The Halo World Championship Tour made a stop at X Games Aspen 2016, which took place near the end of January. Last year, an invitational tournament was held for “Call of Duty: Ghosts” at the annual extreme sports event. This has sparked great controversy with regards to what is considered an extreme sport. What’s a sporting event without a little controversy, anyway?
During this year’s X Games, professional skier Kristi Leskinen tweeted, “As athletes sometimes we risk it all to win X Games. No gamer in the world deserves an #xgames Gold Medal #couchgames #athletesonly.”
This caused a stir in the professional gaming community. Is competitive gaming a sport? Yes. Does it belong at the X Games? It does.
As a kid growing up, I spent a lot of my time playing video games: “Madden,” the latest WWE video game, “Halo 2.” As a college student, I still spend a lot of my free time (which isn’t a lot) playing video games.
I have never attempted to play any game professionally. Why? Because I am not that good. But the players that do play professionally are, obviously, that good.
Athletes who play conventional sports practice for an upwards of twelve hours per day. So do professional gamers.
It shouldn’t matter which is more physically demanding; a quarterback requires just as much concentration to perform as does someone using a mouse and keyboard.
Ten years ago, professional gaming at the X Games would have been even more controversial. In just the last few years, electronic sports, or eSports, have made monumental strides in redefining what a sport is.
Popular games, like “League of Legends,” the “Call of Duty” franchise, “Dota 2” and “Counter-Strike: Global Offensive,” have all contributed immensely to the growth of gaming in the last year alone. “League of Legends” was labeled the most-streamed game on Twitch, a video game broadcasting website.
OpTic Gaming, consisting of some of the biggest personalities across all the eSports, won the gold medal in the “Call of the Duty: Ghosts” tournament at the X Games last year.
The world championship tournament of “Dota 2,” dubbed “The International,” had teams competing from all over the globe. The total prize pool for the event was $18,429,613. The team that won the event, dubbed Evil Genuises, took home a combined $6,634,661, split among five teammates. The tournament was featured on ESPN and other sports entertainment outlets, yielding many complaints that gaming isn’t a “sport.”
Lastly, “Counter-Strike: Global Offensive,” or “CSGO,” has made the biggest impact in the last year. On Sept. 23, 2015, Turner Broadcasting announced the Counter-Strike TV League would be televised on TBS. It has yet to be announced when the league will take place, but there will be two 10-week seasons that will air this year.
Athletes have sponsors, such as Nike, Adidas and Under Armour. Professional gamers have technology sponsors: Razer and Astro Headsets. Two gamers even have Red Bull sponsorships. Red Bull exclusively sponsors athletes of extreme sports.
Athletes are signed under a contract, and they must follow every guideline. A professional gamer is also signed to a contract by which they must abide.
Athletes can be traded between teams, as can professional gamers.
There may not be any physical activity, but that doesn’t take away from what gaming is: a competitive sport. Whether you’re playing “Call of Duty” or “Mario Kart,” it is much more satisfying to win rather than it is to lose.
Add in prize pools that can surpass $1 million, and the competitive drive is increased, just like it is for conventional athletes.
Students can attend college on athletic scholarships. Last year, Robert Morris University in Chicago became the first U.S. college to designate an athletic scholarship for competitive gaming.
Despite the only physical confrontation between competitors being the “good game” handshakes following a match, it seems professional gamers have a lot more in common with professional athletes than is thought.
So it’s only right that a professional gamer does deserve an X Games gold medal. eSports have been pushing the boundaries, redefining and reinventing what a sport is.