Why should video games be a sport?
There was a study at German Sports University that professional gamers exhibit high levels of physical strains. Sitting in front of a computer or a TV and playing video games doesn’t seem super physical but with an advance in technology, competitive video gamers are starting to demonstrate the same athletic properties as a traditional sports athlete.
The first video game competition happened on Oct 19, 1972, at Stanford University where two dozen students competed playing the game Spacewar!. The first big tournament was held when a video game company held a multiple-city competition where 10,000 people signed up to compete to become the world champion at Space Invaders.
According to the Sports Journal, the NCAA has 1,121 college members with nearly half a million college athletes, competing in 24 sports among three divisions (The National Collegiate Athletic Association, n.d.). For eSports to be taken seriously as a sport at the collegiate level, the NCAA will need to recognize eSports as a sport. For that to happen, the sport must go through an extensive review process.
ESports also has an advantage to being acknowledged as a collegiate sport, since no defined gender is required to play competitive video games. Women and men can play together without an imbalance being created by gender differences. Since women can start a women-only team or participate with men, the recognition of eSports in the NCAA could fall under the emerging sports for women.
Sophomore Mayson Hallberg has been playing video games for 12 years. His favorite video game is Madden because “it is very fun to play with friends and it is a good way to act like a player or act like a coach.”
Hallberg shared, “I don’t think video games should be considered a sport because when you are playing video games, you don’t sweat and you are burning calories or doing a lot of physical motion.”
Personally, I think that video games are a sport because there are so many people who love playing video games against their friends and they can prove to their friends that are good at video games if they win a competition. During competitions it takes physical strains on their thumbs and wrists and if it is a close game, people get stressed and try harder so they exert a lot of sweat. To me, that makes it a sport.
