June 03, 2002

Computer games are still not yet a sport How do you figure? How is the skill of golf any different than the dexterity skill of Unreal Tournament? Basketball, football, soccer, baseball, the track & field events- these seem obviously "sports" like, in part because they can be seen as full-body sports, involving at some point all the muscle groups and a wide variety of skills and maneuvers- they aren't just repetitive motions or behaviors. In gamers, there's this gray area where the physical realm is involved, but to a minor degree. The precision and coordination required to putt from 30 feet isn't really that different than practicing and perfecting a deadly strafe move in Quake III, or bowling a strike. How about a darts player, then? Is it a sport? Are they athletes? What about the riflery or archery masters who win gold medals in the Olympics- athletes, all? Perhaps not. To me, computer games are a "sport" and a "game" as much as golf or football or basketball- but the players may not be athletes, not in the big-c Classical sense. One might argue that unlike gamers, even golfers lift weights and work out like "real" athletes (although that is a relatively new trend, forced to be the case in part by the greatness of Tiger Woods), but I'm sure the top gamers do the necessary exercises to keep in shape for their sport, even if that means wrists and thumbs of steel along with a big flabby gut and sunken chest. So what about Ken Griffey, Jr., who infamously boasted about not lifting weights or working out to keep in shape for the game, other than simply stretching (a strategy in defiance of all scientific wisdom about sports wisdom, an ignorance he has been paying mightily for of late)? Does his lack of physical conditioning regimen, or that of Rich Garces of the BoSox, mean they aren't athletes? Or does the nature of their sport, regardless of their own fitness or devotion to physical perfection still classify them as athletes? Does that mean every weak-kneed beer-bellied plumber playing a Wednesday night over-30 basketball league is an athlete- or is he not "fit" enough? To me, I break it down like this: there are games, sports, and athletes as three distinct definitions. If it's a competition in a Finite Game with set rules and clear and objective scoring/determination of a winner, then it's a "game" and if the competition has any physical element of skill it becomes a "sport". This means that poker: game, but not a sport. The card game Egyptian Rat Screw: game AND a sport, in which incidentally I may be the greatest player ever to stride the planet. This is in addition to my world-reknowned Minesweeper prowess, making me a two-sport star on par with Bo Jackson or Deion Sanders. :) Aaaanyway.... semantically separate from that is the question of "athletes", who I'd call that group of whole-body physical performers, regardless of whether they work their bodies into peak conditioning from head to toe. Ballet dancers and figure skaters are athletes, but not sports competitors; riflemen and computer gamers are sports competitors without being athletes. Golfers and weight lifters- despite the repetitive physical motions- are athletes because of the coordination of legs, torso, arms, etc. necessary. Not all athletes play a sport, not all who play sports are athletes. Sometimes they overlap, sometimes they do not. Even this is not, of course, a perfect definition, as a myriad of loophole scenarios can be devised to put lie to these particular types of distinctions. If basketball players are athletes, then what about wheelchair basketball? Is there a need to define two types of athletes- the isolated or repetetive action (golf, power lifting, darts, bowling, even pitching) that may use the whole body, and the non-repetitive free-flowing athlete that may not use certain parts of the body at all, or very little (that Irish line dancing where the upper body stays still, or the aforementioned wheelchair basketball)? These are tough questions to answer, and it seems to suggest that, like the word "terrorism", terms like "athlete" or perhaps even "sport" are impossible to define with absolute clarity. But this does in effect suggest that shortchanging computer gaming as not a sport is too simplistic and knee-jerk to ring true.

posted by hincandenza at 07:54 PM on June 03, 2002

The "what is a sport" argument is a lot like the "I know obscenity when I see it" debate. I, too, have a qualm about calling computer gamers athletes or sports players, feeling like "sport" should be reserved for the obvious, traditional sports. But we shouldn't then craft the criteria for a sport in an ad-hoc manner, trying specifically to exclude things we would call non-sports- i.e., stating that it must involve the whole body just to exclude gamers, and then find that it leaves other athletes out of the mix: 1. It can be played outdoors, or it was first played outdoors. No reason you couldn't put the computers outside, and many sports (like racquetball) are pretty much only indoors, though they wouldn't need to be. The appeal to tradition is tempting: weren't most sports started with something simple outside? 2. It can be played in a low-tech format. Which actually precludes autoracing- but then, I tend to not think of autoracers as athletes, but sports competitors by my definitions above. Car racing is a highly technical area, with advantages sought in tiny changes to tire, engine, or body through technological investigation. The competitors simply maneuver their technological tools to win a competition. 3. The mode of interaction between players requires them to be in the same place at the same time, in the same arena. This is perhaps the most intriguing one, and one I'd agree with, largely. It's like my distinction between game and sport; sport being a game with a physical skill level involved. Requiring a physical skill would seem to avoid the "proxy" issue (I can play poker or chess by mail, or by giving instructions to someone else). However, is there any requirement- other than in the rules- that two bowlers be in the same alley, if all alleys meet the same requirements? I think what this hints at is the idea of offense/defense: namely, that the competitors face each other, and can inhibit the other's performance directly. But then, golf and some track & field events are out, while gaming remains in, since obviously there is an immense amount of interaction. 4. Technology is not the primary focus of the sport, physical training and ability is. I'd say that gets into the "whole-body" requirement that would distinguish "sports" from something like darts, where you could play without moving anything besides your arm. But again, do bowlers train their bodies, or do they just practice bowling? Is that, then, much different than practice sessions in UT involving certain maneuvers or team interaction? Isn't the real focus of gaming the strategy and reflexes/coordination? 5. Technological leaps in equipment enhance the ability of the athletes to perform, but do not revolutionize or make the sport obsolete. This doesn't preclude gaming, if you think of the FPS as a sport unto itself, with each title or game scenario being a different "arena" with its own characteristics and quirks, like Fenway or Wrigley. If faster computers come out, the core sport- reflexes, strategy- doesn't change, only the tools. If Barry Bonds uses a maple bat instead of ash or the olden days hickory, is he no longer playing baseball? 6. Ceremony and history are part of the beginning and end of a season, to the end. This seems an appeal to tradition; for all we know, 50 years of computer games including a perfected virtual game with virtual body suit could develop traditions, leagues, seasons, and all the trappings of "real" sports. I suppose the first sandlot games by Doubleday didn't look like much, either. Basically, I have a hard time calling computer gaming a "sport"- but I'm also playing a little devil's advocate, because I'm not willing to toss it out as a non-sport if I can't adequately define "sport" to begin with. As I said, we shouldn't create definitions specifically seeking to exclude what we consider non-sports. We run into the problem that our definitions begin to conflict and exclude/include activities that clearly are or are not sports. I feel my original definitions- games, sports, and athletes- are pretty good, but even those have loopholes, which I could list ad nauseum. This is why I feel it's in error to call computer gaming not a sport. Maybe we need a new word to classify things like darts, autoracing, computer gaming, bowling etc. if sports isn't sufficient, but until we have that word sports will have to be the umbrella for all of them.

posted by hincandenza at 04:12 AM on June 04, 2002

i have realized that i don't really respect anything with the term "cyber" in it.

posted by moz at 12:15 PM on June 04, 2002