Sport or not, I think it's fine they're doing this. Colleges give scholarships for all kinds of subjects and talents and people go to school for gaming so it fits. I think options like this should be available for serious gamers who regularly compete in tournamets and/or people that may have studied game design in high school.
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This seems foolish to me, but maybe I don't understand the circumstances.
My understanding of scholarships for sports was that there were two benefits for the school: recognition and monetization. Successful sports programs put the school into the national eye in many cases and can generate significant revenue. Do video games offer similar benefits?
That said, schools offer scholarships and awards for many activities other than sports. Some of those awards are academic, or based on membership in different groups, or related to athletics. Some are started and decided by the school, others are started and decided by private individuals. There is no reason awards can't be offered to people who are involved in video games if that is what the school/individual fronting the money desires.
sport
noun
: a contest or game in which people do certain physical activities according to a specific set of rules and compete against each other
: sports in general
: a physical activity (such as hunting, fishing, running, swimming, etc.) that is done for enjoyment
But you twiddle your thumbs and occasionally shift your arms! Heck, in League of Legends, you even have to click mouse buttons with your index finger.
It's totally physical activity what're you talking about.
Plus, your hands sweat! Which burns fat!
I don't know about you, but my hands are jacked.
where's my scholarship
Are you both implying that because we can button mash, twiddle our thumbs and go "pew pew pew" gaming should be excused as a sport, or perhaps the proper term would be......shudders esport? Perhaps only asan exception of the Wii/WII U if you actually have to use mtion controls a it that's 1 thing, but the rest I can't seriously consider because then all you'redoing is sitting in front of the screen and doing it. Next, I may be a bit off-topic on the esports thing, mainly because online gaming is congested full ofit, my personal preference on all major platforms should be a more cooperative/social era, but that's just me. That's what it used to be all about back in the good old days, anyway.
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I keep saying this I guess, but I really hate that e-sports get any recognition at all. Scholarships are hard to come by, and these guys do not deserve them.
I have no problem with people playing video games as a spectator event, but it really bothers me that possibly no other world-class competitive event has such a hilariously high barrier of access.
To use a timely example, people say that football equipment is expensive. And it can be. There isn't a lot of gear involved, but when you consider registrations and fees that are needed to play at the lower levels, yeah okay.
The big however here that I think separates e-Sports from virtually every other competitive event is that if you really wanted to train your ball handling you could just grab a junk soccer ball and practice dribbling. Heck, even if you're not looking to "go pro," you can always just grab a ball (or, lbr, make one) and mess around with your buddies.
People of any age and ability level, with very few exceptions, can put together a football match. Might not be world-class, but it can feasibly exist in the poorest parts of the world just as well as the richest. And certainly there have been world class athletes who came from the humblest beginnings.
E-sports allow for none of this. They involve operating proprietary software that is not available in any way or form to the majority of the world. The amount of people who could even feasibly compete is so laughably low that to recognize it as a legitimate college sport is a wrong-headed embracing of what's basically a caricature of elitist, first-world values.
@World
I'm totally indifferent to eSports, or whatever one wants to call them, but it seems you're trying to tell me that nobody should participate in them because others can't participate in them, and that they're "elitists" for getting some recognition for what they do.
@8BitSamurai That's not really what I'm saying. Like I said at the beginning, I can get behind the whole "commercially-supported spectator version of thing I like" mentality. I think it's totally fine if they make money off live appearances or sponsorship deals or whatever.
I'm just saying for colleges to give them money is ridiculous. They're far from it (and yeah, end up being elitist in their own way) but educational institutions are in theory, if not in practice, accessible to all. Supporting things the majority of the population can't even attempt with scholarships isn't the right way to promote that mission.
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Topic: Your opinion on colleges accepting video games as a sport?
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