Traditionally, we’ve always associated the word “sport” with being outdoors, active, and moving around. Esports, are the total opposite. When you’re playing the games online, you’re sitting in one place, for hours on end, they seem like a total waste of time, but with the rise of digital everything, it’s not surprising that esports has taken over the world, but the question still remains, “is esports a sport?” Let’s get to the bottom of this and the other major questions you might have for gamers!
Is esports a real sport?
From afar, it seems that esports is nothing like the sports we generally know as real sports. There’s no moving around, no special shoes or sporting goods involved, then how could you consider sitting in one spot and staring at a screen “a sport”?
To answer this, let’s take a look at what really makes a sport a sport in the first place? Is it the physical activity aspect of it or the mental strategy it takes? Or is it simply that there’s a bunch of rules to follow and you play along? If you take a closer look, there’s a lot more involved in playing esports than just sitting and staring at a screen. They have the same impact on the person playing as a regular sport would, only without the getting up and running around, unless you’re playing on the VR, then you have that too!
Does playing esports refine any skills?
Even though playing games online might seem like you’re wasting time doing nothing when you could be learning or refining a skill, you actually learn a lot more playing esports than you might think! In fact, it might teach you more than most regular sports do!
Playing almost any esports will teach you to take risks, how to strategize, it refines your leadership and social skills, improves your hand-eye coordination, aids your critical thinking skills, you can become faster at problem-solving and the best of all, it teaches you Multi-tasking. These aren’t just sport-centric skills, they will help you in the real world as well!
Isn’t playing esports isolating compared to real sports?
Even though you might physically be “alone and isolated” the actual playing experience is anything but isolating. Most esports games now are open-world, collaborative, multiplayer games. Even the people that might not have “friends” to play with, get paired with people all over the world and play together! On top of that, there are “real world” tournaments and competitions that you can be a part of where you interact with other people. There are entire communities dedicated to esports, the esports world is far from isolating once you’re actually in it!
Can you gain any advantages in “the real world” with esports?
Apart from learning actual skills that you can apply in the real world if you’re talking about other advantages, there are plenty! As far as earning money is concerned, there are a few ways you can do it. The easiest way is to start a streaming channel on YouTube, Patreon, or Twitch and earn from there. As long as you’re entertaining enough, it won’t matter if you’re actually any good, you’ll eventually be able to monetize it!
If you are good, you can take part in tournaments and win prizes, which can be in the $100,000s range too! So there’s some serious money there. These can easily be found on esports news websites.
And finally, believe it or not, universities are now setting up their own esports teams! So just like people have always been able to get a football or basketball scholarships, you can now even get esports scholarships!
All of these combined shows us how from the outside, it may look that esports are nothing but a waste of time, but when you really dig into the question of “is esports a real sport?” you’ll find that it’s not very different from the sports we’ve always known, it’s just new to us.
