Fuck Football... really...

[Jimmy Higgins]

Pro sports are as real as it can get.

I find that sentiment hilarious. Pro sports are a game. They are big business. I can't possibly imagine what you could be trying to say when you state that pro sports are "as real as it gets."

Hilarious? Maybe to you.

Pro athletes play to win. It is not scripted or predetermined. Around here the Seahawks run to the Super Bowl was high drama. Wilson vs Manning as David vs Goliath.

Over the weekend I watched two of the most intense pro boxing fights I have ever seen.

It is not just pro sports . Nationally there are numerous adult hockey, football, and basketball leagues.

What I think is hilarious, more like sad, is people who play video games thinking themselves winners by killing imaginary opponents. The video game industry is far worse than anything you can make of pro sports.

Wait... are you saying that the 48 I shot in the British Open in EA Golf, including Eagles in 3 of 4 consecutive holes is somehow sadder than cheering on a particular golfer in an actual real world event?

 

[bilby]

Professional sport is entertainment. Not different from a Broadway show really; a bunch of guys ad-lib within a pre set scenario, for the entertainment of a paying audience. It is as 'real' as Disney on ice - which is also performed by skilled professionals, highly lucrative and widely enjoyed.

Amateur sport is a pastime. It fills in the bit of one's life when one is awake, but not working or doing chores. It is not substantively different from video games, reading, or watching TV in that respect. Pastimes are fine, but it is foolish to denigrate those of others or lionise one's own; everyone is entitled to their own taste. Some love video games; some love watching football; some love playing football. None of these things need be particularly important to anyone else, as long as the participants are having fun.

 

[Honza]

Can't stand sport....I like exercise but not sport.

 

[dystopian]

Can you win?

...It generally wouldn't be a game if you couldn't.

So I have been completely screwed by Will Wright, having played the non-game Sim City since Germany was two countries.

Sim City and it's ilk tend to be outliers in the 'doesn't have a hardcoded win-state'; although unlike Pacman's era of 'infinitely harder levels until the game bugs out', it's easier to set a wide range of self-determined win-states.

 

[dystopian]

Pro sports are as real as it can get.

TV wrestling is not a sport, it is a scripted soap opera.

Pro sports serves an important function as social glue un cites and nationally.

Nerds need to get out in the street and toss a football around....maybe even choose up sides and have a game.

You realize that some videogames ARE a pro sport these days, right?

Do you have any idea how much MONEY is involved with videogames as pro-sports? Just take Starcraft 2 alone; its pro-gamers routinely make six figure salaries, and can fill a stadium with more people than your american superbowl can. And they're not just fat 13 year olds just playing a game either, they train with all the intensity of any other pro-athlete; just focused on the mental more so than the physical. In fact, training and performance is so important that 24 is often considered the default retirement age because your brain's response time will have naturally decreased by all of 150ms or thereabouts. (Just take a look at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YbpCLqryN-Q to see how important that can be)

Anyone who thinks that videogames can't (or aren't) a pro-sport by now is living about 15-20 years behind the times. Welcome to the present.

 

[Rhea]

Anyone who thinks that videogames can't (or aren't) a pro-sport by now is living about 15-20 years behind the times. Welcome to the present.

au contraire

There are but three true sports--bullfighting, mountain climbing, and motor-racing. The rest are merely games.

 

[The Paul]

Pro sports are as real as it can get.

TV wrestling is not a sport, it is a scripted soap opera.

Pro sports serves an important function as social glue un cites and nationally.

Nerds need to get out in the street and toss a football around....maybe even choose up sides and have a game.

You realize that some videogames ARE a pro sport these days, right?

Do you have any idea how much MONEY is involved with videogames as pro-sports? Just take Starcraft 2 alone; its pro-gamers routinely make six figure salaries, and can fill a stadium with more people than your american superbowl can. And they're not just fat 13 year olds just playing a game either, they train with all the intensity of any other pro-athlete; just focused on the mental more so than the physical. In fact, training and performance is so important that 24 is often considered the default retirement age because your brain's response time will have naturally decreased by all of 150ms or thereabouts. (Just take a look at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YbpCLqryN-Q to see how important that can be)

Anyone who thinks that videogames can't (or aren't) a pro-sport by now is living about 15-20 years behind the times. Welcome to the present.

That is a little bit weird, yeah. Way easier to wrap my head around than poker being a pro sport, though.

 

[TV and credit cards]

We used to play this tabletop football game at the pizza place. Xs and Os and you would spin this ball with the palm of your hand making your little O run down the field/screen. Faster, faster, faster!
Some years later I'm sitting at my desk on the aircraft carrier watching two of my guys play some video game and methodically dropping Planter's Cheese Balls in their mouths, every evening on an eight month deployment. They may have been playing against others on the ship, I'm not sure. The one individual that worked for me set up the network for the ship. Super sharp guy. Really loved talking about networks and whatnot. Totally could not interpret a glazed over look though. There was a lot of unofficial stuff going on on the unclassified side.
After awhile, I started to go to bed at about 1900 and waking at about 0300. The office to myself. Read in peace. Much better.

 

[steve_bnk]

I believe the general definition of sport is completion with rules.

Technically chess is a sport.

IMO if you think the NFL and physical pro sports are contrived bullshit and see video games as an equivalent competition , that is weak.

My point was if you think the NFL is artificial and contrived, then certainly video games battling imagined enemies is at least as bad, and probably much worse. Imagined games and imagined victories.

 

[J842P]

I believe the general definition of sport is completion with rules.

Technically chess is a sport.

IMO if you think the NFL and physical pro sports are contrived bullshit and see video games as an equivalent competition , that is weak.

My point was if you think the NFL is artificial and contrived, then certainly video games battling imagined enemies is at least as bad, and probably much worse. Imagined games and imagined victories.

See, I would argue that for something to be a sport there has to be some element of athletic competition. I wouldn't categories chess as a sport, but I don't think that diminishes a chess-champions achievements. To me, its just an issue of properly categorizing activities.

Similarly, a professional Starcraft player is not playing a sport and is not an athlete but they have achieved spectacular feats of skill in their particular activity. And they aren't "imaginary" any more than opponents in chess are imaginary. Indeed, if you consider chess a sport then you have to consider professional videos games a sport.


And no one is arguing that they are equivalent. Obviously, a professional chess player is likely not going to be able to out-basketball a professional basketball player, and vice versa.

The point people are making is that they are all games. A game is sort of the antithesis of "real." Pro-wrestling isn't even a game in the sense that it isn't even a competition. It is like watching a play.

Anyway, it's hard to take your opinion on video games seriously since you are self-admittedly completely ignorant in their regard.

I am also inclined not to take your opinion on sports very seriously since I remember you stating an opinion that soccer "isn't very athletic." If I have misattributed that sentiment, I am sorry.

 

[dystopian]

IMO if you think the NFL and physical pro sports are contrived bullshit and see video games as an equivalent competition , that is weak.

Well hang on there. You said that "pro sports are as real as it gets", and you might have had a point... 15 years ago. Today, esports can fill up a stadium with a 120.000 people; which is actually more than you'll find for most traditional pro sports. And as the OP shows, videogames (competitive or otherwise) are far more popular in terms of video-streaming than traditional sports. From the 'pro' angle, esports are not just equivalent, they're beginning to surpass physical sports.

My point was if you think the NFL is artificial and contrived, then certainly video games battling imagined enemies is at least as bad, and probably much worse. Imagined games and imagined victories.

...

What exactly do you think an NFL victory is? An imagined victory in an imaginary game. It being a physical game doesn't suddenly make it more 'real'.

If a bunch of guys 'battling' each other within the constraints of a system of rules; such as say american football; constitutes a 'real' game;

then so too does a bunch of guys battling each other within the constraints of a system of rules; such as say, a videogame.

 

[The Paul]

I think there's this odd reaction to things like League of Legends or Starcraft and it being an e-sport with high level competitions, awards, and so on, where people think something along the lines of "Hah, my lazy bum of a kid plays that game instead of doing homework, are you saying he's some kind of pro athlete?"

But it's not like someone learns there's a FIFA world cup and says "Hah, my lazy bum of a kid played soccer in the park with his friends this weekend, are you saying he's some kind of pro athlete?"

 

[hurtinbuckaroo]

I believe the general definition of sport is completion with rules.

No, that would be the general definition of "game". A general definition of "sport" would be:

"an athletic activity requiring skill or physical prowess and often of a competitive nature"

 

[funinspace]

Video games were developed to show how much people could learn in a short time. The original computer game had no graphics at all, it was completely text based. I have struggled for a day trying to remember the name of it. It started out that you are in a field. You had to type in commands to try to find the entrance to a cave and then to navigate through the cave picking up useful devices. It was the basis for similar games for decades after.

I am talking about the middle 1970's. The game was developed on mainframe computers which we time shared remotely, often through telex terminals. Maybe some of my fellow generation here can remember the name of it.

I believe you're thinking of Colossal Cave Adventure. It was ported to many different systems and I remember playing it on an Amstrad CPC in the mid 1980s, but it was developed for a PDP mainframe in the mid 1970s according to Wikipedia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colossal_Cave_Adventure

LOL...shit I haven't thought of that game in ages...played it a little on a PC in the mid 1980's as well.

Though there is an older one called Lunar Lander, developed on the PDP-8 in 1969 (I'm not that old)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_Lander_(video_game)

 

[dystopian]

I believe the general definition of sport is completion with rules.

No, that would be the general definition of "game". A general definition of "sport" would be:

"an athletic activity requiring skill or physical prowess and often of a competitive nature"

I sincerely disagree. "Athletic" activity should *not* come into play when defining what a sport is. Sport would be best described as: an activity that requires the exercise of skill in a competitive form; the execution of which may appeal enough to warrant a viewing audience.

This definition encompasses all activities that are actually with regularity regarded as a sport regardless of whether athlethicism comes into play, and doesn't reject a whole bunch of activities that don't live up to whatever's the arbitrary standard of the day.

 

[J842P]

I believe the general definition of sport is completion with rules.

No, that would be the general definition of "game". A general definition of "sport" would be:

"an athletic activity requiring skill or physical prowess and often of a competitive nature"

I sincerely disagree. "Athletic" activity should *not* come into play when defining what a sport is. Sport would be best described as: an activity that requires the exercise of skill in a competitive form; the execution of which may appeal enough to warrant a viewing audience.

This definition encompasses all activities that are actually with regularity regarded as a sport regardless of whether athlethicism comes into play, and doesn't reject a whole bunch of activities that don't live up to whatever's the arbitrary standard of the day.

It's just a matter of proper definitions. Calling something a game rather than a sport isn't "rejecting" it.

 

[steve_bnk]

I believe the general definition of sport is completion with rules.

No, that would be the general definition of "game". A general definition of "sport" would be:

"an athletic activity requiring skill or physical prowess and often of a competitive nature"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sport

'..."Sport" comes from theOld French desport meaning "leisure", with the oldestdefinition in English from around 1300 being "anything humansfind amusing or entertaining".[7]


Other meanings include gambling andevents staged for the purpose of gambling; hunting; and games anddiversions, including ones that require exercise.[8] Roget's definesthe noun sport as an "activity engaged in for relaxation andamusement" with synonyms including diversion and recreation




They also recognise that sport can beprimarily physical (such as rugby or athletics), primarily mind (suchas chess or go), predominantly motorised (such as Formula 1 orpowerboating), primarily co-ordination (such as billiard sports), orprimarily animal-supported (such as equestrian sport).[1]


There has been an increase in theapplication of the term "sport" to a wider set ofnon-physical challenges such as electronic sports, especially due tothe large scale of participation and organised competition, but theseare not widely recognised by mainstream sports organisations....'


Chess ..the Sport Of kings as the old saying goes.


There was debate on the old forum as to whether or not online networked games qualify as a team sport.

Football, baseball, and basketball are referred to as both games and sports.

Is half pipe snowboarding and the Olympic downhill trick snowboard a sport or daredevil exhibition? I see it as the latter.

 

[steve_bnk]

I have learned an iimportant lesson here, never get between a man and his vodeo game.

 

[SimpleDon]

Video games were developed to show how much people could learn in a short time. The original computer game had no graphics at all, it was completely text based. I have struggled for a day trying to remember the name of it. It started out that you are in a field. You had to type in commands to try to find the entrance to a cave and then to navigate through the cave picking up useful devices. It was the basis for similar games for decades after.

I am talking about the middle 1970's. The game was developed on mainframe computers which we time shared remotely, often through telex terminals. Maybe some of my fellow generation here can remember the name of it.

I believe you're thinking of Colossal Cave Adventure. It was ported to many different systems and I remember playing it on an Amstrad CPC in the mid 1980s, but it was developed for a PDP mainframe in the mid 1970s according to Wikipedia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colossal_Cave_Adventure

Yes, thank you.

I was developing distributed industrial control systems on DEC PDP-11 RTS minicomputers at the time, 1977, 78 or so. They only cost about $20,000 a piece, cheap enough to dedicate one to a single department or process and to connect them together in networks. A typical smartphone today has a hundred times more computer power and the typical car a larger, more powerful network of computers communicating with each other.

They ran the cave game. I can remember people worrying that the game would divert attention from the control system. Somethings don't change.

 

[steve_bnk]

I believe the general definition of sport is completion with rules.

No, that would be the general definition of "game". A general definition of "sport" would be:

"an athletic activity requiring skill or physical prowess and often of a competitive nature"

I sincerely disagree. "Athletic" activity should *not* come into play when defining what a sport is. Sport would be best described as: an activity that requires the exercise of skill in a competitive form; the execution of which may appeal enough to warrant a viewing audience.

This definition encompasses all activities that are actually with regularity regarded as a sport regardless of whether athlethicism comes into play, and doesn't reject a whole bunch of activities that don't live up to whatever's the arbitrary standard of the day.

It's just a matter of proper definitions. Calling something a game rather than a sport isn't "rejecting" it.

Now he sporting with us engaging us in a word game ...