Question of the week: eSports. Are you excited?

[EA_Archi]

Hello everyone! 

And it is time for the next Question of the Week!

Browsing through my Newsfeed, I`ve stumbled across this article. eSports coming to Olympics? Really? Are we that far in the Cyberpunk future already? 

So, the question is: Are you interested in eSports? Would you participate in any category? And what ARE those categories? 

As for me, I think eSports is worth investigating at least. I`m not following events now, but I do love Olympics, and should eSports became a part of it, I would love to watch some intense online battles. You take on this matter?

Go!

[ivrognard]

Unfortunately, no. Olympics were always about physical prowess. Thing is: i get bored watching someone else playing. I prefer to play a game, read a book, watch a movie or see an old-fasioned sport than watching a few people playing a game (and not necessary in the given order). 

My interest in esports is exactly zero. Wouldn't participate (lack of reflexes and i am not a very competitive person). 

So i say, let the old sports to stay as such, to have their shiny moments and let esports to have their own Olympics. Just don't mix them. I seriously doubt that the people that are watching Summer/Winter Olympics will tune in for a gaming Olympics and that's a sentiment that i've seen shared even by some rabid fans of esports (i have a few aquaintances that love to watch esports, but they wouldn't have tem mixed with their favorite physical sports).

[Vellu78]

eSports as Olympic sport? No, keep that to physical sports. Might aswell have chess or something too..

Nothing against eSports as such, no doubt skills required to reach the top don't come easy...Takes a lot of dedication and practice, like any other sport.

[Straatford87]

@Vellu78 @EA_Archi @ivrognard

eSports has become such a big part of our society that I don't think it's weird that it will eventually become part of the Olympics. There's a whole generation out there who isn't into traditional sports, but they are very much into eSports.

Personally, I'm not that much into sports but I LOVE watching eSports. Even if I don't play some of the games myself, just watching the matches is very thrilling.

[Red_Hood_1810]

Hello everyone!

If they are considering adding eSports to Olympics, this just shows how far the eSports scenario has progressed. From a bunch of friends playing in a room to full blown international events, we have come a long way.

That being said, I would rather watch eSports as a separate event rather than a part of the Olympics. There are a large number of events in the Olympics and I am afraid that even if eSports is included there, it would not get as much attention as other events.

It would be better to have an Olympic level event based entirely on eSports, where teams compete in a variety of online games ranging from shooters, MOBAs to sports titles such as FIFA and Madden. The primary audience for this would be the gamer community so all these events and players would get proper attention that they deserve.

[RedFoxxie]

It would make sense that eSports would be recognized by the IOC and made part of The World Games , but not be recognized as an olympic sport. With that logic, eSports would join in with such as chess, air sports and auto racing.

I personally am interested in the eSports genre but not taking part in it. I am simply not a competitive enough personality to take part into such and desire to keep video games fun for myself. I can still find it entertaining to watch. I used to love watching Starcraft 1 tournaments and I still sometimes dig up some of the old videos of those and find it enjoyable. It is very entertaining, and that is important from the media's point of view. Hence it sells.

[spitfiresiemion]

I'd say that first of all, if they wanted to include e-sports into competitions with classic sports, they would need to figure out what to present. I mean, the number of competitive games is so high that you could easily make e-Olympic Games out of it. If you include e-sports in classic competitions, it will naturally be limited to very few games (if not just one). In such case, no matter what they go with, it's going to be somewhat messy. Right now, most popular e-sports titles fall into 4-5 different genres (and that's without taking sub-genres within account). Ignoring even one would make everything a PR hell.

Also, another problem might be that in some top tier e-sports games many teams are international, and attempts to artificially create national teams might be tricky at this stage. Current FaZe roster in CS:GO is a good example, with each player coming from a different country. Another example is even more noteworthy - Team Liquid roster in DOTA, current top ranked team. Once again, each player is from a different country. Obviously, problem vanishes in games where players play solo, but the fact is that most of current most popular competitive games are team-based.

You also have to wonder if players will be willing to take part - in recent years most of nation-based tournaments did not exactly gather a lot of interest of pro players. There were some smaller exceptions, but usually top players decided not to take part, as team rankings are more important.

Until those problems are figured out, I don't really see much happening in terms of getting classic sports and e-sports together (although they can certainly thrive in parallel to each other).

Personally, I enjoy watching e-sports, but I had extremely negative past experience with competitive gaming, so I'm extremely wary of playing titles which are mostly pushed as 'competitive'.