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Should Video Games Be In the Olympics?
An anonymous reader writes: The BBC is running a story about e-sports and competitive video game. It's based on comments from Rob Pardo, formerly of Blizzard Entertainment, who says there's a good argument for having e-sports in the Olympics. He says video games are well positioned to be a spectator sport — an opinion supported by Amazon's purchase of Twitch.tv for almost a billion dollars. The main obstacle, says Pardo, is getting people to accept video games as a legitimate sport. "If you want to define sport as something that takes a lot of physical exertion, then it's hard to argue that videogames should be a sport, but at the same time, when I'm looking at things that are already in the Olympics, I start questioning the definition." The article notes, "Take chess, for instance. Supporters of the game have long called for its inclusion the Games, but the IOC has been reluctant, considering it a 'mind sport' and therefore not welcome in the Games." So, should the Games expand to include "mind sports" and video games?
NO
Don't need the IOC corrupting my hobby, plus how would you even chose which game was in the Olympics?
Video games have at least one advantage over many of the Olympic sports: They can have clearly defined objectives and scoring. Many of the Olympic sports don't really qualify in my book because they rely on judges to tell us who was better. Even if they were fully objective in every respect, it still smacks of a beauty contest rather than an athletic competition. If we play a match of FIFA 2015 there will be absolutely no question as to who the winner is.
I still think it is silly to talk about video games as an olympic sport, but it is also silly that we have sports like ballroom dance and synchronized swimming in the Olympics. My rule of thumb is "if you have to ask someone else to tell you who the winner is; it isn't a sport, it is a recreational activity."
Olympics is for sports. Not games. Sport is "activity involving physical exertion and skill" google. And no, pressing keys or buttons doesn't count.
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Sailing actually requires a LOT of physical exertion. Most sailors have abs of steel.
If video games go into the Olympics, there's a lot of other things that have to make it in there first like darts and snooker. While video games are a good form of competition between people, I don't think that they are a good fit for the Olympics.
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I'm not going to watch the retarded shit anyway. I do think that video gaming nowadays should be lumped into regular sport, because it's the same kind of people who play the button mashing games anyway.
A game that required actual intelligence can hardly be found, never mind made into an Olympic sport.
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It may not happen; the modern Olympics, quite unlike the ancient Olympics, have not always been purely about physical sports. Competitions like poetry and painting were removed in part because the same entrants won year after year—this has not, so far, been an issue for e-sports.
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You jest, but Quake would be a good candidate on the basis of being open-source. I wouldn't want to see a commercial game be used in the Olympics, the balance would be different every year and features could appear and disappear without control. Plus, there's enough branding going on in today's world without having an event dedicated to a commercial product.
Almost all sports are judged to some degree, even if it is only a referee making decisions. In any case, those sports are all in there because they have large international competitions and structures, with well defined rules that many athletes feel are worth competing under. If they were just a pure judgement call people wouldn't bother participating since there would be no clear and objective way to measure and improve their performance, but that's not how they work.
The judges use very specific criteria, just like an examiner does to mark papers in an academic setting. For example, in rhythmic gymnastics there is a list of moves, ranked by difficulty and judged on how well the athlete meets the prescribed forms. It's not about looking good, it's about doing the motions correctly and with a high level of skill.
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