Slashdot Mirror
Gaming In Sweden Bigger Than Football and Hockey
An anonymous reader writes "SIFO (a major Swedish survey company) has conducted a gaming survey right before the launch of Dreamhack Winter. One of the results is that gaming is bigger than football and hockey combined."
It's easy to understand why. Have you ever tried kicking a football on skates?
-=Bang Bang=-
Um, no.
Jocks and athletes have power in secondary schools simply because their ego is fed by the swooning girls who are hardwired to look for guys who can protect them. In secondary school, girls think that big, strong guys provide the daddy-style protection that they covet. It's not until later (20 to 30) that most women figure out it's the nerds that will provide the economic protection that they really want. Of course, by that time, the nerds will have picked up zero in the socialisation department and not know what to do to pick up the chicks.
An urban legend my good man: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_suicide_rate
If you actually knew any history about football, you would know that the "foot" in "football" has absolutely zero to do with kicking. It has to do with the fact that it's played on foot, as opposed to other historical games that were played on horseback. Football's origins go back much further than any other modern sport (possibly as far as the last century BC), hence why the term "football" still applies, even though under the original broad definition, basketball and baseball would also qualify. Neither Soccer nor American Football is close to how "real" football was originally played in most places, that honor goes to Rugby. (Although both Soccer and American Football do have roots going back for enough, it's impossible to say *for sure* that there weren't certain places that played with similar rules. Rugby just most closely resembles the most popular form of the game.) The only significant thing American Football added that wasn't there since the beginning is downs, and a turnover or punt due to not being able to gain a certain amount of yards in a certain amount of downs (first put into place in 1882). Soccer changed the game altogether. Yes, American Football is just as close or closer to how the game was originally played than Soccer is.
There is no -1 Disagree mod. Slashdot.org/faq defines mod options. USE IT.
Does this mean when Starcraft 2 comes out I will start seeing borkborkborks instead of just kekekes?
Museums, it turns out, have much higher attendance in aggregate than professional sports. They have a much greater net economic impact than professional sports as well. A single headliner museum in a city can bring in a quarter of a billion dollars annually; the Boston Museum of Fine Arts (an absolutely amazing place) was shown to bring in 369 million annually to the Boston area in a recent study. This is actually comparable to the annual revenue of the Red Sox; the net impact of the Red Sox on regional economy might be somewhat more, but there are a lot more comparable cultural institutions in Boston than there are comparable sports teams. You can walk across the street from the MFA to the Gardner, a smaller but equally culturally significant art museum. Boston is a famous sports town, but it is stuffed to the gills with cultural institutions that have heavy attendance every day (except possibly Mondays) year round.
I think one of the reasons for the outsize impact of cultural institutions is that they have a mission to have an impact. They're supposed to maximize bodies in the doors, eyeballs on the exhibits. Sports franchises aren't run that way. They're run to maximize profit.
Gaming's higher impact is likewise related to the fact you can do it every day. However it isn't going to have the same economic impact as having strong cultural institutions.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
I play one aerobic sport quite seriously (football aka soccer). I find that aerobic sports (and quasi-aerobic sports, such as volleyball) tend to be more fun to play. On the other hand, i find that they are generally rather dull to watch as the strategic intricacies are largely removed. You may talk about split-second strategic awareness that a rugby player might have and i could spill equivalent verbage about soccer. However, the reality is that while there is some sort of beauty about so many minds independently and in real time coming up with collective "brilliant" solutions to sports problems (such as scoring a goal or a try), such decisions are far less cerebral than those you get in american football and baseball.
Or, to put it another way, you typical rugby match on TV looks like a physical contest. The team that is fitter and more skillful usually wins. Or, rather, that's how it is for soccer and certainly that's how it looks on tv for ruggers. Real time "strategic" or tactical decisions in soccer are nearly nil. Who to substitute and what formation to play are mostly it. there are a few set pieces, but they are of secondary importance.
Baseball is a perfect strategic game. It's incredibly mathematical and lends itself to all sorts of analysis that is simply not possible in soccer. In soccer, "players working together" comes down i'd say 80% to personalities and at most 20% to complementary skills - such as having somebody with a good cross paired with somebody who is good in the air. In baseball, the situation is reversed. Sure, personality matters somewhat as it does in any sport, but players skills can be matched (both teammates and opponents) on far more levels. there are literally thousands of decisions that go into any baseball game that can be reviewed and discussed intelligently. In soccer there are maybe a handful.
So, I love soccer. I train 3 times per week on the pitch and gym most other days. But, other than picking up some ideas for my own game, I find it incredibly tedious to watch. Baseball and american football stimulate the intellect far more and builds far better dramatic finales because of this. Plus, the games are better structured. Maybe 3 televised soccer matches in 20 are still interesting and plausibly competitive in the last 5 minutes. I'd say at least 5-6 out of 20 baseball games and 13-14 american football games out of 20 could make similar claims.
If you want to talk about a slow national sport, look at baseball. The sport has immense history in the US, but it is painfully slow.
Here we invented a sport that lasts five days, and usually lose to the Australians at it.
If I have nothing to hide, you have no reason to search me
For the record, soccer got its name from an abbreviation of one of the two football leagues created back in the split between football and rugby. Specifically, rugby was called League Football, and soccer was called Association Football. Association got shortened to Assoc., which then got bastardized to soccer.