Dota 2: Now With Real Sporting Controversy!

[klaynexas3]

snip

Or people who want games to be considered art because they want games to have the same legal protections as art. That's a pretty big reason. Same goes with the sports, if a game is considered a sport, then the teams playing it get certain benefits, such as getting visas to be able to visit with your teammates for practice in other countries. So yeah, if you actually pay attention to the issue, you'll notice there are a few tangible rewards for wanting games to be considered art or sports past vindication.

 

[Requia]

Regarding DOTA or any of these 'MOBA's' I could never really buy into them. If you look at 'real sports', in the professional leagues much of the audience aren't active participants but rather are just pure spectators. DotA and LoL have the biggest viewing audience in e-sports, but they also have by far the biggest playing audience. How much of a viewership do they have that simply watch the games without actually playing? I tried watching a game before, even threw in search titles like 'best' into the youtube search bar, and honestly I'd rather watch an MLB game *ducks*.

Until little kids can get interested in, and learn to play for next to nothing eSports will never be Sports. Live with the segregation of never being considered a real Sport.

Your an eSport live with it. Embrace it.

Are you two actually serious? I mean I get Grey and Cory, that's humor. E sports are not real sports because they don't actually involve athletics, its got shit to do with anything else. Trying to be a legit sport is the wrong path, they should be trying to unseat Chess.

 

[Owyn_Merrilin]

snip

Or people who want games to be considered art because they want games to have the same legal protections as art. That's a pretty big reason. Same goes with the sports, if a game is considered a sport, then the teams playing it get certain benefits, such as getting visas to be able to visit with your teammates for practice in other countries. So yeah, if you actually pay attention to the issue, you'll notice there are a few tangible rewards for wanting games to be considered art or sports past vindication.

That's due to a misunderstanding of how the Miller test works. First of all this is completely a US law issue. If you live in a country with different laws, being "art" isn't necessarily going to be a defense. Second, even in the US, there's no body that says "this medium is art, therefore it is sancrosanct." It's a case by case test, initially set up to decide whether it was okay under the first amendment to ban individual movies, pictures, books, etc. for being "obscene." So you can see right there why declaring a whole medium art isn't going to cut it -- those were all recognized artistic media at the time it was set up. Second, here's the actual test:

Whether "the average person, applying contemporary community standards", would find that the work, taken as a whole, appeals to the prurient interest,

Whether the work depicts or describes, in a patently offensive way, sexual conduct specifically defined by applicable state law,

Whether the work, taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value.[3]

If /any/ of those three parts doesn't apply on any point, the work passes the test, and can't be banned. You can see how just going "vidyagames are art" isn't a defense.

Far as the sports thing goes, still, screw it. If Sports get legal benefits beyond any other professional activity, they shouldn't. It's absurd. You mean to tell me athletes get special treatment on visas and stuff that, say, actors shooting on location don't? Because if they do that sounds less like a good thing videogames need to get in on and more like a loophole in the law some jerk paid a lot of money to put in, which needs to be closed off.

 

[Owyn_Merrilin]

Regarding DOTA or any of these 'MOBA's' I could never really buy into them. If you look at 'real sports', in the professional leagues much of the audience aren't active participants but rather are just pure spectators. DotA and LoL have the biggest viewing audience in e-sports, but they also have by far the biggest playing audience. How much of a viewership do they have that simply watch the games without actually playing? I tried watching a game before, even threw in search titles like 'best' into the youtube search bar, and honestly I'd rather watch an MLB game *ducks*.

Until little kids can get interested in, and learn to play for next to nothing eSports will never be Sports. Live with the segregation of never being considered a real Sport.

Your an eSport live with it. Embrace it.

Are you two actually serious? I mean I get Grey and Cory, that's humor. E sports are not real sports because they don't actually involve athletics, its got shit to do with anything else. Trying to be a legit sport is the wrong path, they should be trying to unseat Chess.

Careful there, somebody will bring up that old saw about Chess being technically a sport on paper under certain regulations that only matter for legal and, yes, insecure validation reasons in certain narrow areas. Except they'll leave out all the qualifiers and just call it a sport.

 

[klaynexas3]

snip

Or people who want games to be considered art because they want games to have the same legal protections as art. That's a pretty big reason. Same goes with the sports, if a game is considered a sport, then the teams playing it get certain benefits, such as getting visas to be able to visit with your teammates for practice in other countries. So yeah, if you actually pay attention to the issue, you'll notice there are a few tangible rewards for wanting games to be considered art or sports past vindication.

That's due to a misunderstanding of how the Miller test works. First of all this is completely a US law issue. If you live in a country with different laws, being "art" isn't necessarily going to be a defense. Second, even in the US, there's no body that says "this medium is art, therefore it is sancrosanct." It's a case by case test, initially set up to decide whether it was okay under the first amendment to ban individual movies, pictures, books, etc. for being "obscene." So you can see right there why declaring a whole medium art isn't going to cut it -- those were all recognized artistic media at the time it was set up. Second, here's the actual test:

Whether "the average person, applying contemporary community standards", would find that the work, taken as a whole, appeals to the prurient interest,

Whether the work depicts or describes, in a patently offensive way, sexual conduct specifically defined by applicable state law,

Whether the work, taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value.[3]

If /any/ of those three parts doesn't apply on any point, the work passes the test, and can't be banned. You can see how just going "vidyagames are art" isn't a defense.

Far as the sports thing goes, still, screw it. If Sports get legal benefits beyond any other professional activity, they shouldn't. It's absurd. You mean to tell me athletes get special treatment on visas and stuff that, say, actors shooting on location don't? Because if they do that sounds less like a good thing videogames need to get in on and more like a loophole in the law some jerk paid a lot of money to put in, which needs to be closed off.

Well that's the thing, a fair amount of people calling games art live in the US, and so it is an issue to them if games can't on the whole be classified as art, as it means laws can hinder their ability to enjoy their games. Granted, games have recently been classified as art by a few US institutions, so many lawmakers have left them alone for the time, even if the media won't. I can understand why the rest of the world might not care much about the debate, but there are definite reasons as to why many gamers want games to be considered on the whole art beyond simple insecurities.

And as for the sports visas, here are the actual requirements:

http://www.immihelp.com/visas/pvisa/p1-visa-athlete-athletic-team-member.html

So it's more like a work visa, because their job as an athlete requires them to be within the country. So it's not just some loophole, if a game is considered a sport, it becomes classified as the gamer's job(which for most MLG gamers, it is) and allows them the benefits of it being a job. So it's definitely something that many gamers would and should want since so many pay so much attention to the esports scene.

 

[Owyn_Merrilin]

snip

Or people who want games to be considered art because they want games to have the same legal protections as art. That's a pretty big reason. Same goes with the sports, if a game is considered a sport, then the teams playing it get certain benefits, such as getting visas to be able to visit with your teammates for practice in other countries. So yeah, if you actually pay attention to the issue, you'll notice there are a few tangible rewards for wanting games to be considered art or sports past vindication.

That's due to a misunderstanding of how the Miller test works. First of all this is completely a US law issue. If you live in a country with different laws, being "art" isn't necessarily going to be a defense. Second, even in the US, there's no body that says "this medium is art, therefore it is sancrosanct." It's a case by case test, initially set up to decide whether it was okay under the first amendment to ban individual movies, pictures, books, etc. for being "obscene." So you can see right there why declaring a whole medium art isn't going to cut it -- those were all recognized artistic media at the time it was set up. Second, here's the actual test:

Whether "the average person, applying contemporary community standards", would find that the work, taken as a whole, appeals to the prurient interest,

Whether the work depicts or describes, in a patently offensive way, sexual conduct specifically defined by applicable state law,

Whether the work, taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value.[3]

If /any/ of those three parts doesn't apply on any point, the work passes the test, and can't be banned. You can see how just going "vidyagames are art" isn't a defense.

Far as the sports thing goes, still, screw it. If Sports get legal benefits beyond any other professional activity, they shouldn't. It's absurd. You mean to tell me athletes get special treatment on visas and stuff that, say, actors shooting on location don't? Because if they do that sounds less like a good thing videogames need to get in on and more like a loophole in the law some jerk paid a lot of money to put in, which needs to be closed off.

Well that's the thing, a fair amount of people calling games art live in the US, and so it is an issue to them if games can't on the whole be classified as art, as it means laws can hinder their ability to enjoy their games. Granted, games have recently been classified as art by a few US institutions, so many lawmakers have left them alone for the time, even if the media won't. I can understand why the rest of the world might not care much about the debate, but there are definite reasons as to why many gamers want games to be considered on the whole art beyond simple insecurities.

And as for the sports visas, here are the actual requirements:

http://www.immihelp.com/visas/pvisa/p1-visa-athlete-athletic-team-member.html

So it's more like a work visa, because their job as an athlete requires them to be within the country. So it's not just some loophole, if a game is considered a sport, it becomes classified as the gamer's job(which for most MLG gamers, it is) and allows them the benefits of it being a job. So it's definitely something that many gamers would and should want since so many pay so much attention to the esports scene.

Got an example of any art classifications from other countries that have a blanket "it's art, it's okay!" defense? Even in Germany, which is notorious for videogame censorship under laws that have an exception for art, are going to have to be checking each game individually. The problem is that nobody has ever bothered to challenge videogame censorship over there, so they just get blanket censored without issue.

Edit: As for the other one, here, have this: http://www.immihelp.com/visas/pvisa/p1-visa-entertainment-group-member.html

You don't need a sports classification. And in fact the "sports" visa is actually an "athletic" visa. There's no way in hell pro videogaming should ever classify under that, short of, again, holodecks becoming a thing. And if Chess does it's just as dumb.

 

[klaynexas3]

snip

http://www.cnn.com/2011/TECH/gaming.gadgets/06/27/supreme.court.video.game.art/

Well there's the fact that the supreme court blankets games as an art form allowing it protection under the first amendment of the US constitution, so that's a pretty big thing right there. Sure some games won't fall under this, but by saying that the medium of video games on the whole is an art form allows us to have our Witchers or Mass Effects not categorized as porn because of a few raunchy scenes. So yes, the "vidyagames r arttss" defense did kind of protect the industry here in the US. Yes I realize the blanket doesn't cover all, but categorizing the medium as a whole as art until a specific game is proven otherwise is better than having only specific games treated as art while the rest are just toys or porn until they can prove otherwise.

And I don't even understand the correlation of the entertainment group visa. Are you trying to say that esports teams would fall under this? And if so, what if there was a team that was broken up and had one or two members out of the country, then the entertainment visa wouldn't work because it doesn't work for individuals. However, the athletic visa does work for individuals. I don't know how all the different visas work, but having one that an MLG gamer can fall under perfectly without needing some stretch is purely beneficial. There is no detriment, so why is it so wrong for people to want that kind of classification?

 

[Owyn_Merrilin]

snip

http://www.cnn.com/2011/TECH/gaming.gadgets/06/27/supreme.court.video.game.art/

Well there's the fact that the supreme court blankets games as an art form allowing it protection under the first amendment of the US constitution, so that's a pretty big thing right there. Sure some games won't fall under this, but by saying that the medium of video games on the whole is an art form allows us to have our Witchers or Mass Effects not categorized as porn because of a few raunchy scenes. So yes, the "vidyagames r arttss" defense did kind of protect the industry here in the US. Yes I realize the blanket doesn't cover all, but categorizing the medium as a whole as art until a specific game is proven otherwise is better than having only specific games treated as art while the rest are just toys or porn until they can prove otherwise.

And I don't even understand the correlation of the entertainment group visa. Are you trying to say that esports teams would fall under this? And if so, what if there was a team that was broken up and had one or two members out of the country, then the entertainment visa wouldn't work because it doesn't work for individuals. However, the athletic visa does work for individuals. I don't know how all the different visas work, but having one that an MLG gamer can fall under perfectly without needing some stretch is purely beneficial. There is no detriment, so why is it so wrong for people to want that kind of classification?

Again, you're misunderstanding how that ruling worked. The Supreme court didn't blanket all videogames as art. They stated the truth, that a /blanket law/ that censored /all/ games would fall afoul of the miller test. The California law didn't stand a chance of actually getting past the supreme court, there was nothing really new decided there. It was a terrible law.

Far as the other thing, fine, get a piece of paper that makes it a sport on paper to get in on a legal loophole because the law uses funny words. Doesn't actually make you a sport, it just puts you in a legal category for visa purposes. It's like how a corporation is technically one "person" under the law for certain things, tax law in particular. Doesn't mean a corporation is literally a person.

Edit: By the way, <link=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brown_v._Entertainment_Merchants_Association>here's a better explanation of that case. You'll notice that the word "art" appears exactly once in the entire text, and that's in a note about media coverage, not the case itself. The supreme court didn't literally say games were art. They just reaffirmed that they're protected by the first amendment and that the California law fell afoul of it. The first amendment being the freedom from government interference in religion, speech, the press (videogames would fall under this one as easily as speech), assembly, or the right to petition the government. The word "art" doesn't show up anywhere in it, it came into US law under a pretty bad supreme court ruling that allowed for a pretty bad law banning pornography to stand, as long as whatever was banned under it could pass that test I've been talking about. Basically everything short of child porn is fair game these days thanks to the first part, the "community standards" part.

 

[klaynexas3]

snip

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/109835-Games-Now-Legally-Considered-an-Art-Form-in-the-USA

Well there's a point in time where a US government agency classified gaming as an art form. And yes, again, I perfectly understand not all games are art, but the medium is an art form on the whole, much like painting or music or books or movies. There are paintings and books and movies that all would not classify as art, but the medium, the thing by which the form of entertainment itself is created, is still art. Do you see what I'm getting at? You seem to think I'm trying to say all games are art, no they are not, but the concept of the game is art in of itself, and there are legal benefits to that. I don't care if Mrs. Parker from down the street thinks I'm going to hell for playing my murder machine, as long as the laws aren't affecting my play, as long as legally my games are protected up to an accepted standard, I couldn't care less for what other people are thinking about games, just as long as they aren't doing something to try and prevent me from playing them. That's why I want games to be art, so I can play them in peace without worry of someone ruining it for me. Is that clear?

And likewise with the sports classification. I don't care if it isn't seen as an actual sport by people. The legal classification just helps out MLG gamers, that's why people want it. Not so that Flash from the football team will stop picking on me, but so that theoretically my mate from, I don't know, Mongolia, who I play League with can actually come practice and play with me here for the upcoming tournament. It's all about the legal benefits, which was my entire point to begin with. It's not about these insecurities you seem convinced these people have, it's about seeing something that people, including myself, love be treated as we see fairly in a legal stand point. That's it.

 

[Owyn_Merrilin]

snip

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/109835-Games-Now-Legally-Considered-an-Art-Form-in-the-USA

Well there's a point in time where a US government agency classified gaming as an art form. And yes, again, I perfectly understand not all games are art, but the medium is an art form on the whole, much like painting or music or books or movies. There are paintings and books and movies that all would not classify as art, but the medium, the thing by which the form of entertainment itself is created, is still art. Do you see what I'm getting at? You seem to think I'm trying to say all games are art, no they are not, but the concept of the game is art in of itself, and there are legal benefits to that. I don't care if Mrs. Parker from down the street thinks I'm going to hell for playing my murder machine, as long as the laws aren't affecting my play, as long as legally my games are protected up to an accepted standard, I couldn't care less for what other people are thinking about games, just as long as they aren't doing something to try and prevent me from playing them. That's why I want games to be art, so I can play them in peace without worry of someone ruining it for me. Is that clear?

And likewise with the sports classification. I don't care if it isn't seen as an actual sport by people. The legal classification just helps out MLG gamers, that's why people want it. Not so that Flash from the football team will stop picking on me, but so that theoretically my mate from, I don't know, Mongolia, who I play League with can actually come practice and play with me here for the upcoming tournament. It's all about the legal benefits, which was my entire point to begin with. It's not about these insecurities you seem convinced these people have, it's about seeing something that people, including myself, love be treated as we see fairly in a legal stand point. That's it.

The National Endowment for the Arts did that, it means now they can give money to game studios the same way they do mural painters and PBS stations. It has nothing to do with anything else. There is no body in the united states that defines what is and is not art. It just doesn't work like that. Again, this is a giant misunderstanding of how the law works, mostly I think because the same insecure people are doing it willfully to say "see? I'm not insecure, there's government benefits" even though those benefits either don't exist or don't work the way they're claiming they do.

With the sports thing, good for you if true. Get that sheet of paper that makes visas easier. Just don't call it a sport in any other context, because it's not.

Edit: And I hate to say this, but look at your join date and post count, then back to mine. You joined about half a year before I did, but my post count is significantly higher, which means where our accounts overlapped, I was generally more active. I was around for the games as art hipsters that flooded this place while Extra Credits was a major feature on the site, and for both the Supreme Court case your referenced, and the NEA article you linked. I'm talking from experience with the kind of people who make these kinds of claims. You may or may not have seen them in action, but even if you have, I doubt you've spent as much time around them as I have.

 

[Therumancer]

That's not the problem with any of the eSports.

Frankly it's absurdly obvious.

1) None of the games stay around long enough to become standardized. Baseball, Basketball, and Football might have slightly different rules between leagues, but in an eSport the "rules" are so fluid between different first person shooters that they can't be considered standard rules.

2) The core of game marketing and legal structure is toxic to Sports. If I get a bunch of friends together and we want to play "stick ball" there's no harm in it. No legal threats. Just a bunch of friends having fun. Do that with a game and someone's going to throw a fit. Someone's going to scream about licencing graphics this, or engine that. The skill level needed to do that is also absurdly tiled in a way that the average PLAYER can't actually do that.

Until little kids can get interested in, and learn to play for next to nothing eSports will never be Sports. Live with the segregation of never being considered a real Sport.

Your an eSport live with it. Embrace it.

It's because it's not really about sports, it's about a need for validation, same thing as the "games as art" debate -- or rather, the people who took it too far and started complaining about games that were, you know, games, instead of being glorified movies like Dear Esther. A lot of gamers grew up under the specter of games being perceived as just for kids, and as they hit their teenage and young adult years, they're still insecure about it. Hence "well my games are legitimate because they're art!" "Oh yeah? Well mine are /sports!/ Take that, jocks!"

It's really sad. Besides, games aren't /really/ going to be sports until you get out of breath and sweaty playing them, and no, hyperventilating and/or breaking out into a nervous sweat don't count. So basically not until we're making like Captain Sisko and playing Baseball on the holodeck.

Edit: Whoops, quoted the wrong guy.

Pretty close to my thoughts on the subject, while gaming does require some activity in terms of reflexs and hand eye coordination I do not think it should count as a sport. The problem of course is that the US tends to be fairly insane (and that's largely what we're talking about) and mocked by a lot of the world by how ridiculously liberal it can be. As a general rule we allow terms like "sport" and "art" to be applied to just about anything people do, and have this complex about refusing people desired labels they want for personal validation. On the artistic front for example the basic problem is that the way we define things, anything can be considered art, some dude can take a dump on stage in front of a crowd and call it "performance art" and have it accepted. While I appreciate the free speech protection applied to video games by artistic defense, I tend to think video gaming should be considered a medium capable of creating art, not a situation where all games ARE art and thus protected. Of course our laws don't make that kind of distinction, or set much of a standard, since any kind of standard is something that someone would find controversial and we just can't have that.

At the end of the day when something like "Golf" can be considered a sport, and people can argue that senior citizens hanging out in country clubs are "serious athletes", you've opened a door where you can't really refuse something like video gaming. If you try and set standards for some kind of minimum level of physical activity/muscle activity it's likely to upset someone an generally speaking American politicians aren't likely to have the guts. The last real "barricade" to sports pretty much becoming anything goes after "Xtreme Sports" became a legitimate label and catch all that almost any bizzare thing can be thrown into. For example while the name eludes me there is this one thing I
was watching with people dressing in Velcro and throwing themselves against walls. I also believe "competitive eating" has been officially recognized as a sport now too... and well, I imagine it's only a matter of time before we have something about professional pooping or whatever. I can just see three or four Olympics from now there will be like a Taco eating contest as a "serious sport" where most of the athletes will then head into the bathroom for a competitive, televise purge... ("Big Bob didn't do so well in the eating competition, but wow... he just dropped a pile the size of a Birthday cake, so far he might be going for the gold this year... I've never seen anything like it...)

Hey, it annoys people, but if this was "The United States Of Therumancer" I'd hold onto an "Executive Stupidity Revision" power, where I would basically be able to subjectively go through laws and policies and change them due to them simply being stupid... and flat out say "no, this is not a sport" and "no, that is not art, it's just disgusting".

Speaking for myself I see potential for competitive gaming, but I do not think it should be considered a sport. I personally think it should be handled more along the line of a "game" and treated like poker, chess, major bridge tournaments, and things like that. Granted I'd accept that in some cases professional gaming needs some revisions and perhaps to be treated more like sports (especially looking at some of the bigger poker tournaments and the like), but I do think that it should all fall under a distinct label. Some might consider that demeaning, but I personally do not.

If we developed something like "holodeck" technology I'd treat things using it like the sport they were emulating. For all intents and purpose your actually doing the activity, it's just the equipment and playing field are constructs. On the other hand if we got into things like neutral-interface technology, where it "feels" real but it's all mental, at most involving some keypresses on a cyberdeck or whatever as you play, I'd consider that a game.

But then again I just have no problem in just saying "that's too inane to be a sport" or even refusing official recognition of some things. I mean I don't care about your personal need for self validation, I wouldn't give "official" acknowledgement to human Velcro projectiles, any more than I would Dwarf Punting (even if voluntary), or people playing Slap Jack with cards.... no offense to all the professional dwarves out there who live to be punted.

 

[Catfood220]

Am I the only one who got excited about the Radkey t shirt that one of the guys were wearing. Radkey are an awesome band, people should listen to them. That is all.