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Hanwen Xu

Professor Brandon Alva

ENG 2010 (PEAR Paper Final Draft)

30 April 2018

Is The E-Sports a Real Sport?

“Hordes of fans queue outside, eagerly awaiting a glimpse of their heroes. Inside, a

shining trophy stands upon a pedestal. The players arrive, eyeing it covetously as they make their

way to their positions. Suited pundits have had their say and hand over to the commentators. One

team forms a pre-match huddle; the other waits patiently for the game to commence. A stirring

light show ceases; a chanting crowd falls to an expectant hush.” (Young). When I read this in

CNN reporter Henry Young’s article, it reminds me of the moment that I was standing on stage,

looking around and waving my hands to the excited fans, the big camera was facing me, the

crowd was cheering when the commentators were saying my nickname. It is not a basketball

game; this is an e-sports tournament. It is an unforgettable memory for me, even if I just played

the substitute on a team for one year. Sometimes, my friends ask me: “Do you think you waste

too much time on the video games.” I responded to them: “I enjoy what I did, and I believe e-

sports is defiantly a new sport that developing very fast since the beginning of the 21st century. It

is not just the video games.”

Nowadays, the word “E-sports” is appearing more and more before us. E-sports is

electronic sports, and it means the competitions between some professional video games players.

We can see many huge events and tournaments of e-sports are held every year, millions of the

prize and salary are encouraging more and more people to get involved in this industry

consistently. The e-sports clubs and players always have large fan bases all over the world, and
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the voice of making the e-sports to be one of the Olympic sports is louder and louder. What's

exciting is, according to the ESPN reporter Sean Morrison report on April 22, 2018, the Olympic

Council of Asia announced that it would include esports in the 2018 Asian Games and make it a

medal sport in 2022, and the 2022 Asian Games will take place that September in Hangzhou,

China. (Morrison). Even so, there are still many disputes about this news. Therefore, we have no

way to ignore this new era product. When we consider what the e-sports is, we always come out

with a question : “Is the e-sports a real sport?”

To answer this question, we must think about what a sport is first. In the dictionary, the

sports are defined as “an activity involving physical exertion and skill in which an individual or

team competes against another or others for entertainment.” The writer Chris Chase who works

for Fox Sports made a negative answer to this question. In his article “Will video games ever be

an Olympic sport? (We hope not.).” He states: “e-sports has no athleticism, physicality or

exertion, even if it takes dexterity, intelligence, reflexes, and coolness under pressure to succeed

in gaming.” It is not hard to make sense because we all know e-sports is based on video games,

and it doesn’t have the elements that the typical sports are required. The real sports never

encouraged people to sit in front of the computer all day.

As a former professional player, I agree with Chris Chase when I first read his article. It is

different with the traditional sports; playing video games is not e-sports, so the normal players

and the pro e-sports player are in two completely different worlds because of the competition.

With my experiences, I can promise it is very hard to be a pro player in any kinds of e-sports. A

player can’t earn lots of money from it if he is not one of the best players in the world. To be an

e-sports player requires the highest intelligence and the super talent of the game. The practice

hour for a player is even over 15 hours every day if he wants to be the best, this is extremely
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harmful to the human body. In fact, the best age for an e-sports player’s career is mostly between

16 to 21. Now, you can already see many first-generation e-sports players retired at a very young

age without any honor (because they can’t achieve the best level), the only thing that e-sports left

for them is a harmed body, most of them are suffering the pain of backache and arthritis. After

retiring, they must go back to the college or try to find out something else to do, but the body

injuries will follow their whole life. No sport in history can destroy a player’s body in this short-

term universally. Not to mention the billions of the regular players, they are not doing anything

like playing a sport, they are just playing the video games.

Of course, the supporting voices from some economists and businesspeople are never

stopped, they believe the e-ports can bring us a huge financial value because of the fanbases

(Needleman). However, we don’t need to deny the commercial value behind the e-sports,

because this is not the reason for e-sports to become a real sport. If so, why isn’t business a

sport? I totally agree with that e-sports are commercial events, and it is developing very well for

now, but sports should not be the events that are only seeking for the profit (Chase).

In another way, the video games are usually coming with killing, blood, and some other

inhuman elements, and this is not what a sport is supposed to have. We must mention the

Olympics, the goal of the Olympics is “Faster, Higher, Stronger,” is there any word on the three

goals that fit the e-sports? President Trump also believes the level of violence in video games is

really shaping young people's thoughts, and the article is titled, “Trump says violent video games

'shape' young minds.” We can’t encourage the violent products to be a sport and affect our

children’s mental health. I agreed with this at first, even if there are many games do not have the

violent elements, but the most famous e-sports games must kill to win. My English professor

Brandon Alva commented on this, and he mentioned there are many sports like MMA and
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American football are more violent than e-sports. So, l decided to rethink about this, the sports

like American football, hockey are full of violence as well. Especially the hockey, the Olympic

official website “ice hockey equipment and history” shows: "Six-a-side men’s ice hockey has

been on the programme of every edition of the Winter Games since 1924 in Chamonix.

Women’s ice hockey was accepted as an Olympic sport in 1992 and made its official debut in

1998 in Nagano." Hockey is a sport with some violence, but it still in the Olympics, so, we

cannot deny the e-sports is a sport just because of the violent elements.

I like what Young said in his article “Seven-figure salaries, sold-out stadiums: Is pro

video gaming a sport?” That e-sports has all the elements of typical sports, and to ensure e-sports

is a "completed" spectator sport. But is the e-sports really completed as a sport? Like I said

above, as a first-generation e-sports player, my experience always tells me the fact that my body

is harmed in one year because of this short career, it is hard for a player who involved in typical

sports to get the serious injuries just in one year. So, I did not want to believe what young said e-

sports players and typical sports players have the same level of the training process,

management, and even injuries. To confirm it, I interviewed my old friend Xiao Luo by a

chatting app about the injuries, who is the club manager of the team Invictus Gaming now. He

told me:” We have a more and more completed management system, including the psychological

assistance and physical fitness system, we even control the diet for our players to make sure they

are healthy. It is different with the professional life we had five years ago. Now the players have

the best healthcare and training system, and they also earn a basic salary even if they don’t have

the best grades, they don’t need to rely on the awards anymore. The only thing they need to

worry about is to focus on training and show their talents in the tournaments.” I’m happy to hear

this because it means the e-sports is becoming more and more professional and cares about the
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players’ healthy situation. According to the interview, I can see the e-sports system is as

professional as the typical sports nowadays.

But I am still feeling uncomfortable about what the Fox sports reporter Chris Chase said

in his article “Will video games ever be an Olympic sport? (We hope not.).” He believes the

commercial value should not be the reason for e-sports to become a real sport. So, I interviewed

the business professor Edward G. Engh, who teaches the foundation of business in SLCC about

this, he explained: “In fact, all big sports competitions include the Olympics are economic

events. Olympics are commercial events because it leads the local economic growth. And this is

why different countries’ government are eager to hold the Olympic even if they know they will

not get any profit from this.” So, the commercial purpose is a part of the reason for holding the

Olympics. The argument that saying the purpose of sports’ events are not going for benefit is

invalid at all. It feels like they are afraid to talk about the successful operating results in the e-

sports. In this year 2018, Houston Rockets, Cleveland Cavaliers, and defending NBA champion

Golden State Warriors are involved in a gaming event called, 2018 North American League

Championship Series (Erzberger). There are billions of people enjoying the e-sports, Nielsen

analyst Nicole Pike said clients are hungry to learn about sponsorship opportunities as e-sports

build a significant fan base (Needleman). We can’t stop the trending that e-sports is getting

closer to the typical sports step by step.

When I was looking back to the definition of sports in the dictionary, a sport is “an

activity involving physical exertion and skill in which an individual or team competes against

another or others for entertainment.” I realized a sport should be a competition for entertainment.

The time is changing, and the entertainment is changing as well, video games are popular and

common in every family. The CNN reporter Riddell said in his article “ESports: Global revenue
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expected to smash $1 billion by 2019”: “e-Sports is a revolution which has redefined gaming,

helped shape what it means to be a millennial, and quite possibly paved the way for the future of

broadcast sports.” He also believes e-sports is already a culture of the young generation. The

society is developing, and we can’t use the old view to treat the e-sports, our social media is

different from 20 years ago, our entrainment is different as well, why e-sports cannot be the new

type of sports in our society? We can’t let the stereotypes of video games affect our view too

much. And in fact, most of the video games players are parents, and women players are holding a

big part of it as well(Casselman). The video game is a big part of our daily life now; people to

treat the e-sports as sports is the inevitable trend.

E-sports is becoming more and more regular, and many evidences are proving the e-sports is

a real sport. We can see e-sports is developing and getting better at a visible speed nowadays.

Olympic Council of Asia accept the e-sports is the first step, it will become a sport and be

admitted to everyone someday with a final shape. But the low average age and the violent

elements are still stopping people to treat it as a sport, so, e-sports still need a very long time to

achieve this attitude.

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Cited

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