Sports are a massive phenomena, to say the least, and esports definitely seems to want to try to become similar, but so far…I think it may be fair to say it’s struggling at that, outside of maybe some specific games and countries (…Is StarCraft still a thing in South Korea?).
Do you think that might eventually change, and if so what might contribute to it being alongside regular sports in terms of conversations & attention?
People organize physical sports spontaneously; in particular, children do. The adult activities we call “sports” are formal adaptations of improvised play activities: kick the ball, throw it in the hoop, hit the thing with a stick, wrestle the other guy, jump higher, run faster.
So-called “esports” are video games; activities that depend on being a customer of a software engineering organization. They don’t have the connection to an improvised play activity that physical sports do.
That’s a great point, not to mention how specific the skill set is to some of these games. Some games are so complicated that only the people who play them are able to perceive the value in them. Whereas anybody can watch a sport ball and understand basically what’s going on. And aware how good somebody is at it. With some video games it’s impossible to know what you’re even watching unless you’re actively participating in the game itself.