Two days before the opening ceremony got underway in Pyeongchang, Sasha Hostyn made Olympics competitive history. She didn’t come from behind in a last-minute qualifying event, though, or pull off a new trick in a practice run—she used a zergling horde to upset the heavy favorite.
In Gangneum, a seaside city 15 miles away from Olympic Stadium, Hostyn (known in-game by her handle, “Scarlett”) wiped away the field to win the Intel Extreme Masters Pyeongchang Starcraft II tournament. And in doing so, she became not just the first woman to win a major international esports competition, but the champion of the first esports competition with an official tie to the Olympics.
No, esports isn’t an Olympic event. Yet. But at these Winter Games, the tide may be starting to turn.
It wasn’t just Intel Extreme Masters Pyeongchang—which was broadcast on the Olympic Channel and had partial support from the International Olympic Committee. Five Korean League of Legends players bore the Olympic torch during its journey through South Korea, marking another first in the relationship between the Games and competitive gaming. The Starcraft II players even stayed at the same hotels as some of the Olympic athletes, a glimpse into what the co-mingling at future games might look like.
Despite esports’ ever growing popularity, though, skepticism abounds among the Olympic old guard. Even among gamers, cynics brush off esports as merely a ploy to boost the Olympics’ relevance for younger audiences. And the president of the IOC itself has taken a hard line.
“We want to promote non-discrimination, non-violence, and peace among people. This doesn’t match with video games, which are about violence, explosions and killing,” Thomas Bach said in an interview with the South China Morning Post. He did concede, however, that sports simulators like soccer game FIFA or extreme-sports title Steep could one day make it into the Games. (If and when VR esports takes off, its added physical activity may change that discussion as well.)
But other international sporting events aren’t waiting for the IOC to change its mind; the Asian Games, second only to the Olympics, is making esports a medal event in 2022. And by the time the Summer Games get to Paris in 2024, things might have changed even more. “We have to look at it because we can’t say, ‘It’s not us,’” said Tony Estanguet, Paris’s Olympic committee co-chair, in an Associated Press interview. “The youth, yes they are interested in esport …. Let’s look at it. Let’s meet them. Let’s try if we can find some bridges.”
John Bonini, Intel’s vice president of esports, shares this optimism. Like many esports advocates, he points out that professional gamers share more with traditional athletes than either might believe. Ten-hour days spent in training facilities. Nutritional and physical regimens to optimize performance. A focus intense enough to compete at an elite level. “It’s no longer Dorito-eating, Mountain Dew-drinking ‘lazy people’ who have nothing else to do but entertain themselves,” Bonini says.