Video Games Trying To Infiltrate The Beijing 2008 Olympics

In what must have been last week's most absurd piece of gaming news, CNN reported that the Global Gaming League has been in talks with the Chinese government, trying to bring competitive gaming to the Beijing 2008 games. Their arguments are more about money than athletics, arguing that this could be the biggest boost to the Olympic Games since snowboarding - which was first introduced at the 1998 Winter Games in Nagano, Japan (figures!).

"You need to bring younger viewers back if you want to keep making money. To do that, you need to embrace non-traditional sports. They did it with snowboarding - and look how the popularity of that has surged in the Games. Video games deserve to be seen as a non-traditional sport. ... They would bring something to the Games that [that age group] engages in and everyone understands."

Right, except that snowboarding actually requires the athletes to leave their butt-shaped chairs (or was it chair-shaped butts?) and gaming addiction at home, and start doing some physical effort before they can even think about joining their kindergarden dream-team. Not to mention the following years and years of hard training (as opposed to years and years of blissful sedentariness), required to get anywhere near being admitted in an Olympic team.

Sure, gaming would bring in some extra money for certain people. Sure, it would generate plenty of controversy (which in turn would generate plenty of money for another set of people) if it were to be recognized as an Olympic discipline. But as much as we pride ourselves with our playful kind of life, let's not kid ourselves: there's absolutely nothing Olympic about it.

(N.B. Archive text, links removed)