Bad news if you were hoping to win gold for your country with your extraordinary Zerg-rushing abilities, it looks like esports won’t be making the cut for the Olympics any time soon.
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In an interview at the Asian Games on the weekend, IOC president Thomas Bach told the Associated Press that he didn’t believe that esports were in the spirit of the games:
We cannot have in the Olympic program a game which is promoting violence or discrimination — so-called killer games. They, from our point of view, are contradictory to the Olympic values and cannot therefore be accepted.
Bach has previously won an Olympic gold medal for fencing, which obviously comes from a time when people used the swords to, y’know, stab each other to death, but he reckons this is different:
Of course every combat sport has its origins in a real fight among people, but sport is the civilized expression about this. If you have egames where it’s about killing somebody, this cannot be brought into line with our Olympic values.
Esports were trialled as exhibition sports at this year’s Asian Games (meaning medals didn’t count in final tallies) but will be full-fledged sports in the Games by 2022. The six games played by competitors were Clash Royale, League of Legends, Hearthstone, Arena of Valor, Pro Evolution Soccer, and Starcraft II.
For my money, it’s relatively easy to see both sides of this one. Esports are huge and it seems like yelling at clouds to dismiss them out of hand, but also it is hilarious to imagine someone the world’s fastest runner being ostensible teammates with someone who’s really, really good at League of Legends.
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