Video games are sports, now.

[Speaker to Animals]

A sport is essentially some form of competition between individuals or teams in which specified rules exist and there exists some winning condition that is not achieved primarily through luck. It has to be based on skill.

So you consider Mario Kart a sport?

I suppose it could be if people took it seriously enough. It's kind of gay as far as skill and competition.

Starcraft sure as shit is a sport. There's a huge annual event and teams of people who do nothing but train at Starcraft all day every day.

[Kath]

I dunno. I think when a mom proudly boasts about her kids being involved in sports at school, most people wouldn't think, "must be great at video games!"

[Speaker to Animals]

I dunno. I think when a mom proudly boasts about her kids being involved in sports at school, most people wouldn't think, "must be great at video games!"

The question is whether you think there should be some form of athleticism in sports. People that get hung up on this question often use athleticism and sports interchangeably, but that's not really how most of us conceive of those words.

Sports are a subset of games that are won primarily by skill rather than luck and are valued for their competitive potential. Chutes and Ladders is a game, but not a sport, because it's just a luck-based game and not even competitive. Mario Kart I suppose could be competitive but not so much as to warrant the status of a sport -- and nobody considers it as such.

Any video game that is won primarily through skill has the potential to become a sport if enough people begin to recognize it as such and devote sufficient time to develop skill. One thing about games that become sports is that there is no cap on skill-attainment. There is always something new to learn or devise. Some new strategy or technique to counter the old. Sports are always deep. Look at how simple Football seems at first and then consider how deep that game is in terms of strategy, skill, and even training methods. It's not that a bunch a giant fat dudes are running on the field that makes it a sport. It's that depth and the skill.

[jediuser598]

Call it a generational split.

Esports are a thing. DB laughs about it, but I'd like to see him try out in Starcraft 2 to see how he goes up against the competition and gets smoked.

You guys can try and see how good you are in any of these sports, they're all immediately available to you because the pros compete online all of the time, lots of them are on the "ladder" or in legend in things like hearthstone. A lot of pros get picked up because they're diamond players in their respective game and sponsors or teams like TSM, Liquid, G2, OpticGaming, Fnatic, Cloud9, will see those players and their stats and make them offers. Any one of you could buy a low tier computer, boot it up and get in the top ranks, and get picked up by a team if you're good. You can do all of this from home, right now.

Make fun of it all you want but:

"More Than 360 Million People Watched This Year's 'League of Legends' Mid-Season Invitational"

More than 360 million unique viewers watched this year's League of Legends Mid-Season Invitational, according to end-of-the-year numbers posted by the official League esports website.

In 2017, the League of Legends esports circuit is made of more than 545 pros, across 109 teams and 13 leagues. Competing in this year's season, the website reveals, the "bloodiest" game had 79 total kills, while the longest game clocked in at 1:20:01. The shortest game, for comparison, lasted just under 17 minutes.

In these games, the most-picked champion was Varus, who was picked 1,274 times. On the flip side, LeBlanc was the series most-banned champion, having been barred 1,834 times.

This year's Mid-Season Invitational, according to the numbers provided, by far had the most unique viewers, topping off at more than 364 million people over the course of the event. That said, the series' World Championship this year still had over 100 million viewers over the course of the entire event, watching more than 1.2 billion hours of video. During the event, fans contributed $2.6 million to the prize pool, totaling it to $4,946,970.

To put that all into perspective, 111.3 million people watched this year's Super Bowl, while only 30 million watched the NBA Finals.

https://www.rollingstone.com/glixel/new ... ar-w514580

[Speaker to Animals]

Starcraft is a video game that has become a sport.




Strategy is very deep in that game. People are constantly coming up with new strategies and techniques. It's crazy what people have figured out.

[DBTrek]

I tend to think of sports as athletic events.
But I also think of “heroes” as people who actually did something heroic.

... so in these two cases what I think the language should mean and how people actually use the language are miles apart.

Good to see I’m still living rent free in Jedis Head. No housing shortage there.

[Speaker to Animals]

That's not to say I really give a shit about those kinds of sports. I like chess a little, but not enough to devote my time to it like that.

I'd rather keep working on gymnastics and calisthenics things because I prefer physical sports.

[Speaker to Animals]

I tend to think of sports as athletic events.
But I also think of “heroes” as people who actually did something heroic.

... so in these two cases what I think the language should mean and how people actually use the language are miles apart.

Good to see I’m still living rent free in Jedis Head. No housing shortage there.

Why would we even have two different words for athleticism, then, if that's all you want for us to mean by the word sports? Sports are a competitive subset of games that are not based primarily on luck and that people take to competitive levels. That's all it is, dude. Lots of sports are not athletic either. Curling isn't fucking competitive in the least and it's a sport. Those Starcraft competitors are more fit than the average curling dude.

[jediuser598]

Starcraft is a video game that has become a sport.




Strategy is very deep in that game. People are constantly coming up with new strategies and techniques. It's crazy what people have figured out.

You see Scarlett's win versus the korean? Watched the whole thing live, was pumped, finally a non-korean takes a major.

[DBTrek]

Why?

Why would we have the word ‘synonym’ if every describable thing could only have one word assigned to it?



I didn’t say sports had to be athletic, simply that it’s how I think of them. If someone wants to argue that they’re into sports because they do competitive LEGO building that’s fine. I’ll still think the person is stretching the word “sport” to try to lend more legitimacy to their hobby.