False Prophets & The Gaming Holy Grail

Copyright (c) Noelle Adams. All Rights Reserved.

Let’s set something straight, right now. Competitive gaming is not a sport.  

Somewhere along the line, with the flinging about of bizarre, misleading terms like ‘cyber-athlete’ and ‘e-sports’, people have become confused by false prophets.  

Jonathan ‘Fatal1ty’ Wendel, arguably the world’s best competitive gamer, suffers from just such a Moses complex. Proclaiming himself an ‘E-sports Ambassador’ Wendel has jumped centre stage, preaching that competitive gaming will soon be a legitimate Olympic sport.  

There is, of course, a major flaw in Wendel’s argument. Sport is defined as a ‘physical’ activity. For all the mouse-clicking, button-mashing and jaw-clenching, competitive gaming is not physical. So what, you claim? If our lives have become more sedentary, shouldn’t we respect activities that are similarly so?  

Consider chess, then, as a case example. If chess, centuries’ old and played worldwide, cannot crack an Olympic nod, then electronic gaming has no right to pursue the same goal. All competitive gaming really is is chess without the MENSA backing.  

Don’t get me wrong. I thoroughly enjoy setting up my PC at a friend’s house for a few hours of rocket-jumping, sniping, and teleporting my paladin hero into battle. But I recognise the reality of what I’m doing. I make no grand statements that every time I sit down to game I’m actually fulfilling my daily training quota.  

Regardless of the excellent prize money and ever-growing event size, LANing still belongs to an activity category that includes chess, poker and tabletop strategy battles. Regardless of interest or participation levels, they are all hobbyist games, not sports.  

The question remains then why Wendel and his numerous disciples would want competitive gaming labelled a sport?  

As it currently stands, competitive gaming remains a hard sell to the public. In South Africa our favourite pursuits are outdoors and physical; both of which gaming is not. In a sports-mad nation, attaching the tag ‘sport’ to competitive gaming may camouflage some of the complexities that prevent non-gamers from converting to the passion.  

These complexities include the fact that competitive gaming is an activity rocketing ahead in terms of change. While South Koreans still grant professional sportsman status to StarCraft players, elsewhere Painkiller, Counter-Strike and FIFA 06 are prize money titles.  

With all its different genres and platforms, competitive gaming runs the risk of fragmenting into more groups and leagues than the professional wrestling federations. Faced with variety that is lacking from conventional sports, potential devotees are unsure what altars to worship at.  

But perhaps I’m over-thinking things.  

As more people take up gaming, the move has been to distance the hobby from stigmatising labels traditionally slapped on it. Like it or not, the tag ‘sport’ adds a veneer of social acceptance. The Olympic dreams of Wendel and his followers are then just another sign of gaming going mainstream.  

Perhaps, finally, the quest for the ‘Sport’ Holy Grail is just a case of competitive gamers preferring to be branded ‘jocks’ instead of ‘geeks’. Why else in interviews would Wendel continue to stress his love of tennis?