{"id":3442,"date":"2016-06-01T15:01:12","date_gmt":"2016-06-01T09:31:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/13.201.39.237\/?p=3442"},"modified":"2016-06-01T15:01:12","modified_gmt":"2016-06-01T09:31:12","slug":"video-games-adult-gamers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/13.207.105.184\/?p=3442","title":{"rendered":"Is it Time We Classify Video Games As a Legit Sport?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

W<\/span><\/p><\/div>

eekends are for <\/span>video games<\/span><\/a>. It\u2019s a maxim I\u2019ve lived by since I was ten years old, and one I adhere to even now, at 26. As soon as the pressures of the workweek ease up for a few hours, I fire up my laptop, and set out to pwn some noobs at <\/span>Dota 2<\/span><\/i>. It\u2019s a title with the largest prize in competitive gaming, with this year\u2019s marquee tournament, The International, announcing a prize pool of over 25 million USD. For me the boat has sailed, and I\u2019m not ever going to be a competitive gamer, but videogames as a recreational medium are still as engaging for me as an adult as they were when I was a kid.<\/span>\n\nIn the distant and hazy past of the early 2000s, two boys met up on a Saturday afternoon for a well-established ritual. One of them pulled out a tote bag full of pirated game CDs wrapped in thin plastic, while the other connected their most prized possession, a grey Sony PlayStation, to the TV. The choices were as sumptuous as a five-star buffet: <\/span>Mortal Kombat<\/span><\/i>, <\/span>WWE SmackDown<\/span><\/i><\/a>, <\/span>FIFA<\/span><\/i>, <\/span>GTA Vice City<\/span><\/i>, <\/span>NFS Underground<\/span><\/i>; it was a recipe made for excited pre-teens to waste hours on end. My neighbour and I certainly did, often gaming from after lunch until his mother woke up at tea-time and shooed us out of the living room.<\/span>\n\n\u201cGo finish your homework!\u201d or \u201cGo outside and play a real game!\u201d were the two most common demands made of kids enjoying video games while I was growing up. I guess our elders, a generation for whom the virtual world was a strange, unexplored wilderness, were afraid all those hours spent gaming would leave us ill-equipped to deal with the <\/span>real world<\/span><\/a>, where problems can\u2019t be solved at the push of a button.<\/span>\n\nBut for us, the kids born in the late-\u201980s and \u201990s and after, the virtual world was always tangible, present, and very much a part of reality. Even if you sucked out on the field, you could still claim bragging rights by becoming unbeatable at <\/span>FIFA<\/span><\/i>. We might have turned up our noses at the mushroom sabzi offered by our mother, but we greedily gobbled them up when running through Bowser\u2019s Kingdom as Mario. And as we grew up, the boundaries between the real and virtual world became increasingly blurred.<\/span>\n\n

While competitive gaming is a young person\u2019s sport, our generation, the one that grew up along video games, and saw the medium grow with us, still forms a huge chunk of the gamer population.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\nToday, I just want to shout out a big \u201cSCREW YOU\u201d to the adults who pulled me away from my precious videogames when I was a teenager, because gaming turned out to be a real gravy train. In 2018, problems can be and are solved at the push of a button. Finding friends or <\/span>love<\/span><\/a>, ordering food, <\/span>booking a cab<\/span><\/a>, professional networking; all of these and so many other activities have moved online. And the much-maligned video games, once touted as something that would distract us from real success, are now an avenue to more money than most of millennials can hope to make working in start-ups across the nation.<\/span>\n\nYou already know about the huge payoff for <\/span>Dota 2 <\/span><\/i>players at The International, but there\u2019s many other games that also offer serious gamers the chance to make some serious dough. Developers of the shooter <\/span>Fortnite<\/span><\/i> announced that they would put up 100 million USD in various tournaments through the 2018-2019 gaming season. Closer home, India witnessed its first eSports expo in <\/span>Chennai<\/span><\/a> last month. Here too, <\/span>Dota 2 <\/span><\/i>was where the big money lay, to the tune of 7,00,000 rupees, but other titles like <\/span>FIFA <\/span><\/i>and <\/span>PUBG <\/span><\/i>also proved hugely popular.<\/span>\n\nWhile competitive gaming is a young person\u2019s sport, our generation, the one that grew up along video games, and saw the medium grow with us, still forms a huge chunk of the gamer population. I\u2019m not the only person yawning at work on a Monday morning because my Sunday night gaming spree went on a little too late. Studies from the <\/span>Pew Research Centre<\/span><\/a>, found that in America, 53% of the videogame-playing population were actually 18 and over. These studies also found that older gamers were more likely to play more frequently. So even though I\u2019ll never be as good as the kids tearing it up for millions of dollars at The International, I can take refuge in the fact that I\u2019ll always have more experience.<\/span>\n\nIt\u2019s time the stigma surrounding adult gamers died out. I\u2019m not a bespectacled, socially awkward, 12-year-old taking up space in my friend\u2019s living room anymore, but a productive adult who has a job and pays rent. Just like my granddad liked to come home from work and play a nice solo game of Solitaire, and my uncles who would get together for gully cricket every Sunday, I turn to video games because they\u2019re comforting, familiar, and entertaining. It\u2019s time to admit it to the world \u2013 I\u2019m an adult and I love videogames as much as I did when my friend\u2019s mom was unplugging our PlayStation. There\u2019s a popular saying that goes, \u201cChoose a job you love, and you\u2019ll never have to work a day in your life.\u201d While gaming wasn\u2019t an option back then, maybe it\u2019s time to consider a change of professional scenery.<\/span>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Millennials who grew up with video games, still form a huge chunk of the gaming population. I\u2019m not a bespectacled, socially awkward, 12-year-old hogging the PlayStation in my friend\u2019s living room anymore, but a productive adult who has a job and pays rent. It\u2019s time adult gamers get their time in the sun.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":43,"featured_media":3443,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[82],"tags":[6572,6573,6574,5504,6575,532],"class_list":["post-3442","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-pop-culture","tag-adult-gamers","tag-dota","tag-dota-2","tag-fifa","tag-pubg","tag-video-games"],"yoast_head":"\nIs it Time We Classify Video Games As a Legit Sport?<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Millennials who grew up with video games, still form a huge chunk of the gaming population. 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It\u2019s time adult gamers get their time in the sun.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"http:\/\/13.201.39.237\/?p=3442\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Arr\u00e9\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2016-06-01T09:31:12+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"http:\/\/13.201.39.237\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/1539006923.png\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"1520\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"850\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/png\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Dushyant Shekhawat\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:title\" content=\"Is it Time We Classify Video Games As a Legit Sport?\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:description\" content=\"Millennials who grew up with video games, still form a huge chunk of the gaming population. 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