D I G I T A L S P O R T S

[Hank]

http://www.reddit.com/r/DotA2/comments/298ep2/the_international_2014_prize_pool_is_now_over_10/

This is absolutely insane.

[stark]

...I should just give up life and play video games.

[Halo]

I disagree with referring to them as "sports", but to be honest... if you think about any other activity that has as many active, passionate participants as gaming, that's also widely accessible to anyone (to be honest, only sports come to mind), then when you draw the comparison it doesn't seem as crazy. Many sports have millions upon millions of dollars invested in them without us even batting an eyelash.

EDIT: Also, loving the new set.

[Hank]

There's a reason the whole industry is generally called e-sports. People acknowledge the difference between this and more traditional sports like football or golf by emphasizing the electronic part. Fundamentally I think it's the same thing (people playing games on a professional level; let's not forget that kicking a ball into a net is nothing more than a children's game) and the United States recently acknowledged League of Legends pro players as athletes (for visa purposes)... but yeah, it's e-sports, not 'regular' sports. I agree with that.

[Smiral]

remember how they included MLG in the X Games this year because I do

[Cpt Toellner]

I was at MLG Columbus 2011 as a coach, fuck you guys.

[Halo]

Hank said
There's a reason the whole industry is generally called People acknowledge the difference between this and more traditional sports like football or golf by emphasizing the electronic part. Fundamentally I think it's the same thing (people playing games on a professional level; let's not forget that kicking a ball into a net is nothing more than a children's game) and the United States recently acknowledged League of Legends pro players as athletes (for visa purposes)... but yeah, it's e-sports, not 'regular' sports. I agree with that.

I just feel the term "e-sports", and referring to them as "athletes", is inaccurate. A sport requires physical exertion in some way, according to me and the folks over at Oxford dictionaries. It isn't that the games and players aren't 'deserving' (so to speak) of being called that, or don't deserve the same Visa privileges as athletes, or any such thing - it's just that typically the term applies to something else, and it makes more sense to invent a new one rather than stretch the definition of the old word. We don't refer to chess as a sport or its players as athletes; we use different words, because there are blatant differences between chess and football, rugby, etc. despite them all being games played on a professional level.
So my quibble with it is more to do with language in a general sense than with the actual activity itself. The whole point of language is to communicate, and to do that each word has to carry a distinctive meaning. Stretching the definitions of old words to cover new things that don't readily fall into the same category doesn't really make any sense. It's better to invent new words for new things, no? Language stagnates when you refuse to do that - case in point, French.

EDIT: Oh my fucking god I'm turning Spam into Off-Topic. Put me out of my misery now, please, before I start quoting and replying to everything sentence-by-sentence.

[Hank]

While that may be, language works best when it evolves organically. The word e-sports is already firmly rooted into modern culture and trying to replace it with something else now isn't going to work. The whole shebang is increasingly becoming acknowledged more and more as a sports industry, the players as athletes, and such the definition of the word "sport" will change over time to suit the new world.

[Halo]

Hank said
While that may be, language works best when it evolves organically. The word e-sports is already firmly rooted into modern culture and trying to replace it with something else now isn't going to work. The whole shebang is increasingly becoming acknowledged more and more as a sports industry, the players as athletes, and such the definition of the word "sport" will change over time to suit the new world.

I agree - forcing language never ends well, the case in point being, once again, the French actively suppressing organic growth (I feel like I'm picking on them now.) Which is why I don't think we should go and forcibly change it now, as it's far too late, but reserve my God-given right to dislike it, to believe it would have been better to just have come up with a new word (as over-broadening of a word's definition tends to render the word null, as it doesn't actually describe anything anymore), and to moan about it on the internet.

[The Nexerus]

If the French are doing something, that's a reason not to do it.