e-¿Sports?

Welcome to the League of Legends 2018 Spring Split! e-Sports are back! But… are e-Sports actually sports?

Although maybe you don’t even know about e-Sports. There are people who make their living out of playing video games. They have fans, they have sponsors, and they play in clubs. Som major European football (soccer) and basketball clubs have their own e-Sports teams, as well as some NBA clubs are making their first steps into this world. According to Newzoo (2017), during 2017 e-Sports audience was predicted to reach 385 million, being almost 200 million of them e-Sports enthusiasts.

Now that we know what an e-Sport is, let’s focus on the “sport” term. How could the sport be defined? Oxford dictionary says:

An activity involving physical exertion and skill in which an individual or team competes against another or others for entertainment

The most important concepts/terms in this definition are physical exertion, compete and entertainment. If you go running for 20 minutes every day, I’m sorry, but you’re not doing sport. What you are doing is considered physical activity. You’re doing sport when you run a 10k, when you swim in a competition, or when you play in a football league.

Let’s check if a regular League of Legends player is an athlete.

• Physical exertion: NO
• Compete: YES
• Entertainment: NO

Playing LoL for fun does not make you an athlete. And what about last Worlds finals? Can we consider the players as athletes and the overall competition a sport?

• Physical exertion: NO
• Compete: YES
• Entertainment: YES

It seems we can’t… However, LoL has rules, fans, competition,… as the classic and traditional sports. Why can’t play League of Legends in a European league be considered as a sport? Did we define sport correctly? It seems we did. Therefore, and according to the definition, e-Sports can’t be considered as a sport. The lack of physical activity doesn’t let us consider e-Sports as official sports.

I don’t agree. I believe e-Sports are a sport. It breaks the classical sports definition. There’s no physical activity, but can anyone tell me a difference between the next 2 pictures?

I can’t. Two crowds, admiring how two teams are facing each other in a competition. With rules, with timings, with coaches. But one of them is a sport and the other no. Maybe we did change the meaning of sport. Maybe sport is now a spectacle, a show.

I used to try to make skeptical people admit that they should be considered sports by saying that chess is a sport. But I don’t want to use this argument anymore. League is a sport, Dota2 is a sport and all games played in a competition mode for the amusement of others is a sport. A new sports concept. A new way of defining entertainment. A new game. OUR GAME.

e-Sports do not involve any physical activity (although lesions are associated to e-Sports), but they do involve high levels of cognitive activity, stress, and training that make someone playing a video game professionally an athlete, and thus it should be considered as a sport.

Should the definition of sports change? Should we include mental exertion at the same level as physical exertion? Reviewing the previous definition, and the similarity (in terms of crowds, of entertainment, of resources… Why would e-Sports like to be included in the sports definition? There is a bond, and we can see similarities between e-Sports and conventional sports.

However, what I propose is to simply consider e-Sports as something different, a new concept, which can be related to sports, but not necessarily part of it. A new era of entertainment should learn from others, but not try to fit where it does not belong.

Physical activity lets us train our body, improves some cognitive abilities and has countless benefits to our health. But have you ever thought about how could we improve our cognitive abilities if proper research about which games and how many hours we should play them was conducted? Good news for all of us. It’s happening and it’s coming to Psychogamer in the February 2018 post!

Since then, GL & HF!

Newzoo. (2017). 2017 global esports market report. Retrieved from http://strivesponsorship.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/Newzoo_Free_2017_Global_Esports_Market_Report.pdf

Working and growing

This is one thought about my own experience around video games and psychology. But it isn’t something exclusive to this field. I think my opinions and thoughts can be applied in many other situations.

People change. In many ways and not always to good. But we change. As a psychologist, I’ve been told that nothing is black or white, and that we fluctuate, affected by the ones that surround us, by our feelings towards others and towards ourselves,… And when we change, we learn things. Some are sweet and full of colours, and others are dark and unpleasant.

And as we change in many fields of our lifes, we change our motivations & interests. And during my formation (which will never end), I’ve changed many times the objectives of my “future”life. But I’m in love. I’m in love with what I’m doing, with what I’m learning and with who I’m becoming.

But lately I’ve had a weird feeling. Like if something that I do, and I get payed for, does not longer give me any thing. And that made me think about the main theme of this post: growth.

Left-handed players

Have you ever thought about how right-handed people rule this world? It may sound silly, but there are many differences between how lefties and righties live their lives. I can tell you some basic things that may ring a bell on you. Scissors, knifes (the cutting part tends to be on the left side), doors, TV switch buttons…

Yes, I am left-handed. And I could write a lot about things that annoy me because I feel are not designed for me (UX pls). But I am here to talk about Video Games. Few studies are directly talking about differences between laterality and its effect on playing a game.

Some games, as CoD, have the option of switching from right-handed to left-handed controls, and it’s (for me) a big relief. But you might ask why most of the lefties dont complaint about playing video games using controls designed for right-handed people. I think I might have the answer.