games that will be played in 50 or 100 years, so how do you compare records from one era to the next?
Other Olympic sports are discrete entities with well-defined rules that don't change much over decades or centuries. Video gaming changes significantly from one year to the next.
The Olympics are about physical achievement and performance.
Videogames do not promote such ideals. Otherwise we'd might as well add BEER PONG to the list of events.
Jeeeezzzzzz!
"I'm a humble person really,
I'm actually much greater than I think I am"
It'll never happen, and as an avid gamer myself, I say "Thank God!"
If the Olympics accept gamers, then it'll be one more excuse for them to not get outside, ride a bike, etc. The Olympics are for physical athletes, not people with unusually high twitch-response ability.
Unpleasantries.
All the other issues with this (that others have mentioned) don't even matter because video games aren't sports to begin with! This would be as ludicrous as making Poker or Tax Accounting Olympic "sports!"
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
Everything I say is a lie. Except that... and that... and that, and that, and that, and that... and that.
Isn't one of the main goals of the olympics to unite diverse people from all over the world, because sport is such a great unifier?
Videogames are not universally accessible by any means that disqualifies it from being an olympic sport, period.
Uhhhm...no, I don't think so. Archery is about patience and steadiness. There's no worry that if you don't get a bullseye in 0.01sec from seeing the target, it will shoot you back. Same for shooting. Table tennis...vaguely, sorta, kinda. But it requires far more than depressing a finger / thumb 1/4", and the ability to move your whole arm, as well as your body for wild shots, is more a matter of overall health than twitch. As for curling...I don't even see how that has anything at all to do with 'twitch response'. It's repetition of the same thing every time, and trying to do that thing perfectly. There's no surprise involved.
Unpleasantries.
Olympic Recognition? It'd be nice if what was shown by NBC was recognizable as the Olympics. IMNSHO, the Olympics haven't been the Olympics since, say, Munich. Rather than penalize countries that refused to play by the rules (East Germany, Soviets, etc.) the IOC just rolled over and let full-time professionals compete. From that point it's been downhill. Ever since it's been one doping scandal after another. And that's just the Summer Games. The Winter Olympics have been a disgrace for even longer what with a host of stupid sports that require judges who are incapable of acting like adults. ("Oh, dear, the British skater got low marks from the Romanian judge. Could that be in response to the 3.5's that the Soviet skater received from the U.S. judge?") Judges, check your politics at the door. The Games were about athletic competition, not geopolitical competition. Oh, and any country that turns down their invitation to the Games forfiets their right to compete for the next couple of Games. Yes, I realize that the U.S. wouldn't have gotten to go for boycotting the Moscow Games. Tough. Geez, there are so many things about the Olympics that are screwed up.
Once, the Olympics were about the individual athletes or teams. NBC pretty much single-handedly turned it into a competition between countries. I never got that same sense when ABC covered the Games. While there was always a bit of that -- the athletes themselves expressing their pride and all -- NBC made it obnoxious what with their semi-hourly update on the medal count and how many gold medals the U.S. had won. Rarely, if ever, is it U.S. athletes that won medals; it's that the U.S. has won the medals. It's, IMO, a nauseatingly jingoistic shift away from the individuals' achievements to something that the nations had somehow achieved. (I'm surprised that Bob Costas hasn't said something about the superiority of American cord-fed beef being the deciding factor in the competition.) You'd be right if you guessed that I'm not in favor of the obligatory, flag waving victory laps either. The IOC ought to be shutting that practice down. Hard.
How refreshing it would be to toss out every single sport that doesn't have an outcome that meets the Olympic goal of higher, faster, and stronger. Heck, it wouldn't take as long to hold an Olympics if they were to dump all the so-called sports that awarded medals for "prettier". (Don't even get me started on Rhythmic Gymnastics. I might be carrying a blunt object.) Nah, we couldn't have that. Think of the losses in advertising revenue. Bu-u-ut... what if NBC were banned from covering the Olympics for, say, the next 20 years. On second thought, make that 30 years. That would be a good start. The IOC coming down hard on the politization of the Games would be another welcome step.
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