Today a story about “video games and Olympics” was published on the BBC news website. According to the story, the creator of Blizzard’s World of Warcraft claimed that competitive video gaming (e-sport) should be included in the Olympic Games as video games are well positioned to be a spectator sport.
With the improving quality and technology of video games, now this has become a huge industry that brings a large amount of income and professional e-sports events are attracting millions of audience. A recent major final held in Seoul, South Korea, filled a stadium of 40,000 people - with many more watching either online or at meet-ups around the world. However, video games are still struggling to win over those who follow more physical sports.
Before the 2014 Incheon Asian Games in South Korea, the request of adding e-sports as one of the competitions in the Asian Games was rejected. In the comments, some said that the way how e-sports are played does not accord with the feature and culture of “real sport”. And the “playing” of video games is regarded as “just a game” by many who support the refusal of introducing e-sports to competitions. When I firstly heard the news report on radio, the commentary indicated “how would games be possibly brought into one of the most important sport event in the world?”
Indeed, the definition of e-sports is still remaining in a controversial situation. The difference between e-sports and physical sports is significantly obvious. However, in this case we need to ask ourselves what is sport? Is it only on a physical level or it also requires the competition of mind? Actually, I would say that if we don’t allow competitive gaming to appear on either the Olympic or Asian Games, why would the competition of chess be allowed? It also seems not as physical as football, athletics or swimming. And for many competitive sports, like basketball, football and volleyball, every completion of actions is based on the control of our brain. Therefore, apart from physical training, these sports are also competitions of mind.
But honestly, in terms of the watching of e-sports, this might not be an unfamliar thing for many spectators, especially for those traditional sport viewers. Firstly, they need to understand the game. If you don’t know, let’s say, Warcraft, you would only be watching several units fighting and there are some effects showing on screen. Video games are not as popularised as as other classic sports and there are indeed people who never play video games.
Not sure whether e-sports would win its chance to show up in worldwide sport competition in the future, for me, I still hope this would come true one day as having been a video gamer for more than 10 years. Maybe one day when video gaming becomes also physical and people would change their comprehension on it, we would see a golden medal obtained by a e-sports player standing on the Olympics awarding stage.
Microsoft announced its financial results for Q3 of fiscal year 2026, including an update on its gaming Xbox business and more.
Not looking good. Hopefully Asha Sharma is able to turn Phil’s disaster around.
To me it's still quite remarkable how they can cash-in 5.3bn in revenue in a single quarter, since their hardware is basically dead.
The stock mark is what makes Microsoft remarkable, They have convinced every institutional and retail investor to just keep piling money into them. Like many big tech giants they are just a big growing pyramid scheme. As long as people keep dropping money into ETF's that cover the market Microsoft will always be liquid. At the same time it is completely stifling innovation and competition. People need to start being more discreet in how they invest their money as it's killing the system.
Riiiiight because people will just flock back to them for one or two games per year.
15+ years of bad performance is what they call irreparable in business. It is time for them to sell off the assets and get out of entertainment.
These declines are on the back of extra revenue received from releasing games like Forza horizon 5 on PlayStation. So I’m being sarcastic here when I said they should go back to exclusives. Killing off a revenue stream from Ps5 sales will only make things worse
The charity event will be streamed live from Gamescom in August.
Thanks to the slip-up of an artist working on the title, we now have more evidence that a new Injustice game is in the works.
Well Checkers and Chess have been popular "games" for years, yet nobody expected it to be in olympics. So why would videogames?
The Olympics tend to be about physical limits of men and women's bodies being pushed to capacity. Maybe games should just make their own olympics.
I still approved your blog because it still is a valid arguement.
I actually covered this a few days ago on my site, it's an interesting argument.
Personally I think the Olympics is less about the actual game and more about the physical capabilities of the participants. It goes back to when they games stared in ancient Greece, they were there to show who was the strongest, who was the fastest and who was the bravest, something that just doesn't translate very well into gaming.
e-sports definitely has a place in the world, if there's people who will watch it and pay money into it then it should be allowed to grow but within it's own ecosystem.
Me? I prefer to play games rather than watch, that goes for actual sports as well as gaming.
I dont ever see it happening, gaming is not seen as a sport, even as an "e-sport". If gaming was a sport we wouldnt even need the title "e-sport" in the first place. I have been gaming since the 80s and I dont think it should ever be seen as a sport, the same as I dont see poker as a sport or tiddly winks. Its gaming the same as chess or monopoly, which can all be done competitively.
Another problem is regulations, imagine how many rules and sanctions would need to be made for gaming to be part of the Olympics IF they did think about it and what about the poorer countries that enter the Olympics, none could fund a gaming team, therefore you would only get well off countries participating.
There are so many problems that would prevent it from ever happening but I dont really have the time to type it all out and I dont think I would be able to convey my points as well as I would like to.
I am all for a big gaming event though like an Olympic sized thing across genres but its never going to be classed as a real sport. I would gladly watch them if they were games I was interested in as well.
LMAO. Videogaming at the olympics.
'nuff said.
I get the arguments people make as to why they feel games do belong in the olympics but, at the end of the day, I think that's best left for that of athleticism and actual physical prowess.
Gaming already has its own events and culture. Don't see the need to shoehorn it in elsewhere.