screenshot of Mario and Sonic at the Rio 2016 Olympics Games courtesy of Nintendo
The co-president of the committee for Paris's 2024 Olympic bid, Tony Estanguet, is holding talks about esports at the Paris Games, according to the Associated Press. While we're still a long ways off from seeing esports at the Olympics (the International Olympic Committee won't even rule on what sports will be represented in Paris until 2020), it's striking just how open-minded Estanguet sounded when it came to competitive gaming.From the AP report:
Advertisement
Now there's a bit of "how do you do, fellow kids?" to this but it's interesting to see one of the key planners for the 2024 Olympics hand-wringing about the Games' continuing relevance to youth if they don't embrace competitive video games. For now, however, the next steps are for conversations to take place with the Paris Olympic bid committee, various esports representatives, and the IOC.As the AP report notes, esports are already being adopted by traditional international athletic competitions like the Asian Games. However, while these stories are easy to frame in terms of esports' growing legitimacy and broadening acceptance, it's also worth noting that esports are already incredibly international.Unique among modern competitions, esports are a product of a uniquely interconnected world and technological infrastructure that made playful international collaboration and competition trivially easy. Setting aside the obvious symbolic importance of seeing video game represented in an Olympic setting, in some ways the Olympic Games' present-day mission is a bit redundant in esports. Esports already transcend an awful lot of national boundaries, and dividing teams and players by nationality could actually inject an element of nationalism into esports that's historically been rather muted (with the exception of people chanting "USA" at tournaments, but good luck getting douchebros to stop doing that anytime soon). Would an Olympics League of Legends tournament be able to match the prestige of Riot's own Worlds, and would fans connect with single-nationality teams when allegiances have traditionally been more personal and more fluid? Alternatively, perhaps all of these traits have come to define esports because players have never really had the chance to play for their country in a widely-respected competition like the Olympics.Nevertheless, there's a lot of time and a lot of things to consider between now and the Paris Games. Let's not even get into the reaction that Olympic Counter-Strike would likely garner, as the broader world realizes that one of the most prestigious competitive games in the world is a game of IED whack-a-mole between Terrorists and Counter-Terrorists. Yikes."We have to look at it because we can't say, 'It's not us. It's not about Olympics,'" Estanguet said in an interview with the AP in London. "The youth, yes they are interested in esport and this kind of thing. Let's look at it. Let's meet them. Let's try if we can find some bridges.