
The next Olympics should include Fortnite - melvinroest
https://www.economist.com/leaders/2020/06/27/why-the-next-olympics-should-include-fortnite
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enzanki_ars
Fortnite has _way_ too many problems to even be anywhere near considered ready
for an esport presented in the Olympics.

Fortnite still has a large amount of luck involved. Even the most skilled
players have to rely on luck to be able to get the high leveled items they
need to succeed in the long game. While current competitions have tried to
lessen this by having multiple rounds over and over in attempt at giving all
players a fairer chance, the luck aspect is still there.

All other games with a heavily established esports base uses games with much
lower levels of luck, and are centered around the balance of skill and
strategy. CS:GO, League of Legends, Rocket League, Valorant, Super Smash Bros,
etc. are all centered around the player or team's skill and/or strategy. Luck
is either minimal or non existent.

The Olympics should be about skill, never about luck.

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bathtub365
There is still a fair amount of luck in the Olympics. For example, in the
winter Olympics, snow conditions are only somewhat in the control of the
organisers and can have a huge impact on someone's performance. All you can
do, as an athlete, is train in a variety of conditions to try to be ready

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notahacker
Sure, but snow differences aren't determined by programmers trying to make the
game more interesting by ensuring different skiiers have different amounts of
snow to work with. If e-skiing were to become an Olympic sport you'd expect
everyone to start with the same amount of snow.

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bathtub365
> If e-skiing were to become an Olympic sport you'd expect everyone to start
> with the same amount of snow.

Since competitive skiing is based on athleticism in the face of uncertain
conditions, that sounds dreadfully boring.

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notahacker
From a consume-on-TV perspective it's the athleticism which makes it
compelling, not random misfortunes with the snow conditions.

Appreciate experienced skiiers might see more nuance to how skiiers approach
subtle changes to the piste, but still doubt they'd find button clicking in
the face of uncertain conditions equally compelling (or even more compelling
than watching real skiiers on a suitably large raked and climate-controlled
slope)

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Alupis
Olympic games should be activities that will remain largely the same for
decades, or forever.

Fortnite, or any eSport game out today, will not be a thing 40 years from now,
let alone 4. You can't have records when the game constantly changes.

~~~
chrisseaton
> Olympic games should be activities that will remain largely the same

But why?

> You can't have records when the game constantly changes.

Many olypmic games have no records. There’s no records in fencing, for
example, as all matches are against an opponent not an absolute like a time or
distance. Nobody considers this a problem. Why do you think it matters if
there are records or not?

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bathtub365
When the rules stay the same, it pushes people to improve their performance
within the rules (or, sometimes, unfortunately, outside of the rules). When
the rules are constantly changing, the focus shifts from the competitors to
the game itself and the corporation promoting it.

~~~
noodlesUK
The rules in sports change pretty frequently. Little changes to the rules have
a massive impact on the way the game is played at a high-level. See fencing,
or goal-line tech in football (soccer).

~~~
notahacker
I'm the first to sneer at the merchandising elements of [association]
football, but the rare substantive changes to the game aren't driven by sales
cycles. Ensuring the game isn't significantly different at grassroots level
has always been a sticking point for tech adoption in football, and this is a
sport so contrary to the original amateur ethos of the modern Olympics that
the top players earn millions every month, clubs have official tractor
sponsors and manufacturer sponsors promise the official World Cup ball will
curve differently from the last one.

Also, you don't have to use the IP of Epic Games Inc to play any variant of
football, or even a stereotypical rich person sport like dressage, so
performance improvements aren't contingent on enhancing a specific
corporation's bottom line

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bathtub365
The Olympics doesn't currently include any competition fully controlled by a
corporation. Why would you want to introduce this?

~~~
chrisseaton
Most sports are controlled by corporations - for example fencing by the FIE,
football by the FIFA, etc.

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gruez
You literally can't play fortnite without a license from epic or epic's
servers. You can play soccer with a ball and a field, no FIFA involved.

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PostPlummer
Except you can't in any serious organised form, like the olympics would be, or
they'll come after you / the payers.

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marvelm
"The idea that an activity, rather than a substance, can be addictive is
contentious among doctors" As a person who has been struggling with video game
addiction, especially in order to combat the loneliness I have been
experiencing during the pandemic, I would disagree. While it is unlikely one
would get an addiction in terms of physical dependency, psychological
addiction is a whole other question. That being said, one can also get
addicted to exercise, so I guess its not a reason to keep it out of the
Olympics!

~~~
chongli
This highlights something that's made me uncomfortable for a while. In
discussions around addiction, suicide, and other mental health outcomes, the
focus is almost always placed on stopping the undesirable outcome. They'll put
timers that kick people off games, they'll put barriers and nets around
bridges people commonly jump from, etc.

What they aren't doing is treating the root cause of the problem: loneliness,
listlessness, depression. These are problems of our society and they seem to
be getting worse over time. We need to change this. We need to build real
communities where people belong. We need to build relationships. We're not
doing that though. We're becoming more and more atomized.

~~~
whatshisface
You can hire a contractor to build a net, but you can't hire a contractor to
make people have more friends.

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mrkramer
"Why the next economist article should include name of an author or at least
pseudonym" So I can know who writes this bs.

~~~
mirekrusin
John Doe, PR/Social Media, Epic Games?

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derefr
IMHO, Olympic sports should never have their playerbase entirely beholden to
one corporation who makes all the “equipment” (in the case of a e-sport, the
game itself.)

An Olympic e-sport should probably have _at least_ a FOSS reference
implementation, if not multiple competing implementations all inter operating
on the same network.

It is also very important (much moreso than for conventional sports) for
e-sports rules to be driven by a rules body external to the league
owners—hopefully one with membership open to any interested organization.

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seattle_spring
Please, any game except Fortnite or any of the DoTA variants. The last thing
the Olympics needs is to be infiltrated by a half million 12 years older
throwing hard Rs.

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coronadisaster
Another Olympic discipline could be programming...

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lacker
Obviously it would be a win for the Olympics to include Fortnite. After all,
Fortnite makes more money than the Olympics and is more popular than almost
all Olympic sports. It would provide inroads to the more valuable younger
audiences that the Olympics are starting to lose. But why would Fortnite want
to give up control of its product to the Olympics?

~~~
notahacker
If Fortnite was really the entity holding the spectator sport aces here,
broadcasters would already be paying them handsomely for broadcast rights to
their competitions rather than Fortnite streaming being the preserve of Twitch
amateurs collectively reaching as many people per _quarter_ as an off-peak
hour of the Olympics[1]. It's not like Epic aren't commercially savvy, after
all.

The reality is that there's little about a computer game that's less than an
Olympiad old to appeal to the IOC and plenty of major issues with them
granting Epic their patronage, and both entities will do fine without each
other.

[1]obviously many of the minor Olympic sports also aren't great as standalone
TV and wouldn't get the viewers without the big umbrella event, but that's
kind of the point

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hungryhobo
League of Legends was introduced in the last Asian games, I think when they
tried to get it included in the Olympics it was rejected on the basis of
promotion of violence. So we'll see how it goes this time

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iamwil
I've always wanted Japanese style dodge ball (with inner and outer courts) to
be an Olympic sport.

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x87678r
What about Beer Pong and Dodgeball?

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notahacker
Both of these are closer to the original Olympic ethos than Fortnite.

As is [for better and for worse perceptions of the original Olympic ethos]
naked Twister.

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noobermin
I'm on board if quake 3 will be in the olympics, and especially defrag.

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scotty79
Maybe 1000 years after it includes chess.

