And my point was to ask what the significance of the comparison was supposed to be.
My issue with this defense of it is that professional gaming competitions (televised, even!) existed for literally decades before big racing game developers started throwing money at it; and most of them were and still are much closer to VBR's description (exaggerated though it is) than they are of super elite racing game players going through physically exhausting trials at Gran Turismo Sport events like people are bringing up in this thread. At this point in time those types of events are almost significantly more popular as well, though I don't care enough to try and find numbers to that effect.
If the default context people on this forum had for competitive gaming was instead something like Pokemon, Counter Strike, Street Fighter or Dota 2, I have little doubt there wouldn't be nearly as much insistence that E-Sports are directly comparable to events already in the Olympics. Indeed, some of the posts to this point have acted like the guy specifically singled out racing games for his ire, as if they were the extent of what E-Sports are.
I take your point about esports being a lot more than just racing games, and that most of these other genres of games are controlled with a controller or mouse and keyboard. I’ll accept that I was using an overly simplified rebuttal against an overly simplified point.
However, let’s look at it a little deeper, 3 games in particular. Counter Strike, Traditional Tetris, and Starcraft - and let’s keep this so-called definition of “sport = physical exertion” in mind when doing so.
Counter Strike is arguably one of the oldest and “hard core” competative games that have been around for a long while, which implies the people competing at the top of the game are competing at an extremely high level. If you ever watch pro CS games, some things that immediately jump out is the hand-eye coordination, the timing, and the reflexes...they are so insanely next level. There is no way that you can argue that the reflexes of a pro CS player are not on par with the reflexes of any pro athlete from any sport. Remember, no one is playing Counter Strike telepathically, so those reflexes are physical reactions. So going by the definition of “sport = physical exertion”, CS would count as a sport, not just an e-sport.
Tetris is probably the oldest game that has a competative scene, using the original Tetris that came out on NES as the platform for competitions. Within this community, there is a practice used by some players that has come to be known as “hyper taping”. I can’t really explain it, it look it up, and then try to explain that’s not physical exertion, therefor making Tetris a sport.
Last, Starcraft. A real time strategy game? How much physical exertion can there be? Well, if you watch pro level Starcraft matches, such as the world finals played at Blizzcon, you’ll notice a little meter on the screen for each player that says APM. APM stands for Actions Per Minute, and in top level Starcraft, players average around 300 actions per minute. That’s average though, and it’s not at all uncommon for APM to spike to over 800. Yes, many of those actions are mouse clicks and keyboard strokes, but those are all physical actions, and they’re doing them at a rapid pace. So again, going off of “sport = physical exertion”, Starcraft would count as a sport.
Again, I’m not taking the position that any of these games should be in the olympics. What I’m saying is that using a dictionary definition of the word “sport” to determine what should and shouldn’t be in the olympics is silly, especially if you don’t follow it up with dictionary definitions of “physical” and “exertion”. Furthermore, like you said, the notion that “gaming is just sitting in a couch flicking sticks” is wrong when racing games are brought into the picture (but like you say, that’s a small fraction of the overall esport world); and falls apart as an arguement against gaming being a sport when looking at things in more detail.
I also think it will only be a matter of years before VR kind of blows the lid off this whole “gaming isn’t physical, it doesn’t belong in the olympics” arguement, but we’ll just have to wait and see.
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A general point regarding car racing not being in the olympics.
If Sailing, Equestrian, Shooting, and Bobsledding are in the olympics, I don’t understand why motorsport couldn’t be.
In sailing, a human controls a device that harnesses wind energy. In Equestrian, a human controls an animal (a device) that convert chemical energy into kinetic energy. In Bobsledding, a human controls a device that converts gravitational potential energy to kinetic energy. In shooting, a human controls a device that converts chemical energy into kinetic energy.
So on the most basic level of what those sports are, they’re no different from motorsport, where a human controls a device that converts chemical energy into kinetic energy.
Furthermore, what about a car that didn’t use an internal combustion engine? If you can have a wind powered boat, or a grain powered horse in the olympics, why couldn’t you have a solar powered car in the olympics?
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I've also played the game on many levels for over 42 years so I know what it can take to play that game.
