Watch ignorant morons discuss eSports, then read why they're wrong

Last week, HBO posted a clip of its show Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel that has a short feature on competitive League of Legends, and then a bit of the panelists’s mocking, derisive discussion of whether or not competitive gaming is a sport. The video has been making the rounds on the gaming web today but if you haven’t seen it yet, here you go:

Ugh.

Is this a “sport”?

First of all, let’s get one thing straight: competitive gaming is a sport. Anyone who’s actually watched pro gamers knows that playing almost any game at that level requires physical skills, like the ability to manipulate a mouse and keyboard with a high level of both accuracy and speed. Sure, that’s not going to work up a sweat in the same way that playing 90 minutes of soccer does, but there are plenty of widely-accepted sports that require similarly negligible amounts of physical assertion.

Professional golf requires players to walk, but most amateurs would argue they’re still playing a sport as they speed from hole to hole in golf carts. Target shooting is an Olympic sport that requires little more than the physical strength to pull a trigger (though of course aiming requires precision fine motor skills). Archery is similarly more about finesse and fine motor skills than the ability to run a six-minute mile. A lot of the winter Olympic sports (luge, skeleton, bobsled) are more about quick reactions and precise movements than they are about sheer physical speed or strength. Heck, even horse dancing is an Olympic sport.

What is the difference between an Olympic target shooter and a professional League of Legends player, really? The essence of both activities, on a physical level, is the use of fine motor skills in the arms and hands to execute precise commands quickly and accurately. The only real difference is that a target shooter makes adjustments and ultimately shoots based on a real-world situation (target distance, wind strength, etc) and a pro gamer makes adjustments and executes commands based on what’s happening in the game. One is real and one is digital, yes, but pro gamers still need to use real-world fine motor skills to control their digital avatars.

Of course, not every video game could be considered a sport. Turn-based games, for example, probably wouldn’t quality as sports because there’s no real physical ability required to play them at a high level. They are not sports in the same way that chess is not a sport. But high-speed fighters, MOBA games, FPS games, and the like? If target shooting is a sport, then they are too. And while you may not agree target shooting should be considered a sport, it’s in the Olympics, so that ship has pretty much sailed.

This is what ignorance looks like

But beyond the is-it-or-isn’t-it-a-sport debate — which honestly is pretty irrelevant — it’s sad to see the show’s pundits can’t even take the concept of competitive gaming seriously. “Do you have any statistics on how many of those people also go to Star Trek conventions?” asks one, as if enjoying Star Trek somehow invalidates all of one’s other life choices. And when the discussion comes to how people pay money to watch competitive gaming, the entire panel cracks up, as if there’s something inherently crazy about enjoying watching other people play games.

There’s no doubt that the attitudes on display in that video are already outdated, and I’m not surprised that Soledad O’Brien — the one who actually did the reporting on the League of Legends championship — seems to be the only one willing to say that gaming is a real sport. I’m also not shocked that the two most derisive, disrespectful people on the panel appear to be the oldest.

But what really bothers me about this video isn’t the discussion of whether or not eSports are sports (which just an arbitrary categorization anyway), it’s the use of derision to cover for ignorance. It’s obvious that in this discussion of eSports there hasn’t been any real attempt to bring knowledgable, experienced people onto the panel. So instead of an actual informed discussion of eSports and how it compares to traditional sports, we get this shlock, arrogant laughter and Star Trek jokes. The message: look at these crazy people who like watching video games! How stupid!

Of course, everyone has their own preferences, and as both a League of Legends newbie and a die-hard fan of a “traditional” sport (soccer), I understand that it can be hard to get what’s appealing about eSports when looking from the outside in. But the logical jump that these people are making — I don’t get it, therefore it must be stupid, worthless, and worthy of derision — is pretty unforgivable.

Don’t be a dick

This point, of course, has a broader application than just condemning these idiots on HBO. In fact, the gaming community does this sort of thing to itself with amazing regularity. PS4 owners and XBox One owners have been at war about which is the better console since years before either was even released. Dota 2 players snort derisively at League of Legends players (and vice-versa). Fans of “cerebral” JRPGs look down on the fans of “dumb jock” FPS games.