I love video games. The problem I have with recognizing video gaming as a sport is mainly that the rules and playing fields change too often, and with no regulatory bodies to provide checks and balances to these changes. The developer of the game being played can change and patch whatever they want, whenever they want, with no oversight.
Not to mention, the sport being played is essentially whatever the "cool" game is at the time, which changes year after year. It would be difficult to maintain interest in a game for even 2 Olympic cycles, let alone hundreds. Can Starcraft 1 still generate massive world-wide interest in 2013? How will LoL be doing in 2023?
Meanwhile traditional gaming and sports haven't changed a whole lot over the hundreds or even thousands of years we have played them, they have stood the test of time and are still capable of generating massive world-wide interest. Video games cannot claim to have done this.
With that said Im not against awarding visas to pro gamers.
I'm really happy this is happening. Is the static nature of the playing field actually a good thing? Does a single game even need to survive more than 2 Olympics (I also don't think video games need to be incorporated into the Olympics)? The vast majority of skills in video gaming carry over just fine to the next generation of the same genre. Flash was the undisputed god of SC1, and he is fast rising to that spot in SC2 less than a year after switching.
I think the evolution of the playing field is actually a great thing, and something I wish conventional sports did more. A rule change in a physical sport happens so rarely.
The only reason conventional sports remain balanced and interesting to watch at all is because they are nearly 100% symmetrical (ex: 5 on 5, symmetric court/field, tip-off to start, etc). In my opinion, this actually leaves a lot of sports as pretty poorly designed "games" -- any activity that you can assign a score to can turn into a competitive sport under the existing physical sport paradigm. I don't want to pick on any particular sport, but I think a lot of popular sports just ride on past passion, nationalistic/regional pride (rooting for your team), and sponsorship marketing rather than the game itself being intrinsically interesting to watch. Which could be an endless cycle, with schools giving scholarships for those who perform in those sports, and the next generation having the same feelings for them.
More importantly than having a wider viewership for eSports (as a game designer and developer by trade, this is obviously exciting), I'm more excited about how this will affect physical sports, and force them to evolve into becoming more entertaining and fun experiences than they already are, instead of stagnating as they have been for nearly a century.
i think the point though, is that the governing body for soccer has stayed the same, and a soccer player's status continues to be recognized despite a change in the rules. the structure of governance for whatever game is currently popular gets tossed and re-established as soon as a new game gains popularity. The organizations sponsoring these gamers for immigration purposes don't have much in the way of permanence or reliability. it seems like a huge potential for fraud or abuse.
I also have some other problems with "pro gaming" being seen as legitimate due to the insane impact corporate sponsorships have on the landscape of competitive gaming.
Granted, massive corporate sponsorships are nothing new to sports, but there's nothing in other sports quite equal to the situation in console gaming where Microsoft is the official console of competitive Call of Duty gaming. Even though the game can be played on many consoles, to play it as a "sport" you need to be playing it on the Xbox. This goes well beyond the already unfortunate lengths to which corporate sponsorships impact other sports, IMO.
And thanks to Microsoft's hardline "no cross-platform play" guidelines for the Xbox line, this isn't something that can be easily solved even if everyone but Microsoft wanted to do it.
These sorts of arguments often come up when people talk about which games deserve to be considered eSport-worthy. Ultimately, a game's legitimacy can be based on whether people are competing against each other and whether it's possible to be significantly better than another person or team.
Not to mention, the sport being played is essentially whatever the "cool" game is at the time, which changes year after year. It would be difficult to maintain interest in a game for even 2 Olympic cycles, let alone hundreds. Can Starcraft 1 still generate massive world-wide interest in 2013? How will LoL be doing in 2023?
Meanwhile traditional gaming and sports haven't changed a whole lot over the hundreds or even thousands of years we have played them, they have stood the test of time and are still capable of generating massive world-wide interest. Video games cannot claim to have done this.
With that said Im not against awarding visas to pro gamers.