Video games take a lot of practice, endurance, and hand / eye coordination. But come on, can we really compare it to real sports? You may recall some time back on TGD that we reported that a competition for League of Legends had formed, somewhat like a video game Olympics, and in this case, gaming was officially classified as a sport.
There was even a segment on HBO’s Real Sports about this, and Howard Stern did a funny routine in response. Howard loves being hard on the nerds, he hilariously goes to town on the Bronies, which is fine because even by geek standards those people are really scary, and he scoffed when these gamers were called “athletes.”
Stern laughed at these guys being called “elite players. You know they’re guys who spent way too much time leeching off their parents. I’m sorry, I am never accepting this a professional sport. I refuse to accept this. I’ll accept bowling over this.” Howard also marveled that these guys are making a good living playing games. One player told Real Sports you can get up to six figures.
It’s hard to equate gaming in the same league as baseball – for one thing, steroids certainly aren’t required – and yes there are competitions where you can make good money, but we don’t think we’ll see gaming competitions in the Olympics any time soon.
