A few weeks ago I took part in a podcast with a few of the other students in my games media class. The topic up for discussion “Are Games Sports?”. This is a topic that is close to my heart, I grew up playing a lot of games and never really got into sports myself. To me, the possibilities enabled by interactive media far outweighed the restrictive and frankly exhausting alternative offered by sports. When I broached this topic in class to begin with, I was surprised that so many students were quick to try and claim that games and sports were equivalent and could not understand that point of view. For me, they are polar opposites and I felt as though my peers felt they needed to claim games were sports in order to make them seem like a more valid way to pass their time.
In the podcast, I focused my argument on three main concepts:
1. Games are usually as challenging as the player wants them to be
2. Games are designed experiences that can tell stories
3. Games can invoke a wide range of emotional responses
In the podcast, I was outnumbered by my peers with the podcast being three against one in favour of games and sports being the same thing. This was not unexpected, however I was not sure what arguments would be used to support their view, leading me to find a large number of sources to try and counter their point of view to varying degrees of success. A few highlights of the podcast are contained in the video below:
And the complete podcast can be found here:
The three arguments I ended up having to counter were as follows:
1. Games require constant training and therefore should be considered sports
2. eSports are popular and generate large amounts of money and should therefore be considered sports
3. Games are competitive and this is the essence of a sport
In the end, I was unconvinced by these arguments that games should be the equivalent of sports. In fact, my argument ended up becoming that games are so much more than sports could ever be. The wide range of experiences available to gamers, the emotional draw and messages these games can have and the stories that can be experienced far outweigh anything a sport can offer. In fact, I believe if we framed this argument differently and instead talked about why games are important, we all would have been on the same side.
Overall the experience was positive and it was good to have an open discussion with other passionate gamers about games and game culture. I learned a lot about how another generation views games and how they fit into our everyday lives. Given the opportunity I would value the opportunity to take place in further discussions regarding similar topics.
According to Jason 