Should Video Games Be In the Olympics? 232
An anonymous reader writes: The BBC is running a story about e-sports and competitive video game. It's based on comments from Rob Pardo, formerly of Blizzard Entertainment, who says there's a good argument for having e-sports in the Olympics. He says video games are well positioned to be a spectator sport — an opinion supported by Amazon's purchase of Twitch.tv for almost a billion dollars. The main obstacle, says Pardo, is getting people to accept video games as a legitimate sport. "If you want to define sport as something that takes a lot of physical exertion, then it's hard to argue that videogames should be a sport, but at the same time, when I'm looking at things that are already in the Olympics, I start questioning the definition." The article notes, "Take chess, for instance. Supporters of the game have long called for its inclusion the Games, but the IOC has been reluctant, considering it a 'mind sport' and therefore not welcome in the Games." So, should the Games expand to include "mind sports" and video games?
One word (Score:5, Insightful)
NO
Don't need the IOC corrupting my hobby, plus how would you even chose which game was in the Olympics?
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Caffeine is a PED (Score:2)
Caffeine is already banned as a PED above certain quantities. (Or at least it was last time I checked)
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AND I AM NOT SORRY!
The Lance Armstrong Defense.
Re:One word (Score:5, Insightful)
...plus how would you even chose which game was in the Olympics?
The same way it's currently done now, with both bribes and sponsorship money.
In any case, I agree with you. If video game studios want their own competitions, they should just organize their own leagues.
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NO
how would you even chose which game was in the Olympics?
That's easy....
For the Summer Games:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S... [wikipedia.org]
and
http://www.arcade-museum.com/g... [arcade-museum.com]
For the Winter Games:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W... [wikipedia.org]
and
http://www.arcade-museum.com/g... [arcade-museum.com]
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Considering table tennis is already an olympic sport, perhaps we should start with Pong.
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Yeah, it would be clowns doing the announcing for that. "And xXx_L33T_MSTR_PWNS_UR_M0M_xXx finishes his final round of Duck Hunt with a 360 Noscope Eyes Closed Backflip, downing the last duck and sticking the landing! Now we go to the judges.... PWN, PWN, L33T, PWN, and a Tryhard. One L33T, 3 PWNs, and one Tryhard for an average score of PWN. Which is enough for xXx_L33T_MSTR_PWNS_UR_M0M_xXx to take the gold for Canada, edging ==KILLA_KLOWN_KENNY== from USA down to silver and Sven96 from France to bronze."
I'm Gonna Say "Yes" (Score:5, Funny)
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So you will PAY them money to watch their ads.
Re:I'm Gonna Say "Yes" (Score:5, Insightful)
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Rifle-shooting is a sport in the olympics... (Score:2)
...so why not "virtual" shooting?
Re:Rifle-shooting is a sport in the olympics... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Yeah when will monopoly and cranium hit the olympics? What games will make the cut, Duck Hunt? SMB 3?
Unavailability of copies of old games (Score:2)
Because virtual shooting changes far more rapidly than physical shooting. Strategies that work in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare may fail in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3. Even if you standardize on one particular iteration of a series, there's no guarantee that the game's publisher will still be willing to sell copies of the old iteration. And the demise of GameSpy has shown that multiplayer won't even be available in older games after a service provider hardcoded into the game pulls the plug.
They do have one advantage (Score:5, Insightful)
Video games have at least one advantage over many of the Olympic sports: They can have clearly defined objectives and scoring. Many of the Olympic sports don't really qualify in my book because they rely on judges to tell us who was better. Even if they were fully objective in every respect, it still smacks of a beauty contest rather than an athletic competition. If we play a match of FIFA 2015 there will be absolutely no question as to who the winner is.
I still think it is silly to talk about video games as an olympic sport, but it is also silly that we have sports like ballroom dance and synchronized swimming in the Olympics. My rule of thumb is "if you have to ask someone else to tell you who the winner is; it isn't a sport, it is a recreational activity."
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I agree. Figure skating, ski/snowboard tricks, etc have always irked my sensibilities. I prefer things with measurable times, goals, etc to the other fluff. Regardless of that, the coverage and inane commentary has been fairly off putting above and beyond the choice of the sports themselves.
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If we play a match of FIFA 2015 there will be absolutely no question as to who the winner is.
Really? What happens if they encounter a bug in the game, especially one previously unknown publicly? What happens if there is a technical problem (mouse stops working, blue screen, fried GPU, etc.)? Even in esports there are circumstances where a person has to make a judgement call. They try their best to reduce those situations with clearly defined rules but when they try to be perfectly strict like KeSPA did in the past then it causes resentment from fans and players alike for being too unreasonable.
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You have to be careful to distinguish between competitive sports like athletics or weightlifting, and game sports like football(soccer) or hockey. The former is purely about who is strongest, fastest, whatever on that particular day. The latter deliberately introduces variability ("luck") so that the outcome isn't always the same "best" person/team winning every time - because that would be boring.
So no, a mat
Comparison from one Games to the next (Score:2)
If we play a match of FIFA 2015 there will be absolutely no question as to who the winner is.
Will multiplayer in FIFA 2015 still be playable in 2019? 2023?
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For rhetorical purposes, I would not have posed that as a question.
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we have sports like ballroom dance
As far as I can find the IOC has only recognized the World DanceSport Federation [wikipedia.org] as the international body governing competitive ballroom dancing. There has been a lot of push to get ballroom dancing in the Olympics but as far as I can find it has never happened. If you can find any references to anyone actually winning a medal in ballroom dancing I would like to see it.
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First thing: I came here to say that video games have one significant disadvantage, in that the games (rules, if you like) are not stable; the publishers change them every few years in order to boost the revenue stream. The rules to video games are generally not in the public domain, unlike common sports. They are controlled by a single publisher interest. And the hardware quickly changes and becomes unavailable, too (or at least requires an emulator). So that would be my biggest dispute with video games be
NO (Score:5, Insightful)
Olympics is for sports. Not games. Sport is "activity involving physical exertion and skill" google [google.com]. And no, pressing keys or buttons doesn't count.
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Believe it or not, at one point, someone tried to get Bridge qualified as an Olympic "sport".
Luckily, they failed [nytimes.com].
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Any ar
Games leave the market (Score:2)
Any argument against e-sports works equally well against shooting and archery
You can still buy new equipment for shooting or archery. You can't buy new equipment for pre-infinite-spin [harddrop.com] Tetris because Tetris Holding won't let anybody sell it.
competitive archery is one of the oldest sports, at least 2800 years old
I'm in favor of including any sport that's at least 95 years old [wikipedia.org].
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I exercise with my fingers, hands, arms, eyeballs, brain, etc. :P
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All of above. :P
StepMania, but not yet (Score:2)
How do you define dancing games as well? These are clearly very physically demanding games.
Once Konami's patents on Dance Dance Revolution expire in a few more years, I would be willing to add StepMania alongside floor exercise. StepMania is physical but doesn't need nearly as many human judges as the existing gymnastic events.
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Something that challenges the body (Score:4, Interesting)
I think some ultimate Dance Dance Revolution would make an interesting olymic event. Singles and in groups.
Limit it to actual war fare games (Score:4, Funny)
The origianl games revolved around martial sports; javelin, wrestling, archery, etc. Then came shooting, pentathlon, biathlon etc. So limit it to the games actually used in warfare such as drone strikes, gunship strafing, and the perennial favorite thermo-nuclear war. Though the last one would actually be pretty boring. The players would have to do nothing to compete.
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The real problem with thermonuclear war as Olympic sport? The only way to win is not to play.
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I'm glad someone got the reference.
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Haha yeah I loved starship troopers!
do what you want. (Score:3, Interesting)
The Olympics lost all meaning when it was decided to admit events for people missing fucking LIMBS into a sporting gala previously for those who were ACTUALLY BETTER THAN AVERAGE! Better, stronger, faster. What the fuck is "dressage", anyway??
Take my favourite competitive sport: archery. OK, we have the longbow, which is pretty fucking difficult to STRING, never mind DRAW and AIM, but now we have the olympic event where they get to use counterweights, spring cam mechanisms to bring the draw weight down yet maintain nock energy, composite bows and superthin strings, peep sights(!) and drop scales, and the basic event which runs just 33 feet, where it is entirely possible to gain a gold medal. I *PRACTICE* AT NINETY FEET. WITH AN ENGLISH LONGBOW (and the trainer at the club across the river wonders how I don't tear the shit out of my shoulder muscles every week, it's because I've been shooting bow since I was FOUR). I could piss the basic event with my bow on a *bad* day.
Re:do what you want. (Score:5, Funny)
Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you, Robin of Locksley, Internet edition.
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Nottingham, actually. I've never been to Locksley.
Re:do what you want. (Score:5, Informative)
BTW: Compound bows and peeps sights are NOT used in the Olympics; his "33 feet" is just out his arse, Olympics are shot at 70 meters. After that, he just starts talking bullshit.
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http://www.olympic.org/photos/... [olympic.org]
^fucking peep sights.
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Oh, I see. You don't know what a peep sight is.
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Um... The picture you linked to doesn't show a peep sight. Could you perhaps circle it and post the image somewhere? I'm interested to know what you think a peep sight it.
Re:do what you want. (Score:4, Interesting)
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wi... [wikimedia.org]
She was holding the red balloon.
Dressage is defined as "the highest expression of horse training." My aunt dedicated her life to understanding and working with horses. Going to the olympics was an added bonus, awarded to her because she is very good at what she does.
Horses were largely replaced by the internal combustion engine about 100 years ago. Bows were replaced by firearms nearly 400 years ago. Both are archeaic and underappreciated. Honestly, I was surprised someone who enjoys longbow archery has no respect for dressage. Then I read NoNONAlphaCharsHere's reply and see that pretty much everything in your post is bullshit. So now I'm no longer surprised.
Bows have evolved (Score:2)
Bows aren't obsolete [wikipedia.org]. The crossbow holds a silence advantage over firearms.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H... [wikipedia.org]
My point still stands. For the most part, bows are obsolete and not used nearly as much as before the spread of firearms over 400 years ago (which btw, can be silenced with a little bit of effort).
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It does not. Unlike a silenced gunshot, you hear the crossbow's bolt comming and can dodge it. Well, unless you wear mediveal helmets etc. ...
Re:do what you want. (Score:4, Informative)
but now we have the olympic event where they get to use counterweights
Yes. I'm not sure why that's such a big deal...
spring cam mechanisms
No; there are no compound bow events at the Olympics. It's all recurve.
peep sights(!) and drop scales
Peep sights aren't allowed. I don't know what a drop scale is.
and the basic event which runs just 33 feet
No, all four events are at 70 metres. That's 220 feet.
where it is entirely possible to gain a gold medal.
Of course it's entirely possible to get a gold medal. The whole point is that there's only one, and someone gets to win it.
I *PRACTICE* AT NINETY FEET. WITH AN ENGLISH LONGBOW
Okay,
(and the trainer at the club across the river wonders how I don't tear the shit out of my shoulder muscles every week, it's because I've been shooting bow since I was FOUR).
we get it,
I could piss the basic event with my bow on a *bad* day.
you're awesome.
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I could piss the basic event with my bow on a *bad* day.
Sweet! I assume that, since you're more skilled than everyone else, that you'll be competing in the next olympics? I look forward to hearing about your gold medal!
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In Olympic archery the distance to the target is 70m, roughly 70yards, not 33feet (which is 10m/10yards) ... you should have figured yourself that that number could in no way have been correct.
So your 90 feet is less then half the olympic distance.
However I agree that shooting with those modern bows is just a joke.
Relaxing (Score:3)
I think relaxing ought to be an olympic sport. We could judge it by attaching biometric sensors to the competitors.
It's not called the Olympic Sports. (Score:2, Interesting)
It's the Olympic Games. A game shouldn't be accepted or rejected based on if it's a "sport", it should be based on if it's socially or culturally relevant to a significant fraction of the participating nations.
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Except everything in the Fundamental Principles in the Olympic Charter refers to sports and athleticism.
Cut Down On Olympic Bloat (Score:5, Interesting)
Get rid of the sports that cannot measure the success of the competitors using the Olympic motto: higher, faster, stronger. That means no figure skating, no synchronized swimming, and, especially, no more rhythmic gymnastics. Essentially, nothing that requires assigning a number to a performance via a panel of judges. (I'm a little torn about any sport that chooses winners based on the points that they score on a particular day but when I think about the excessive coverage given to beach volleyball in the last few Summer Games I lean hard to the "drop them, too" side.)
Just think how much less expensive it would be to hold an Olympics would be if all those judged "sports" were taken out. The potential sites for the games would mushroom without a need for all the additional venues for the judged events. Cities that hold the Games can rarely afford to and the citizens wind up footing the bill for facilities that will rarely see use after the closing ceremonies. Plus, if it would get Bob Costas' interviews with prepubescent gymnasts off the air, we all win.
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Get rid of the sports that cannot measure the success of the competitors using the Olympic motto: higher, faster, stronger. That means no figure skating, no synchronized swimming, and, especially, no more rhythmic gymnastics. Essentially, nothing that requires assigning a number to a performance via a panel of judges. (I'm a little torn about any sport that chooses winners based on the points that they score on a particular day but when I think about the excessive coverage given to beach volleyball in the last few Summer Games I lean hard to the "drop them, too" side.)
Just think how much less expensive it would be to hold an Olympics would be if all those judged "sports" were taken out. The potential sites for the games would mushroom without a need for all the additional venues for the judged events. Cities that hold the Games can rarely afford to and the citizens wind up footing the bill for facilities that will rarely see use after the closing ceremonies. Plus, if it would get Bob Costas' interviews with prepubescent gymnasts off the air, we all win.
Considering the TV coverage those are probably some of the sports that are actually profitable (assuming you don't build a custom venue).
The events costing money are the ones you don't hear about.
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Get rid of all the sports involving scantily clad women? Don't count on it happening.
Re:Cut Down On Olympic Bloat (Score:4, Insightful)
Almost all sports are judged to some degree, even if it is only a referee making decisions. In any case, those sports are all in there because they have large international competitions and structures, with well defined rules that many athletes feel are worth competing under. If they were just a pure judgement call people wouldn't bother participating since there would be no clear and objective way to measure and improve their performance, but that's not how they work.
The judges use very specific criteria, just like an examiner does to mark papers in an academic setting. For example, in rhythmic gymnastics there is a list of moves, ranked by difficulty and judged on how well the athlete meets the prescribed forms. It's not about looking good, it's about doing the motions correctly and with a high level of skill.
Paralympics (Score:2)
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have the talent to do so, but lack legs.
Only for a very narrow meaning of talent. For the rest of us, that's a contradiction.
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Sitting team handball perhaps? (Score:2)
Basketball, team handball, soccer, rugby and gridiron football are members of a family of sports based on advancing the ball into the goal based on restrictions against arbitrarily carrying it. A Paralympic sport in the same family is wheelchair basketball. I wonder what sort of other sports in the same family could be invented for people with no legs like Jennifer Bricker [youtube.com] in the same way that volleyball was adapted into sitting volleyball.
No! No No no No!!!! (Score:3)
What a fecking dumb idea, who wants to watch sweaty geeks with over "developed" wrists play computer games ?!?! Half of them wouldn't be able to make it up the steps to get their medal!
GTA FTFW (Score:2)
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Decathlon (Score:2)
I vote for the old game, Decathlon for inclusion... It fits, serious physical exertion, coordination with all the keys with a result of trying to run faster or jump higher.
I never once succeeded at the pole vaulting game in it...
No. (Score:2)
But e-sports, in the olympics, get out of here. Is there poker, chess, or any other more traditional and widely respected table games in the olympics? no.
Haevy Chess Pieces (Score:2)
Only one game is demanding enough, (Score:3)
both mentally and physically,
QUAKE
Re:Only one game is demanding enough, (Score:5, Insightful)
No, and the people suggesting this are retarded (Score:2)
You can look back at the 1950 olympic games and see people running and jumping and doing other things that we still do today.
Now imagine that video games were included, and you look back at the 1980 olympic games. Overweight geeks with mullets and bowl cuts competing intensely over.... Pong and Breakout.
50 years from now, watching old footage of overweight geeks with lip piercings competing in Counter Strike and Call of Duty will seem just as lame and outdated.
Why not? (Score:2)
After all, competitions in music, literature, sculpture, painting and architecture were part of the Olympics at one time.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Not before they allow bowling (Score:2)
Bowling is a legitimate sport and should be represented in the Olympic games.
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No (Score:2)
Which games? (Score:2)
Without concrete suggestion on which games to play, or how to select the games, and all the practicalities involved, this is a pointless suggestion.
Do we have an Olympic Chess Team? (Score:2)
If not, then no.
Video games can be serious pass-times, and have their own internal/external structures to foster competition.
But they are NOT "sports", any more than "competitive long-duration sitting" is a sport.
Yes, a certain modicum of physical skill is required for competitive play.
However, some of it can be substituted for using technology.
Three ways to look at it. (Score:2)
2) Physical effort: Then figure skating and dancing should be in, but video games and chess should be out.
3) Both competitive and physical effort. Her
One year, as a demonstration "sport" ... (Score:2)
I think it would be good as a demonstration sport for one of the games, if they select the game carefully to align with what the games are.
The thing is, the games are mostly about physical competition along with physical factors that have a strong psychological element such as endurance and reaction time. Video games are poor at the former but rely heavily upon the latter, which is why I think they would be excellent as a demonstration sport but not as an ongoing element of the games.
Interesting ides... (Score:2)
Its an interesting idea but there are so many issues to resolve.
Which platform do you use? Xbox? PlayStation? PC?
If PC, who defines the system specs? Which games do you use?
Who defines what settings are used for each match like the level to use? What would the rules be regarding player choices like e.g. which faction the player picks in an RTS? What happens if the internet or severs go down mid-match?
Of couse some of these questions have already been answered by existing e-sports contests and the IOC would
Mirror match (Score:2)
Street Fighter II lacked symmetric starting positions. This was rectified in Street Fighter II' Champion Edition and later Street Fighter games.
Yes, but I pick the game (Score:2)
Wrong Question (Score:2)
I would have preferred to have been asked, "should the Olympics be abolished?".
The Olympics is little more than dirty politics, enriching the members of the IOC with bribe money and having an overall negative impact on the common citizens of the countries that host the games. Of course, they do provide free condoms and a great opportunity for the few privileged participants to have lots of sex, but unless you're one of the uber-rich that can afford to compete then that probably isn't important to you. And
irony (Score:2)
My soul just died a little more (Score:2)
{nt}
It wouldn't be competitive (Score:3)
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Except that Sailing and Curling are both current olympic sports, Chess is apparently under occasional consideration, and according to wikipedia, even ballooning was once an olympic sport....
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Sailing actually requires a LOT of physical exertion. Most sailors have abs of steel.
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Except that Sailing and Curling are both current olympic sports
Ever watched Olympics-level curling? The curlers are generaly in great shape.
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So are most pro gamers, so you're not saying much with that statement.
"Oblate spheroid" was not the shape that was being described.
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Even non-traditional sports like skateboarding and snowboarding have things like the "x-games", because they simply aren't olympic.
poker and chess are not olympic sports and video games should never be. the only real argument is that its a massive promotional value for game manufactures nothing more.
Re:Betteridge here. (Score:5, Funny)