Esports?

Or maybe it’s spelled e-sports or eSports. Anyway, a local religious college has decided to add esports to the sports they already have in order to encourage more students to enroll. Also, they are going to add archery to their list of sports. I didn’t know that archery was a varsity sport anywhere, but what do I know? It seems a little strange that these people imagine that prospective students would want to come to rural Ohio for these sports.

Comments

[John from Daejeon]

I guess I'm not the only old fogey these days, as even the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris are discussing adding eSports to the Olympic Games in order to keep them relevant to the video game-raised youth of today as even the Big Ten Conference has already done. Some ex-sports stars are also getting in on this billion dollar plus action and owning teams like Rick Fox and Shaquille O'Neal. And as this sporting phenomenon began in earnest in South Korea, it's not surprising that the love of archery in South Korea is also being exported abroad with their KPop and drama fever like wildfire to the youth of the world on their Samsung and LG smartphones, tablets, and televisions. Hell, this year's surprising new United States drama on ABC, "The Good Doctor," is just a recycled version of South Korea's 2013 drama, "Good Doctor" or "굿 닥터."

However, the world of eSports is far from all fun and games. Google it and read some of the horror stories of the deaths and the physical and psychological side effects this sitting on your rear end sport has produced.

But in the long term, eSports will probably have one hell of a detrimental effect on the world when it comes to obesity and poor eyesight, but luckily we won't have to worry about the likes of soccer hooliganism as eSports spectators mostly watch and compete in their parents' basements.

[John Pepple]

Many thanks for the info. I learn a lot from my readers.

[John from Daejeon]

It boggled my mind when I first moved to South Korea (about 2006) that two of the most watched TV channels were strictly devoted to WOW (aka World of Warcraft). Here's a NBC news piece on the e-sports action back in those days. Only in today's 2017 world, professional South Korean gamers are pulling in bigger bucks than those playing what is thought of as traditional sports (baseball, soccer, archery, and figure skating in South Korea). Not only that but at the recent world eSports Championship in China, South Korea once again fielded the best of the best teams, of which the same top two faced off against each other once again in the finals (SK Telecom T1 and Samsung Galaxy).

[John from Daejeon]

I don't know if the NBC news story linked, so here's the address for it: http://www.nbcnews.com/id/17175353/ns/technology_and_science-games/t/forget-reality-tv-korea-online-gaming-it/

[Charles N.Steele]

My first reaction is "what else is there to do in rural Ohio?"

But if sport is competition, eSports seem as legitimate as any other spectator sport. And the visuals are probably more exciting than in many other sports.

I have a hard time accepting the claim of some that eSports is *athletics,* unless we mean mental athletics, like chess or solving math problems etc. BTW, I don't play, or watch *any* video games. I think it would be like taking an addictive drug, and lead to overindulgence. (So I run ultramarathons instead!)

Here's a recent Forbes article that includes a pro-eSports video, and the video is worth watching.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/mikestubbs/2017/12/02/are-esports-a-real-sport-riot-games-wades-into-the-debate-with-league-of-legends-video/#46617f892486