Comment on Did the western world just suddenly go back to pretending wrestling is "real" for some reason?
hobovision@lemm.ee 4 days agoWhat athletic competition would not be a game if all sports are games? I mean, honestly, what is the difference you see between “sport” and “athletic competition”?
You can extend or contract “game” as much as you want, but I can’t think of a definition of game that would encompass all sports but not all athletic competitions (if there really is a difference).
ExtantHuman@lemm.ee 4 days ago
Track and field events are not games.
Gymnastics or any kind of event involving a choreographed routine. Diving. Really any kind of race.
hobovision@lemm.ee 3 days ago
Why track and field events not games? They have rules, can be won or lost, and can be played casually if you think that is a requirment.
Take shot put, hammer throw, and javelin, for example. The game is who can throw the object in a certain way the furtherest. I could play a shot put game with some friends at a river bank by drawing a line in the sand and seeing who can huck the heaviest rock on the shore the furthest.
There’s a reason they call them Olympic Games.
Really any activity with some structure is a game if it is play and not “real”, even better if it can help practice a skill useful in life. There is a difference between a running race (a game) and running for your life from a bear (not a game). Between MMA and a street fight. Between war games and a shooting war.
ExtantHuman@lemm.ee 3 days ago
Nah. Those aren’t games. The rules are often quite loose. You’re often not even directly competing with anyone else. Like, one person acts, and later another person acts and the results are compared. Your opponent’s actions don’t affect your results. Those field events don’t even necessarily have a set order to act on… people just wander in and out making their attempts, it’s mostly them competing with themselves.
You could run a race asynchronously as well, but time constraints prevent that.
Games have action, AND reaction. They have strategy. Throw things harder isn’t a strategy. Run faster longer isn’t a strategy.
hobovision@lemm.ee 3 days ago
The rules are quite loose? Why else would they have eagle eyed officials watching closely to disqualify athletes for infractions.
Games can absolutely be played asynchronously. Games can have scoring systems instead of head-to-head.
Would you say pinball is not a game?
I didn’t think I needed to get out the dictionary definition of game, but I hope this clears it up… Definitions from Oxford Languages: “noun, a form of play or sport, especially a competitive one played according to rules and decided by skill, strength, or luck.”