Don’t Hate The Game, It’s You That Sucks.

Photo from Ozhadou website, taken on the night of tournament.

My first encounter with the idea of ‘e-sports’ was in mid-2008 when I covered the Australian finals of the World Cyber Games for PC Powerplay. At the time, the concept amused me because I’d never considered gaming to be a sport, no matter how competitive it got. My idea of ‘sport’ was shaped by years of getting footballs to the face and tripping over myself during games of primary school cricket. I supported the conventional definition of ‘sport’: an active diversion requiring physical exertion and competition.

Even after attending the WCG and seeing how heated the CS battles were and the seriousness in which people took their Halo 3, I was still skeptical. After all, these tournaments didn’t even involve real sports; it was just videogames. Surely these people knew that they were playing games and that the idea was to have fun, right? There was no way that, upon being defeated, they would feel the same levels of humiliation and soul-crushing disappointment that real athletes experienced, yeah?

I held onto that view for quite some time, refusing to accept that competitive gaming could be or should be taken seriously. That was, of course, until I took part in a Street Fighter IV tournament this week.