August 30th, 2018
Courtesy of the New York Times, an interesting article on whether violent eSports should be considered for the Olympics:
As fighting raged across the battlefield in a video game called Arena of Valor, the announcers could barely contain their enthusiasm.
“That is going to be two kills for team Thailand!” said Caro Wang, an announcer who was calling a video game competition this week at the Asian Games in Indonesia. “Make that three, actually.”
“Chinese Taipei counter-engaging!” added her fellow announcer, Jeff Chau, after a virtual character in a red cape shot an opponent with a bazooka-like gun. “Getting the kill, getting the snare.”
Competitive video gaming is an exhibition sport this week at the Asian Games — perhaps the largest international exposure yet for an e-sports industry that is said to be worth nearly $1 billion. “E-sports” are scheduled to be upgraded to the status of a medal event at the next Asian Games, in 2022, and the International Olympic Committee has said it will consider eventually adding them to the Olympics.
But the timing of the event — the same week that a gamer with a real weapon shot and killed two people and himself at a video game tournament in Florida — is awkward because many games played by “e-athletes” revolve around violence.
“I think it is inevitable” that e-sports will become Olympic events because of their soaring popularity, said Samart Benjamin Assarasakorn, the executive secretary to the president of the Thailand E-Sports Federation. But he added that violence in games was an issue that needed to be “worked out.”
The term “e-sports” refers to video games that are played across a variety of digital platforms in competitive settings, including stadiums. Global revenues for the industry were expected to reach $906 million this year, up more than 38 percent over 2017, according to a report by Newzoo, an Amsterdam-based research firm. The report said China accounted for $164 million of the total, and North America for $345 million.
The 135 e-sports players at this week’s Asian Games represent 18 countries and were drawn from a 27-nation qualifying pool, according to the Asian Electronic Sports Federation, a co-organizer of the demonstration matches. Ms. Wang, the announcer, said the players were a mix of amateurs and professionals, some of whom have handsome corporate sponsorships.
“I’ve been longing to wear China’s national flag on the world stage since the first time I played Honor of Kings three years ago,” Zhang Yucheng, a professional who played for China this week, was quoted as saying in The Beijing News on Tuesday. He was referring to the Chinese video game that Arena of Valor was adapted from.
The matches, in six separate video games, were being followed online by fans across the region. Two days after the Chinese national team defeated Taiwan in the Arena of Valor finals, for example, the trending topic “#e-sports asian game” had more than 710 million clicks on Sina Weibo, a Twitter-like social media platform.
“I’ve always believed that those who can be Olympic champions not only have better physical bodies, but also smart brains,” one Weibo user wrote.
Alan Hellawell, the group chief strategy officer for Sea, the Singapore-based parent company of a firm that publishes Arena of Valor in Taiwan and Southeast Asia, said the Asian Games matches were “another form of legitimacy” for e-sports in a part of the world where they are booming.
“E-sports is in many ways an everyman’s or everywoman’s game,” Mr. Hellawell said. “The only barrier to entry is being able to find a device, and it doesn’t even need to be your own.”
The International Olympic Committee helped organize a forum on e-sports in July in Switzerland. Among other questions, the committee reported, the forum explored “the question of whether e-sports could be recognized as a sport,” as well as how they “could align with the Olympic values, rules and regulations.”
Despite the genre’s growing profile, even top players remain dogged by skepticism over whether they are real athletes.
Mr. Assarasakorn of the Thai e-sports federation said a common problem is that casual video gamers are confused with “e-athletes,” some of whom have training regimens that include running and muscle-strengthening exercises. He added that physical training was linked with success in e-sports, and that playing video games had a physical dimension.
“Even typing what I’m saying now, you’re engaging your core muscles,” he told this reporter.
But the prevalence of violence in e-sports competitions may be a steeper obstacle to overcome.
Thomas Bach, the president of the International Olympic Committee, said in April that “killer games” or ones that promote “violence or any kind of discrimination” would never be suitable for Olympic competition. “They would be contrary to our values and our principles,” he said.
It was unclear whether the six video games being played at the Asian Games would meet Mr. Bach’s definition of nonviolence. (The official description of Arena of Valor says the basic objectives include “killing enemies” and “destroying towers and the enemy base.”) The I.O.C. did not respond to emailed questions.
On Wednesday, Kenneth Fok, the chief of the Asian Electronic Sports Federation, a governing body, told reporters that while Sunday’s shooting in Jacksonville, Fla., was a tragedy, e-sports and video games were not to blame.
“I think it is a bigger issue of gun control and also the access to guns,” Mr. Fok said.
In interviews this week, people in the industry offered different views on whether it was feasible — or desirable — for e-sports to shed their violent ways in a bid to shine up for a possible Olympic appearance.
Some, like Huang Cheng Hui, a professional player from China who competes under the nom de guerre Lciop, said certain games could be toned down to make them Olympic-friendly without dampening their competitive spirit.
“There are still a lot of games that aren’t so violent,” Mr. Huang, 23, the silver medalist this week in a video game called Clash Royale, added. (E-sports medals are not being counted toward the overall tally at the Asian Games.)
But Ms. Wang, the Arena of Valor announcer, said that choosing less-violent games for an Olympic event would be a “disservice” to ones that feature shooting, in part because their violence is often rendered in cartoonish ways.
“They’re great e-sports to watch,” she said. “They require immense amounts of skill to make it to the top.”
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