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from the all-competitors-are-disqualified dept.
Der Spiegel [in German], supported by Sky News [in English], report:
[translation mine]Ever since young people started earning money playing computer games, a discussion has arisen within Gamer circles: is E-sport, professional computer game playing, really sport? Is mouse-clicking and button pressing at high tempo easier, more challenging, or just as sophisticated as kicking a ball or swimming faster than others?
To put it plainly, whoever games professionally needs exactly as much training, passion, and talent as professionals in classical sports. And that good gamers compete in front of tens of thousands of spectators makes the world hardly better or worse than a football/soccer world championship or the Tour de France.
In any event Gamers may have to think about the issue more than they'd like. The E-Sports League (ESL), in which players of games like "Counter-Strike: Global Offensive," "Fifa," and "League of Legends" compete, has announced that they will be cooperating with the National Anti-Doping Agency (NADA). It is supposed to not only prevent doping, but institute concrete testing. ESL has announced that the Counter-Strike competition on August 22-23 in Cologne's Lanxess Arena that skin tests will be conducted.
Additional reporting here and here.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 25 2015, @04:22PM
and the desire to see what humans can accomplish.
I can see why people wouldn't want to be forced to use drugs in order to compete, but even if you're using drugs when doing something, that's still an example of something that humans can accomplish.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by JNCF on Saturday July 25 2015, @08:35PM
even if you're using drugs when doing something, that's still an example of something that humans can accomplish.
I think this is maybe the heart of the issue. Does a human on steroids still count as a human for the purposes of a strength-based competition? Does a human with metal legs still count as a human in a 100-yard dash? Does a human on adderoll still count as a human for the purposes of a StarCraft match? How about a human on coffee? How about a human with a Thync [thync.com] on, or a human with a cluster of rats [sciencealert.com] jacked into her brain? Are we going to ban a genetically engineered football player from competing in the major league because of a decision that is parents made for him? What if his grandparents made the decision, but they changed the germ-line? Would the player still be discriminated against if he was the product of a controlled breeding experiment, or natural selection, instead of CRISPR? If so, why? I don't care about sports, but I think it's interesting that society is still unwilling to embrace transhumanist sports leagues.