tired: esports aren't sports because they're video games
wired: esports aren't sports because they're proprietary artifacts tied to one specific manufacturer, rather than a set of rules anyone can make equipment for
I think this post genuinely hits upon a big reason why games-as-sports will never be as ubquitous as physical sports, and also the only reason why game publishers pour so much money into trying to make it happen; Game companies want a sport that they have a monopoly on, and players don't. Monopolistic practices are antithetical to the kind of accessible universality that makes a sport something anyone can pick up at any time or start their own organization for. Game companies will never allow that, and so we'll never have it.
it is genuinely dire to think about what the intersection of computers and IP law has done to culture
"games" used to be things you could adapt, could play in the dirt with rocks and sticks if you had to. now they're vastly more interactive, sure, but the vast majority of them only work on one platform, degrade over time, and come in an inscrutable format that's illegal to tamper with. because that's the default state of software
Oh! This is why watching Games Done Quick feels more like "electronic sports" than esports does! The sort of stuff you see in GDQ is typically games that are easy to preserve and mod, often without publisher consent! Removing DRM allows us to approach a level of accessibility that capitalism would refuse to match, because it would be less profitable in the short term.
Hermitcraft feels like "real esports" to me too, and I think part of that is that Minecraft has transcended Gamehood and become an Institution, which it could never do if it had launched with official servers, anticheat, and subscription fees. Minecraft is sort of an embarrassment to capitalism because it's a game-as-product that worked and they refuse to admit it.
