By Bastien Moal Sports and video games are often seen as opposite things, and indeed they seem to fulfill totally different goals and passions. But what if sports could become electronic? According to the Encyclopedia Universalis, sport has the appearance of a paradox: it is a word and a phenomenon understood by everyone, but nobody, even the greatest scientists, can properly define it. Perhaps we cannot find a clear definition of sport, but most of us would agree that it is a physical activity with varying degrees of intensity, and that it aims at a goal set by the practitioner or an organization.
Sports are played around the world. We can watch competitions on TV, practice at the stadium or at the gym in most cities, and even learn and practice them at school. Moreover, the sports industry occupies an important place in developed countries. But with the emergence of new technologies, arcades games and video games have become a popular activity. With the development of the internet we can play not only at home or with friends, but also with complete strangers. This in turn has led to the first electronic sports competitions. But what is electronic sport? Are video game players athletes or players at a competitive level? Should we consider video games as a competitive sport? We might think that people behind a computer are not doing sports, if we consider sport only as an exhausting physical activity that implies effort over a certain period of time. However, why should we accept snooker, chess, darts, or golf tournaments as sports competitions but not video games? Why should we call the former competitors athletes, but the latter only nerds? The main skills required are, to some extent, the same: special and high-speed reflexes, game vision and mathematics, strategic thinking, and fast decision making. One argument is that video game players are not athletes because anyone can sit behind a computer and win in a virtual world. But the same idea can be applied to every sports amateur. Millions of them will never reach a competitive level, mostly because it requires sacrifices such as hard training, skill development, talent, and maybe a bit of luck. Anyone can play a video game, but how many of us could train, without getting tired, for hours and hours every day, during months of competitions? Just as only a small percentage of good players manage to become NBA or football stars, only 2.5% of League of Legends players (the most famous video game today) actually reach the highest level. Few of them are members of a professional team, and even fewer can make a living from E-sport money. Moreover, with the evolution of the games themselves and constant competitions, it is getting harder and harder for them to maintain their skill level. Old players are beaten by stronger and younger ones. On the League of Legends scene, the Koreans from the team SKT T1 were world champions in 2013, but, 10 months later, they did not even qualify for the 2014 competition. Indeed, some professional players are famous and can earn a lot of money each year, like the moba player Ocelote or the Starcraft II player M.C. They have sponsors and stream their playing to viewers all around the world. The game Dota2 awarded its last winning team a 5 million dollar cash prize, and at the Dota 2 Asian Championship, a 15-year-old Pakistani player won 1.2 million dollars for his team. Maybe these amounts seem surprising, but they are comparable with the earnings of players in other sports, or probably much less than the salary of other sports stars. However, there are very few pro players, and most of them will simply get a monthly wage from their team to train at least 10 hours a day, or even 12 hours for the last League of Legends champions. Professional players are often young, around 20 years old. But some of them can be 16, and they try to improve their professionalism, with all the responsibilities that such a status implies. The Korean E-Sport Player Association (KeSPA) was created in 2000 to build better working conditions for pro players and to get them better contracts with their teams. Also like other competitive sports, the players themselves can be big business, promoting the products of their sponsors. In South Korea, the biggest telecom operators have their own team, as is also the case for Samsung. Even sports brands such as Nike and Adidas are sponsoring teams. In Taiwan, the most famous teams are the Azubu Taipei Assassins and a group called AHQ E-sport. Fans identify with a certain team and support it just as a baseball lover will do with his or her favorite club. In the U.S., inter-collegiate competitions of E-sports are taking place just like basketball and football championships. The North American Collegiate Championship of League of Legends is growing every year. This has led to the first college teams and even the first player scholarships. Managers, coaches, referees and players are all hot jobs in the E-sport scene. Finally, it is interesting that video games competitions don’t only happen online but in real and concrete places – and the same places where you can see other sports competitions. Local competitions take place in school gymnasiums, and the last two League of Legends World Championships Finals took place at the famous Staples Center in Los Angeles (the stadium of the L.A. Lakers) and at the World Cup Stadium in Seoul, where it was watched by more than 40,000 spectators! Even the NTU sports center hosted the semi-final phases of the League of Legends World Championships in 2014. It is your choice to agree whether video games should be considered a sport, but I hope you can now see the E-sport scene with new eyes. You might consider E-sport as a bad example of the expansion of virtual reality or as an exciting entertainment, but considering its growth and its impact, you probably can’t be indifferent to it anymore! a
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May 2024
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