eSports Are Real Sports
eSports should be legally classified just like traditional sports. eSports may not require as much physical activity as conventional sports, but they require at least the same amount of mental awareness, strategy, and planning (if not more) than traditional sports do. Take League of Legends as an example. There are three "lanes" where players go to "farm" and battle other players. Then as the game progresses, the "laning phase" ends and the "team fighting phase" begins. This is when players have to plan where they want to fight, who is going to start the fight, positions of the people in the fight, or even if we can fight. They also may have to think about where the enemy players are, what they are doing, what objectives they might be taking, are they planning on fighting us, or are they right behind us? There are so many more thing every player has to think about than, say football. Sure some players; quarter back, or receivers have to think about lots of things, but linemen don't really think about more than just blocking. Every single League player has to have split-second hand-eye-coordination, fast thinking and planning, they have to be able to make game deciding decisions in a blink of an eye. Do you have to do that in football? I read an amazing article about this topic and the ESPN President saying eSports are not "real sports". Take a look for yourself. eSports took a huge step toward mainstream coverage in July when ESPN broadcast The International 4, the world championship of the popular computer game Dota 2. TI4, which sold out the KeyArena in Seattle, even made the front page of ESPN.com. It may come as a bit of a surprise, then, that ESPN president John Skipper dismissed eSports as a whole during a media conference in New York. Skipper was asked about Amazon’s nearly $1 billion purchase of the video game streaming platform Twitch, which as of now is the site most viewers use to watch professionals play games like League of Legends and Dota 2. “It’s not a sport — it’s a competition. Chess is a competition. Checkers is a competition. Mostly, I’m interested in doing real sports.” Skipper’s rationale that the professional play of video games is a mere competitions may have held up 15 years ago, but there are eSports that mirror “real sports” in nearly every single way in 2014. Take League of Legends, for example. In the United States, Riot Games runs an 8-team league that plays 28-game seasons before moving onto an NBA-style playoff. The worst teams in the league can be relegated, much like teams in the English Premier League. Players swap teams (and can be traded) in the offseason just like in any other sport. At the end of the year, the best teams from each region in the world will meet for a championship final that’s not unlike the World Cup. eSports teams have fanbases and rivalries just like any “real sports” teams, and hundreds of thousands of people watch Riot’s League Championship Series every week. The same cannot be said for, say, the Jacksonville Jaguars. You probably wouldn’t call a professional League of Legends player an “athlete” (though the U.S. Government recognizes them as pro athletes), but their competition is questionably a sport. By: Nick Schwartz September 6, 2014 I hope you help support this cause and put your signature on this petition. Thank you for spending your time to read this. I hope now you understand why I, and millions of others, believe that eSports are "real sports".
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