Fr0dus Maximus said:
The comment that there is no "desire" in a virtual world baffles me. There may be no "desire" in the game itself but, there is that "desire" in the player themselves.
Allow me to expand a little on what I meant by that.
The analogy I made with boxing illustrates what I was getting at, but I'll attempt to put it into words here. I more or less said video games could not be considered sports because there is little to no physical aspect in competitive video games. There are exceptions but I will address those in a moment. While finger dexterity
can be considered a skill and while it
can be a determining factor in a competitive game, it usually isn't. Most games are won and lost based on out-thinking the opponent via knowledge of the game. Breaking this down even further it gets difficult to discuss without picking examples, but it is more or less recognized that before the match starts the playing field is equal. In Halo 2 all the members of Red team and all the members of Blue team all have the same attributes. No one is faster or stronger in the game, and so the deciding factor of the match is not based on something physical but something mental. Call of Duty 4 gives some options in terms of the weapons you choose going into a battle, and other games incorporate attributes whereby your character can sacrifice strength for speed, but this all pertains to the strategy and does not interfere with the notion that at one initial point all was equal. Regardless of where those attribute points went, everyone had the same amount to dispense. Which is why desire can separate a real-world sport from a video game one, because physical strength, quickness, agility, endurance, and so forth are not fixed constants, and can in large part be determined by how far an athlete is able to push themselves. This is why I say there are no true upsets and no true underdogs, because the ability to out
work a highly skilled opponent does not exist. Each competitive video game player wants to win, yes, their desire to achieve victory is there, but its not going to make them run faster or push harder, the game sets their character at a virtual stamina limit that no amount of real-world desire can change.
The excpetions I alluded to earlier have already been mentioned in this thread (DDR, Guitar Hero, etc.). These games are more akin to sport because there is a physical element. But rhythm games are limited by the fact that contestants are being judged on how well they are doing what they are told to do. Every real world sport I can think of involves some sort of creativity, and on-the-fly thinking. Again, players who find themselves at a disadvantage in terms of skill can use their creativity to overcome this problem. By playing the game differently or by performing a play that no one has ever done previous, a real world athlete can expand the parameters by which the game is played (rules need to be invented, strategies of the opposition need to radically shift, etc.). In DDR, you are given instructions, and you are ranked on how precisely you followed them. I have seen people play that game with some creativity, which is entertaining, but does not affect their "score."
So in the end I guess my response to your comment, Frodus, is that desire in the player's themselves is meaningless because it doesn't not translate into the game their playing. There's no way one can choose to "play through the pain" so to speak. When your life bar reaches zero, you're dead.
