

E-Sports Set Video Gamers Fighting for Real Money in Virtual Contests - bdz
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/31/technology/esports-explosion-brings-opportunity-riches-for-video-gamers.html

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mrottenkolber
How is the involved cognitive and manual labour virtual.

eSports are no more virtual competitions than chess.

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alexjeffrey
in my mind, eSports is psychological/dexterical, and chess is
psychological/memorization (openings). The challenge is getting to the point
where the world at large considers these types of competition to be equally
valid to physical/athletic ones.

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TheMakeA
There is a lot of memorization in eSports too. Remember where all the players
hide in Counter Strike, remember build orders (openings) in StarCraft,
remember skill and item orders in Dota clones.

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alexjeffrey
yes actually you're right - maybe not as much as in chess due to the depth and
variation involved in openings, but still a hell of a lot.

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ASneakyFox
I always thought of chess as pattern recognition. But I guess that's kind of a
subset of memorization.

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alexjeffrey
a lot of the opening of chess is playing memorized counters to different plays
that have been extensively studied - you could fill a library with books
dedicated to chess openings, explaining why a particular move is good against
another.

