E-sports enter the Olympics, just today

Brothers, a chance to compete in the Olympics by yourself is now in front of us.

Not long ago, the International Olympic Committee announced the news of the 2023 Singapore Olympic Esports Series. Although this e-sports series is not a large-scale event like the Summer Olympics and Winter Olympics, it is just a small competition that lasts about a week, and e-sports players will not compete on the same stage with athletes from traditional sports, but for players who want e-sports skills to join the Olympics, the Olympic Committee’s personal move to organize e-sports is enough to cheer people up.

What is most exciting is that in this competition, ordinary players, besides professional players, also have the opportunity to stand on the Olympic field to compete for the championship.

But when I saw the competition, my ambition to win glory for the country was halfway down.

Of the nine e-sports events in this game, only two games "GT7" and "Dance" are what I know. The other events are virtual archery, virtual baseball, virtual sailing, virtual taekwondo, and even virtual chess...

If this trend continues, the Olympic Committee may cooperate with Tencent to directly transform the QQ game hall into a new arena for e-sports.

In a number of e-sports events organized by the Olympic Committee, except for virtual taekwondo and full-dance dance competitions, only official designated players can participate, players in other games can compete for the qualification of the official competition through the qualifiers. However, for those who are determined to show up in the Olympics, the difficulty of getting started in these games is also different.

Hardcore simulation games like "Virtual Sailing Race" and "Zwift" that focus on restoring reality require a certain degree of professional knowledge and are difficult to achieve quickly, and are not suitable for novices to fight head-on.

"Zwift" is a large-scale multiplayer online pedal game

Chess, "GT7" and other games have fixed players' groups, and the players themselves are very inclined and are only suitable for players who have a certain foundation before.

After some investigation, I found the most suitable competition event for experiencing the Olympic esports atmosphere: "TicTac Bow".

This is a new mobile game that was just launched at the end of February this year. There are no old players at all. Everyone is standing on the same starting line. However, the game currently has only 1.9 points on GOOGLE PLAY because it is full of bugs. Many players reported that the game will crash and restart after playing within a few minutes. The advertising and micro-transactions everywhere also make people doubt whether its game is truly fair.

It is just this kind of unreliable project, which is the best choice for us e-sports amateurs who are blinded by the sticks to kill the master.

Translation, what is e-sports

The confusing behavior of the Olympic Committee redefining e-sports has caused complaints from netizens all over the world. The selected games present a sense of "in order to prevent and control the new crown epidemic, the Olympics have been held online", highlighting a virtual, which almost copies the real sports activities into the game, which is far from the mainstream e-sports competitions today.

All signs point to a conclusion: the Olympic Committee’s understanding of e-sports competitions is somewhat different from that of most of us.

In fact, what the Olympic Committee wants to vigorously develop is virtual sports, not competitive games like "Interstellar" and "LOL". Moreover, not all sports simulation games can be supported by the Olympic Committee. Not only should there be a strict organization to verify players and formulate rules, the players' training and selection methods should be similar to traditional sports, and the game itself cannot fight and kill, which is in line with the values of the Olympic sports...

Only the Olympic Committee's persistence in this principle can explain why these participating projects are so weird, because this list of games full of flaws highlights a variety of things, including console games, mobile games, new games, old games, well-known games, and niche games. The only thing in this hodgepodge is that they are endorsed by third-party institutions in related fields.

The nine projects that appeared have been recognized by relevant institutions

In fact, the Olympic Committee had already held a similar competition before, but its name was the Olympic Virtual Sports Series at that time. Although the Olympic Committee itself calls it a successful event, the number of related videos on the YouTube channel is only 20,000 to 30,000, which is in sharp contrast to the number of fans with the Olympic official account of more than 9 million.

This year, the competition was held in the name of the E-sports Olympics, and it attracted the attention of media around the world before the competition started. Because in a sense, this little wording change gives the official answer to the topic of "Can e-sports participate in the Olympics" that netizens have been quarreling for many years - Yes, but not completely.

Although there are some games in the esports events that have entered the Olympic Games now that it is difficult to stretch, the Olympic Organizing Committee actually does not treat e-sports events differently. They did adhere to the concept of "higher, faster, stronger" and choose the Olympic events, focusing their main directions on those events that challenge the physical physiological limits of human beings. Not only are e-sports events rejected by this standard, but even competitive competitions such as chess and racing missed the traditional Olympics for the same reason.

Chess was also an Olympic event, but it is not now

From the current situation, the Olympic Committee is indeed relieved now and wants to embrace e-sports audiences, but it still sticks to a certain bottom line - traditional e-sports projects like "LOL" or "CSGO" are still not accepted by them because of their excessive violence.

The Olympic Committee's entanglement and pull

"We want to eliminate discrimination, violence and promote peace; but this is not the case with video games full of explosions, violence and killing, and we need to draw a line in this regard," said Olympic Committee President Bach.

Compared with the debated "e-sports is a real sport" on the Internet, the frequent violent colors in electronic games are the main reason why the Olympic Committee is afraid of the situation. After all, it is still a consensus in most countries that cannot fight during the Olympic Games. The Olympic Committee, which has such a high personality, will naturally have some concerns about this.

On the other hand, the Olympic Committee has been showing goodwill to e-sports and player groups from time to time, saying that the Olympics will never miss this field that is popular among young people. Finally, it began to personally host e-sports projects this year. Now this is full of frustrations. The Singapore E-sports Series is the final result of the compromise of the Olympic Committee after multiple parties weighed the trade-offs. Judging from this list of selected items, their understanding of e-sports seems to need to be strengthened.

In fact, even in the virtual sports that the Olympic Committee is focusing on, their choices are hard to compliment - in this field, there are obviously larger and more mature partners such as EA SPORTS FC (renamed FIFA) and NBA2K, but they chose a mobile game that has just opened the server and is full of bugs.

After all, the Olympic Organizing Committee joins the e-sports event not to hold an e-sports event of the "LOL" S competition or CS Major, but to use electronic games related to traditional sports to drive young people's interest in traditional sports competition and save the Olympic Games' ratings lower than the next.

So, now this Olympic esports series is likely to not develop into the traditional esports field as e-sports fans hope, but this is not entirely bad news. Maybe the Olympic Committee's unique understanding of e-sports can introduce e-sports into some new fields, such as somatosensory games and AR games.

Under the Olympic Committee's obsession with "sports", games such as "Fitness Ring Adventure" or "NS Sports" that are committed to making players move are likely to appear in the future e-sports Olympics. It may give these gamers who are not valued in the e-sports field a chance to show their skills, so that those who are attracted by the gimmicks of "Olympics" and "e-sports" will remember the fitness rings that have been eaten in their home for a long time by watching the competition.

The reason why the e-sports competition organized by the Olympic Committee has received so many complaints is that the organizer himself is doing his own work based on his strength. On the one hand, the fact that the e-sports event can enter the Olympics is not only involved in e-sports.

When we are quarreling online about whether e-sports is considered a sports or whether we should enter the Olympics, we are often not arguing about this issue itself.Instead, we are trying to win more people's recognition of e-sports and even electronic games.

But today in 2023, does e-sports still need the Olympics to gild themselves?

The e-sports industry today is a multi-billion dollar industry, forming a mature event system and a stable audience group. Compared with today's mainstream e-sports events, the just-starting Olympic e-sports competition seems a bit "pheasant".

The current e-sports players can actually be more confident.