Should esports be considered sports

Topic: Should Esports be considered sports?

In recent year, electronic sports (eSports) have been increasingly spread and gained a
high position in the field of sport and entertainment. It is not hard to find information
about the tournaments or professional eSports athletes . However, that does not mean
people fully understand and appreciate the nature of eSports. Since it do not require
the amount of physical activity regular sports do, people may have thought that
gaming is not a “real sport.” Regardless of the lack of physical activity, it requires the
same amount of effort and dedication as regular sports do. Despite that difference,
they still have many similarities such as necessary qualities, training and high income.

Many people still believe that to become an eSport athlete, who just play game really
good, but it is not the truth. One of the most important factors to become professional
eSport athletes is passion and determination. In Vietnam, to be a athlete, a casual
gamer have to overcome barriers, preconception of social and family about games.
For a long time, any games would be considered useless and harmful. Parents always
want their children to follow traditional industries to have stable future. Another
quality that eSport athletes need is collectivity (teamwork). It decide the success or
failure in the league. For League of Legend, there are two team, five players each
team. One person holds a position and they must work together to destroy enemy’s
turrets to win (Jerry Adjoyi). Collectivity of a team not only showed while playing,
but also to express in real life. Members of an eSports team often live in the same
place, living under the same mode can be certain to spend a lot of time for exercise.
This also means that they will be away from family and friends for many months of
the year. Understanding, sympathy, sharing among the members of an eSports team is
an important factor to help gamer relax. By helping players to improve their skills,
eSports make them more mature and advanced.

To succeed in eSports, player need 1 percent talent and 99 percent comes from hard
work. However, Electronic Sports require athletes to have a scientific exercise
regimen. Unlike conventional games, eSport athletes train from basic skills to

complex skills to ensure that they will not take unfortunate mistake during the match.
There is a number on which player can base to practice and improve their abilities. It
is APM (Action per minute). “Actions Per Minute or Active Per Minute is the number
of actions (such as selecting units or issuing an order) completed within a minute of
gameplay in 聽 real-time strategy games, most notably in 聽 StarCraft” (Wikipedia). A
professional athlete is able to play with three hundred APM. To do it, he or she have
to train for a long time. However, a player not only need skills, but also culture-social
knowledge, language and behavioral skills. They will help athletes become more
complete because their life does not end in four wall and computer. The path to
become eSport athletes is not easy. To archive the peak of glory, player must go
through days and months of hard training, compete drastically to assert his position. If


Park Ji Sung, a dwarf guy from Korea can play for Manchester United, why you can
not expect a Vietnamese can be a member of Fnatic or SK Telecom.

Last, another reason make eSports similar to sports is amount of money that
professional athletes and their team can earn. Each year, the League of Legend (LoL)
in Korea received 57.714 dollar and the StarCraft II received 39.106 dollar (2015).
Lee Sang Hye-ok (Faker) is the best LoL player. He is considered Leonel Messi in
football or Michael Jordan in basketball. He earns 200,000 dollar per year when he
was twenty. Beside salary, professional athletes also have income from grants and
bonuses from the tournament. In 2015, the champions of eSport tournaments received
reward up to 18 million dollar, more than casual sport such as rugby or tennis
(thanhniennews). It shows that eSports is not useless and harmful as people think.

In summary, eSport help players to persue their dream and develop their ability. By
training, players not only become professional athletes, but also get useful knowledge.
In addition, the development of eSports provides opportunities for athletes to be rich.
The evidence absolutely shows that in developed countries, eSport play an important

part in entertainment industry and it is time for people to have positive thought about
them.

References

Jerry Adjoyi, (2015, Feb 16). Should Esports be considered sports? Word Press.
Retrieved from a-sport/

Viet Tam (2015, Aug 19). What are electronic sports? Thanh Nien News.
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Wikipedia, (2011, May 31). Action per minute. Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
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