Jaded Scribe said:
I agree that "sports" is a misnomer. Unfortunately, competitions involving mental agility don't have an over-arching term.
But the term "competitive gaming" will get even less respect than "e-sports". I have no problem taking it as seriously as a group of people chasing a ball around attempting to complete arbitrarily chosen tasks that have been given arbitrary meaning as being significant.
And arbitrary player arbitrarily playing an arbitrary game...
Now that's a very mature way to look at things...
Just because it is not physical does not mean that it does not require a great amount of skill, stamina and agility. And there is a physical component as the speed at which you can physically react to what appears on the screen is important.
E-sports can require a great amount of skill: Yes. That's about all there is to it.
Great amounts of stamina: No. Not in the sense of running a marathon. Not even in the sense of running to the fridge. It requires almost the same kind of mental stamina as playing live poker for 8+ hours in one go. It can be straining mentally, but not physically. It does not require stamina. Unless you blow up everything out of proportions.
Great amounts of agility? No. That's quite the overstatement. Slash shows a great amount of agility when he does a complex guitar solo. Lionel Messi shows a tremendous amount of agility when he dribbles past four world class opponents and makes it looks easy. A high-level competitive gamer shows agility in the same way as someone typing really fast. Of course it requires some agility. You at least have to think and deduce things very quickly and usually there are multiple things to keep in mind and think through at the same time, but that goes to the skill apartment rather than to agility.
And just to put this all into context: I play games a lot. I love competitive gaming. I have played against guys who play at the highest national and continental level. A couple friends do competitive gaming in a serious manner at quite a high level. I've watched several competitive tournament matches live, because of interest. I have nothing against eSports, but it doesn't prevent me to look at these things objectively and unbiased.