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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, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 25 2015, @04:35PM
Because all the sponsors would want to be associated with the PED-free league, so the cat-and-mouse game between the athletes and the drug testers would continue.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by RobotMonster on Saturday July 25 2015, @04:43PM
PED manufacturers would be happy to sponsor the PED league, methinks.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 25 2015, @05:06PM
Maybe not: what if, in lieu of a secular PED-free league, you had an explicitly Mormon league? Sponsors would be wary.
The Mormons would probably welcome it. They've made huge forays into music via YouTube; many of the "viral" stars (Lindsey Stirling, The Piano Guys, etc) are well-funded Mormons. The LDS church is making a push to demonstrate that its members are talented and relevant individuals rather than puppets of some cult. A Mormon video game league wouldn't be out of the question. On the other hand, advertisers might not flock to them because of the culty-side of things.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 25 2015, @05:09PM
Do you have any information about the LDS church bankrolling those acts?
(Score: 3, Interesting) by bradley13 on Saturday July 25 2015, @05:21PM
Possibly, but if there were two leagues, it would be possible to be much harsher with doping. If you are competing in the naturalist league, and are caught doping, then you have doped, and can be immediately and permanently moved to the "modified" league.
This would be much fairer than the current system. Currently, the judges are often reluctant to be really harsh, because it can be career ending. When someone has build up a super musculature (using, say, HGH), it's really unfair to ever let them back into competition, because continued training can preserve the advantage that they achieved through doping. Which means that everyone else must dope, in order to have a chance. It's only a question of who has been caught, and who hasn't.
Giving dopers a place to go, and sending them there, would open a real chance for drug-free sports. Really, an excellent idea.
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 2) by tynin on Saturday July 25 2015, @06:37PM
Meanwhile the body count continues to rise in the drug using camp, but hot damn they can play while so long as they still notice they are in a chair and that thing in front of them is a monitor.
You can almost see it now, some CS match with half the team looking at the patterns in the walls while the other slightly more sober team goes on a knife only kill spree.
I think, and this would be a first, that I'd love to here the commentators talk about such a game with the same zeal they normally have for other games with balls.
(Score: 2) by tynin on Saturday July 25 2015, @06:41PM
Replying to myself... I say all that as someone who knows that the Ballmer Peak [xkcd.com] also applies to things like gaming, and not just with the use of booze.