Sports are a massive phenomena, to say the least, and esports definitely seems to want to try to become similar, but so far…I think it may be fair to say it’s struggling at that, outside of maybe some specific games and countries (…Is StarCraft still a thing in South Korea?).
Do you think that might eventually change, and if so what might contribute to it being alongside regular sports in terms of conversations & attention?
People organize physical sports spontaneously; in particular, children do. The adult activities we call “sports” are formal adaptations of improvised play activities: kick the ball, throw it in the hoop, hit the thing with a stick, wrestle the other guy, jump higher, run faster.
So-called “esports” are video games; activities that depend on being a customer of a software engineering organization. They don’t have the connection to an improvised play activity that physical sports do.
That’s a great point, not to mention how specific the skill set is to some of these games. Some games are so complicated that only the people who play them are able to perceive the value in them. Whereas anybody can watch a sport ball and understand basically what’s going on. And aware how good somebody is at it. With some video games it’s impossible to know what you’re even watching unless you’re actively participating in the game itself.
Exactly, I was at a League of Legends esport event in South Korea once without ever having played the game, and while there are Sports where the rules are so complicated that It’s hard to follow (rugby, baseball, etc.) you at least can see the athleticism, speed, power, etc. while I was looking at that screen there and had no idea what I should look at.
Needless to say that this was my first and last atempt to enjoy esports as a viewer.
But I have to add that I still enjoy watching people playing games, like Pewdiepie playing Minecraft but then I’m watching for the story they create, not the game itself.