Are Video Games A Sport?
If "professional sport" means getting paid big money, then the answer is clear.
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Well. Are they? That depends on your definition of “sport,” probably, but looking at this article in the New York Times profiling professional gamers, it’s hard to make a case against the idea.
The article examines the Evil Geniuses, a team of Starcraft II players that spend 12 hours a day locked in the Lair, a homebase where they train for competitions in the real-time strategy game. (Not familiar with the genre? Think: maneuvering a tiny army with clicks of a mouse. It’s complicated—chess, not checkers.) However you feel about the idea of video-sports, though, one thing’s for sure: there’s money in it. Next month, a tournament at Staples Center will award $1 million to the first-place finishers in a bout of the game League of Legends.