| Title | Bryant Gumbel's Real Sports debates professional gaming events |
| Author | Nick Diamon |
| Posted in | News |
| When | December 19, 2013 |
Gamers are hilarious, right? Check out the nerds trying to gain legitimacy for their games by having so-called "cyberathletes" compete for money! Laughter abounds! These nerds are missing their Star Trek conventions! Neeeeerrrrrrds!
Read the full articleI heard about this but can't watch it. Afraid I'd get irritated.
I hope there aren't any nerds on this website.
Given that a portion of the gaming community has had much discussion (plus a lot of yelling) as to whether a particular release (e.g., Dear Ester, Gone Home, or Beyond) is a 'game' or not, it is not surprising to see another community have opinions on whether some games can be considered sports.
I'm unsurprised by the level of discourse by geriatric sports journalists.
I can't watch this. But riddle me this: I see plenty of people obsessing over athletes and their stats when participating in "fantasy" leagues. How is that any different from fussing over the stats of your fantasy game character? WHO'S THE NERD NOW?!
So if its a competition with a bunch of silly rules it's a game. But if you can get a concussion it suddenly is a "sport."
Yeah, to me this is pretty much like My Little Pony fans looking down their noses at comic book cosplayers. Sports fandom is way more ridiculous than video game fandom.
I would say that the real distinction would/should be the physical activity involved. A sport, in my opinion as a gamer and a former high school athlete, has a true physical component with concussions being a bonus.
Those "journalists" are just upset that the LoL Championship had higher viewership than any program they will ever headline.
Seriously though, no self respecting journalist should look at the numbers around that story, the viewership, the prize money, and be able to dismiss it out of hand with a laugh and a "nerds and Star Trek conventions" comment. There's meat to that story if they felt like actually reporting on it.
This segment had nothing to do with sports or journalism. It was all about making a bunch of dinosaurs feel better about themselves.
And I say all this as someone that finds everything about e-sports boring (ie, I'm certainly not a fan).
Don't worry, I watched it for. I can safely say that you can feel irritated without having watched it because all your assumptions would be true.
Ok, so DDR is a sport League of Legends isn't.
That kinda stuff seems a little ridiculous to me. Although, how the term athlete is used makes a more compelling argument for me.
I did get a chuckle when they talked about how silly it was that twenty million watching LoL was silly when implicitly millions watching the Super Bowl wasn't.
Watching the Starcraft 2 tournaments or EVO to me proves that video games are a sport. As the level of hand-eye coordination needed to play at a professional level is something all together different than just playing a game for leisure.
Yes, I would say that a DDR or Wii Tennis, when played as intended, are more of an eSport that LoL or Starcraft will ever be. I do appreciate the reflexes, stamina, utter concentration, and intestinal fortitude it takes to sit for hours on end playing MOBAs and RTAs at a master level; however there is no real feat of athleticism involved where as people can sweat it out when playing DDR.
The fact that these people don't think "eSports" are legitimate doesn't bother me at all, the way they condescended towards those that do was irritating though.
Anyone who laughs at stupid stuff should jump to 1:51 of the video though.
Trying to nail down the definition of the word like that gets you into trouble, as the DDR example above shows. At a certain point it is semantics and what matters is the competitive playing of the game and if people are interested in watching that competitive play.
I had no idea Nancy Pelosi was doing a Bryant Gumball sports chat show. That was Nancy Pelosi, right?
Its the jocks vs nerds all over again...
If the Revenge of the Nerds movies have taught me anything its that nerds always win :)
It's not any different. But people who play fantasy sports do not consider themselves athletes or fantasy football a sport.
These same people are also content to ignore soccer / football in spite of the billions of people who care about that sport.