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Gaming in the Olympics?
by Chris Remo, May 31, 2006 1:20pm PDTGaming is seen as a lot of different things, depending on who's looking: a hobby, a killing simulation, a sport. Competitive gaming organization Global Gaming League is looking to heavily promote that last one, by getting gaming officially recognized as an Olympic sport in 2008. GGL head Ted Owen is currently in talks with the Chinese government regarding the matter, hoping that the region's strong competitive gaming scene will make it a good place to start. He figures if China gives approval, it will be followed in turn by the International Olympic Committee. "There is interest at the highest levels [of Chinese government]," said Owen about the discussions. "It is something that has momentum." It will certainly need a lot of momentum, however. For one thing, no new events will be added until 2016; baseball and softball will be dropped from the roster in 2012, and since organizers have been unable to come up with any physical sports to replace them, changes are next to nil that a demonstration sport will be added. "If they can't figure out sports to give real medals to, then you can forget about them adding 'let's pretend' sports," said Ed Hula, who edits an independent Olympic coverage newsletter called Around the Rings. "There's a big campaign in the [International Olympic Committee] to get kids away from computer terminals...[Lobbying for] video gaming would be like asking the IOC to approve power smoking," he added. Owen points the to revitalizing effect nontraditional sports such as snowboarding have had on the Olympics, bringing in new audiences to the Games. "Video games deserve to be seen as a non-traditional sport," he said." Last mongth, Major League Gaming announced that its upcoming season will be televised on USA Network, perhaps giving a better indication of public interest in competitive gaming.
Comments
Competitive gaming is great, but the Olympics are about physical competition and pushing the body to its limits. There are a whole array of extreme sports that deserve a look before competitive gaming.
Wait, why is curling in the winter Olympics?
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Perhaps even more interesting, there are a number of sports that are 'recognised' by the IOC but are not currently a part of the games. http://www.olympic.org/uk/sports/recognized/index_uk.asp
Check out the list, you'll see billiards, bridge and chess among others. At the very least, seeking out this "official recognition" would be a great thing to do for competitive gaming.
the biggest problem I see is the volatile and comercialy driven nature of games. To make a true competitive sport out of gaming, we need a game or set of games developed and maintained by some sort of official organization, specifically designed for competition and made apropriate for mass viewing and participation by all people.
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Olympian athletes train for YEARS AND YEARS to get where they are... getting good at a video game takes, what... a few months?
The amount of work that goes into becoming an olympian-class runner is ridiculously more than would go into say... becoming rank 14 on your WoW server.
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Ok, back to my basketball comment. I heard something several years back, and I wish I remembered it's origin. Basically the idea is that olympic events should be reserved exclusively for events in which winning an olympic gold is the pinnacle of the event. In, as far as I know, all track and field the olympics are indeed the top of the sport. Same for swimming and gymnastic and skiing, and honestly the majority of the events. But then there is stuff like basketball where no, thats not really the top of the sport. International players want to come to the US to get lots of cash dollars, but then the NBA tards run off to the Olympics and get crushed because they don't care. Some players kindly pass the opportunity to let new players go to the olympics, just for the experience.
The problem is that games constantly evolve and every 4 years the 'top' FPS game or what not is going to change. As games change so does balancing so having super fancy official rules could be troublesome.
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I enjoy gaming as much as the next guy, sometimes more, but it's not a sport by any stretch of the immagination.
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-X
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(And I agree. I have no problem with pro/competitive gaming but it doesn't really belong in the Olympics for a number of reasons which people have already said in other comments, plus the issues of cheating and exploiting the games' code.)
Olympics events recognise sports that have been around for a while and don't plan to go away. (most of the time)
Of there is always the exception. The good exception: Tetris, and the bad one: curling.
Maybe one day when computers' computation power start to stagnate and games will less 'need' to be next-gen renewed. Then maybe we might see games that stay long enough to gain large recognition. But then again as the green little bastard said 'hard to read the future is' (or something along that line)
I am however all for separate competitive gaming events to be more publicised/ receive more support.
And yet I know we're bound to have at least one Greek Shacker who has done it.
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