Reading 10: It’s a Club, Not a Sport
But you can watch Overwatch on ESPN, it must be a sport!
No. This may be my hottest take in this class, but Overwatch and League of Legends are not sports, they are a competitive game you play with your friends. Don’t get me wrong, I love video games of all varieties. While most of the games I play tend to be single player, story-driven RPGs, I’m still ranked in the top 20% in Battlefield One, and I’m consistently the highest scoring player in almost any match I matchmake into. It’s not a case of “oh you just suck, stop complaining you casual ape”, video games were never meant to be a spectator sport, and the overall quality of online competitive games has dropped as they make the easily identifiable “esports attempt”.
Inexplicably, to me at least, the popularity of watching esports is only growing. Esports might one day reach the viewership numbers of the Olympics, but I doubt it will ever become part of the Olympics itself, or reach the same level of public popularity. Right now, competitive video games are still caught in their own niece environment. No matter how much money gets thrown at the competitive side of things, I think MLG will always be in a separate category the same way the World Series of Poker is. There could still potentially be $1,000,000 tournament prizes and daytime segments on ESPN, but the majority of the population will never really grab interest.
To me, video games will always be a hobby and an enjoyable pastime to share with friends, but I don’t think I’ll ever think of a Halo tournament the same way I think of the Super Bowl or the Masters. Plenty of people will disagree with me, but I don’t think any activity where I can be competitively ranked while playing from my couch, drinking a beer in my underwear will match the same level of competition found in professional sports. Multiplayer games were designed for people to have fun together, and people who take a game that seriously just wind up ruining the game for everyone else.
