“Play to win, literally.”

power on and play

Parents for years have told their children that life is not all about playing games. Then you see over the years how gaming has become so lucrative. No one would have ever imagined that gamers would be making six figure, some seven figure salaries. And what are they really doing, playing video games, testing video games. But this month is about sports and from a Real Sports with Bryant Gumble, episode a question was asked. And that was, “Should gamers be rewarded scholarships like athletes?” Because gaming has gotten so big that it is now considered sport. My only criticism is, is it really? I define athletics a little differently, some don’t.

who is an athlete

To me, I look at the athletes who compete in sports as a physical task in whatever it is they are doing. It’s their own human skill, not their ability to work around a computer system. Because if we are going to add gamers as athletes, why not chess players. Because to me, chess is more impressive than gaming. Another reason gaming is not athletics to me is because let’s say we are playing a sports video game. No one is buying a video game playing with gamers. You buy Madden to play with NFL players or a baseball came to play with MLB players. So if gamers are athletes, then traditional athletes are superstars. Because there will never be a game where gamers take the profile of gamers to play other gamers. There is no real objective to the game. It would be like playing the Playstation so we can play this guy with a high score against this guy with a high score in a game. So it becomes a game in a game that no one wants to play.

we play, just a different kind of sport

They may not be athletes in the traditional sense. But let’s for a second assume that they are athletes. They would fall under the category of amateur sport. Now, the big gamers don’t play sporting games, they play well known fantasy or first person shooter games. Still some people are not convinced, but we have to look at it as competition. That doesn’t mean sport because of competition, since physical activity is involved. But, also remember, there is a entertainment for spectator aspect to the competition that could make it a sport. What makes gamers upset that they are not seen as athletes is that what they do: skills, competition, tournaments resulting in championships, cooperation, are integral to sports. Yet, still, the real objective of sports is your human skill against mine. What would make gamers athletes is if they turned their favorite games real. So that it was their physical ability versus the other person. So let’s turn Call of Duty into a sport, but on second let’s not. Because that’s not sport, that’s war, making it more violent than any sport out here.

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