E-sport Shouldn’t Be Olympic – not Because It Isn’t Sport but Because It Is Bad, Actually

E-sports companies are always lobbying to be included in the Olympic Games. And for years I have been joking that e-sports should be treated as sports because they lead to the exact same disinterest in me. I like playing games, virtual or real, but watching someone else do it never quite works for me. That also means that I didn’t really follow the development of e-sports casting over the years. Until recently when I watched a professional broadcast of a huge tournament – which game doesn’t matter, because I was shocked to learn that none of them understand how to do appealing programming.

20 years ago, like every other kid at that time, I was into Counter-Strike. With that came an interest in the ESL, one of the first proper e-sport tournament providers. I remember seeing recordings as you would imagine: Screengrabs from the game itself and maybe sometimes footage of the players. What else would have been possible at that time and with games that haven’t been made to provide entertainment to spectators?

But hey, the times have changed, companies like Blizzard and Riot run their own tournaments and their own broadcasts. The games are tailored to be streamed and enjoyed by people who just want to watch. One (or at least I) would think, that some thought would have been made on how to generate an experience that kind of feels like proper sports broadcasts.

And they sort of did. They have nice professional graphics and commentators that try to explain what’s happening on screen. But they were set up to fail by the developers. Because what I saw were … screengrabs from the game itself and some footage of the players playing. It was a high-fidelity version of what we had two decades ago.

To understand my problem with that scenario, imagine that kind of broadcast in other sports. They would never have mass adoption! Let’s use football as an example. You could sit every person on Earth in front of a TV, and they would be able to understand what was happening with minimal explanation. And that’s not just because two teams of eleven chasing a ball is easy to follow but mainly a clever choice of perspective.

If football were broadcast like an e-sport, every player would run around with a Go-Pro strapped to their forehead, and nobody would be able to enjoy the game. A professional footballer rarely looks at their feet or the ball. They also don’t need to search for their teammates because they trained hours and hours so that everybody knows where to stand on the pitch at all times.

But I, a casual viewer who was dragged to the pub by his friends, doesn’t know that. And I don’t need to. Because I have a bird’s-eye view of the stadium. I can see every relevant piece of information on screen. That view also allows me, a complete amateur, to have some spare brain power left to listen to the commentators or my friends explain smaller details like offside to me. All of this is only possible because every single decision in the pipeline makes it as easy to understand as possible.

Let’s get back to e-sports. Modern games have become way more complicated than Counter-Strike ever was. More weapons, more abilities, different types of heroes. And of course, it’s possible to learn all the intricate details, to figure out all the nooks and crannies on the map where people could hide, and what strategy is most effective in which scenario. But all that takes time and effort. It may even be necessary to play the game yourself to fully get it.

But what if you’re just casually interested in the game? What if you want to spend time with your friends, don’t really care, and just want to follow along? That kind of consumer, the type that is essential for sports to become one of the most important activities of modern society, is seemingly not wanted by game studios.

In an age where the experience is tightly controlled by the developer – from hosting the server to hosting the tournament and broadcasts themselves – it would be as easy as never before to build a dedicated camera for streams. A bird’s-eye view with only the necessary information being shown to the viewer and the realization that this information is different than the one the player needs.

Only with this groundwork being done will it be possible for the commentators to provide a satisfying experience to all viewers. Because only when the basics of the game are self-evident to everybody would they be able to explain the strategies being used, why something was a mistake, and the reason behind the pros doing what they do.

Before this has been done, there shouldn’t even be a conversation about e-sports being included in the Olympic Games. They don’t yet deserve to be there.