For many Canadians, unless a game involves a stick, a puck and a sheet of ice, it isn’t a real sport. But what if the stick was replaced by a controller and the sheet of ice was a computer-generated field? The world of professional gaming is not one where the most athletic, strongest, or bravest always wins, but a venue for the quickest fingers and healthiest mental stamina.
In recent years, the establishment of leagues such as Major League Gaming (MLG) has contributed to its growth and popularity with over 500,000 unique views on MLGPro website’s live game feeds. With an increasing list of sponsors and events across North America, this grassroots organization is becoming a business conglomerate where the top players can earn a respectable salary as a gamer. But despite the industry’s professionalization of video gaming, is it appropriate to call it a sport?
The definition of the word “sport” has long been in dispute. The basic definition of the word as a “physical contest pursued for the goals and challenges it entails” is ambiguous enough to add to the confusion. Consider that one must not ignore the physical challenges of eating 59 hot dogs in ten minutes for the Nathan’s International July Fourth Hot Dog Eating Competition.
Raymond Lau, Manager of Player Relations for MLG, insists that one should not overlook the dexterity needed to compete at the highest level of gaming. “There’s hand-eye coordination [in gaming] and that’s physical,” said Lau. One could argue that hot dog eating as well as gaming hardly equals the athleticism needed to play in something like the NFL. But if so, how is it that golf—a game that concerns one’s dexterity more than their physical strength—gives Tiger Woods the title of the “world’s greatest athlete”?
Perhaps it’s the accessibility required to make it to the professional rankings, tied to the hours of training and the level of skill to become an elite. Gaming does not seem to follow this requirement. Even the MLG Canada website stated that: “The ability to break into professional gaming is much more accessible than most other professional sporting leagues.”
But according to Lau, just because professional gaming is widely accessible does not mean it is easy. “You have to be born with certain skills,” he explains. “A person can play a million times more than one of the pros and still never be as good. They need to be born with some natural ability and obviously practice a lot of hand-eye coordination.”
“[NBA superstar and an MLG sponsor] Gilbert Arenas once said that [top ranked pro gaming team] Final Boss practices more than himself and other basketball stars do because they just play for hours, sometimes 8 to 10 hours a day. When you get an athlete to see that it is athletic, and that it is a sport, it provides more legitimacy.”
Even amateur gamers feel the pressure of training in order to legitimately compete in professional gaming. A young female gamer, who traveled from Atlanta, Georgia to be able to attend the MLG Toronto event explained, “You have to really train, just like any other sport. You have to practice and practice to be good at something you really enjoy and actually go somewhere with it.”
The meaning of sport is changing with the times. With the advent of various technologies from the automobile to the XBOX 360, the rules of competition have evolved to the point where one’s physical capabilities no longer need to be the sole and primary determiner of an outcome.
As participants find themselves in conflict with the historical representation of sport, new terms are created to categorize them. As top-ranked professional gamer 17-year old Jarred Szabadi justified, “I like to think of [gaming] as an eSport.”
