By Noah Hayden
Members of the Virginia Tech Smash Bros club warm up by playing one on one to start the event.
Photo Credit: Noah Hayden
Possibly the greatest debate in all of video game culture is whether or not e-sports should be considered a real sport or not. Those who do not believe e-sports are real sports most often make the claim that pro e-sports players lack the fundamental quality that all other sports revolve around. That quality being physical activity greater than just twiddling the thumbs.
For those who say e-sports are real sports, their most common claim usually revolves around debunking the idea that a sport is a sport based on physical activity. This is most often done by making parallels from other sports to e-sports. For example, “If chess is a sport, why can’t video games be one?” Racing is another sport in which this parallel can be made.
However, this is not to say that e-sports fans do not have more intriguing cases to make. “You don’t really consider sports a viable profession, not everyone makes it big, but the opportunity is there,” said Virginia Tech’s Super Smash Bros Melee club president Erick Cox. “If you win a [smash bros melee] tournament, you might win a thousand dollars. If you win a Dota 2 tournament, you might become a multi-millionaire. I think the opportunity should be there for e-sports too.”
The real issue with this debate is trying to understand what a sport really is. The definition of a sport is continuously changing and trying to understand what makes a sport a sport in the eyes of an individual, or even from nation to nation, is even more difficult.
Outlined in the European Sports Charter under article 2, the Council of Europe defines a sport as, “all forms of physical activity which, through casual or organized participation, aim at expressing or improving physical fitness and mental well-being, forming social relationships or obtaining results in competition at all levels.”
Going by Europe’s definition would mean that e-sports should not be considered sports. However, while countries like South Korea do not have a solid definition of what a sport is, they have nurtured the development of e-sports in the hopes that one day it will be considered a sport in the traditional sense. This leaves the role of deciding what a sport is in the hands of the individual.
Whether or not sports are a pure physical activity cannot be decided by one person, government, or nation for the sake of others. However, one person can make that decision for their own sake. At the end of the day, only time will tell if e-sports will be considered a sport or not.
Here are some members from the Super Smash Bros club at Virginia Tech preparing for a tournament.
Photo Credit: Noah Hayden
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