Sports as Bad Video Games

I grew up playing every sport imaginable–hockey, lacrosse, rugby, soccer, basketball, volleyball, swimming, running–and thoroughly enjoyed playing them. I followed professional sports and still do to this day, so I’m not the anti-sports type, but looking around at the world and the declining popularity of traditional sports with young people, has made me question the role of sports.

People talk a lot about the positive life lessons you gain from sports. We view them as a special and crucial part of developing into an adult. We take the assortment of games we’ve chosen very seriously. We lose touch with the ridiculousness of all the games because they are so common and prevalent.

A good way to think about this is to imagine if football was not a thing. You walk by the park and see a bunch of guys in tights and gigantic helmets running into each other and think to yourself–“that looks dumb.”

Sports are popular because the meet human needs, this is especially true of team sports. They fit us into a tribe like community and allow us to live out a competitive ritual that is something like an approximation of war or hunting. By serving as a simulation for hunting and community building, sports meet needs that are deeply attached to our psyche.

When you think of sports through this lens, it is easy to see why video games–and especially battle royales like Fortnite–are so popular. It is a much better simulation of war/hunting and allows for community building in a way that traditional sports would even struggle to rival.

For a kid in middle school, they can go home, sit down and their computer and spend hours on end playing alongside their friends in an almost completely free environment. There is no authoritarian coach, no parents in the stands, no one to tell you that you aren’t good enough to be on the team, you simply sign on and get in a game.

As you get better, more and more of your IRL friends want to play with you and the game becomes an even more powerful tool for connection. There is still something different about doing an activity with your full body vs. just looking at a screen, but as technology gets better, that gap decreases and the simulations that video games provide get better and better.