1.2 billion people play video games, and around 700 million of them are currently online. It’s evident that video games are a popular activity on modern society, giving them the ability to change certain aspects of it. One example would be the definition of sport, as there is currently an ongoing debate whether video games should or not be one. Video games should not be a sport, but rather categorized as something different. This would allow video game users to play at a professional level, while establishing a clear definition for a sport.

Sports serve the purpose to demonstrate an individual or team performance on a competitive activity. This is done by observing the physical capabilities and skills a certain individual or team has, when compared to the competition. According to the Oxford Dictionary, a sport is defined as “an activity involving physical exertion and skill in which an individual or team competes against another or others for entertainment.” This definition specifically states that a sport is a competitive activity involving both physical interactions and skill. Although video games are highly competitive and require skill, they still lack the physical aspect of the definition. This indicates that either the current definition is redefined, or video games along certain current sports like chess are categorized differently.

This has not stopped the video game industry from creating professional tournaments like eSports, which attract an international audience. This new categorization would allow these less physical activities to remain highly competitive, yet conserve the potential they have when it comes to tournaments and entertainment. We cannot simply waste the popularity video games have, as these open new industry possibilities as Henry Young states in his CNN article “According to Newzoo, the eSports global audience grew from 204 million to 292 million between 2014 and 2016 — a 43% increase in just two years — and it’s projected to exceed 427 million around the world by 2019.”

Video games users develop and tune specific abilities the average human does not possess through gaming. This is due to the fact that gamers are constantly tested and trained by problems presented in video games. Peter Grey accounts in his Psychology Today article “In a correlational study, regular gamers are compared, on some perceptual or cognitive test, with otherwise comparable people who don’t play video games. The typical finding is that the gamers outperform the non-gamers on whatever test is used.” For this reason, we can compare gamers to athletes in a competitive level, as they have skills and abilities the average individual does not possess. The issue is that gamers cannot be considered athletes due to the fact that they do not engage in physical activity. For this reason, video games must remain a competitive activity, but not be considered a sport.