Should Video Sports Be Considered A Sport?

Football, Basketball, Soccer, Volleyball, all these activities are considered sports, but what does it take for an activity to be considered a sport? What does it take to break that boundary between being a sport and just being an activity that you enjoy? Is chess a sport? is poker a sport? Are video games sports? Even though video games do not require any physical strength, they should still be considered a sport due to the tremendous amount of mental effort, teamwork and hand-eye coordination they require. For years human beings have been participating in activities called “sports”. Sports have been a big part of society for years now, but recently a new type of “sport” has caught quite the attention. This new kind of sport has been turning

Cheating. As cheating is possible in sports, the same goes for video games. Typically when you hear of someone cheating in sports they are taking a steroid or some form of performance enhancing drug, but in video gaming cheating can be of the same nature or a little more complicated than just taking a drug and gaining an advantage over your opponents. In the video game scene cheating is usually done in three forms, these forms include: the consumption of the drug “Adderall” which is typically used to control chemicals and nerves that contribute to hyperactivity and impulse control (reddit, 2016). Another form of cheating used in video games is called “modding”, what is modding? Well, modding is any sort of modification that is done to a player or a piece of equipment that can cause an unfair advantage to the person(s) partaking in the activity. The last and probably most detrimental to an e-sports player’s career is hacking. Hacking is considered to top of the line cheating and is punishable by permanent ban from the league or tournament that you are playing in. Hacking is a sure way to to lose all credentials earned over your career, but what exactly is hacking? Hacking by definition is finding a way to gain access to data in a system in an unauthorized manner via computer. Well, how is this really that bad to where if you are caught doing this then your career is pretty much flushed down the toilet? It is simple, with having access to files you are not authorized to in a video game you can encrypt coding into the files to give yourself and/or your team an unfair advantage. Hacking doesn’t sound that bad until you figure out what you can really do for yourself in a video game. When thinking about a football player you think about how many times they can catch they ball when it’s thrown to them, or how far and accurate they