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Carson Rich

Professor Strickland

ENGL-1010

March 29, 2018

Sorry Nerds, Video Games aren’t a Sport

To give a little bit of background on the subject, I am a huge sports fan. I love playing

and watching plenty of different sports and have ever since I was a child. That being said, I have

also loved playing video games ever since I was a child as well, and I do like competitive games

as well. Giving you this background information on me will help you see that I am not biased

toward either side of the spectrum when it comes whether or not video games should be

considered a sport. I think both communities are great, and I am personally not entirely sure what

my opinion is on the matter. After reading through this article and looking at it piece by piece, I

believe that Matthew Walther fails to convince the reader that his opinion is correct. I don’t think

it’s a terribly written article, but I think he goes about explaining his view points from an odd

perspective that didn’t convince me to agree with him.

In Matthew’s article, he talks about how he doesn’t want to get a bad reputation for

hating a specific community and knows it could be harmful to him as a writer. He then goes to

explain why he isn’t a fan of the so called “nerd community”, and why he doesn’t like video

games. Matthew actually does bring up a good point on why he believes that video games

shouldn’t be considered a sport, but then he never follows up on it with anything backing up his

claim. He says that colleges and other big companies are jumping on the video game bandwagon

because of all the profit and money that can be made of it. Throughout the article, He takes
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different shots at the gaming community that I eventually want to go into, but it seems to

backfire on his opinions and statements. To end off his article, He says that video games are just

a way to ignore the real world and the problems we have within it, while sports are actually part

of the real world and have actual human drama.

Before I dive deeper into some of Matthew’s writings from this article, I wanted to talk a

little bit about Matthew and his writing style. I have read and skimmed over a few of his other

articles on The Week and noticed a few trends. First off, the topics of his writings are usually

political or very controversial at the least. He enjoys writing on something that you can have a

definitive stance on, which there is nothing wrong with. Secondly, He heavily relies on pathos or

using emotion in his writing to connect with his audience. Once again, there is nothing wrong

with this, but I think he misses out on some good opportunities to use logical explanation and

capitalize on it. This is something that I am going to come back to later in this paper quite a bit.

In the beginning of the article, Matthew admits that he isn’t a fan of “nerd culture” nor

their community, and sarcastically mocks the community when saying, “as a columnist you hate

to get a reputation for having anything negative to say about a large group of people. Which is

why I am often at great pains to admit that nerd culture has given the world lots of wonderful

things and not just wizard erotica, minarchism, and all the anti-anti arguments about racism and

misogyny you can find on Reddit. I just don't know what they are yet.” (Walther 2018) Matthew

knows that being negative towards a community can grant a writer some negativity but continues

to mock the nerd community by saying sarcastically that they have done so much for us as a

community, it comes off that he already has a bias towards the culture which hurts his position in

the argument. If he knows that calling out a large group of people will only hurt his reputation,
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why does he then continue to do it? It’s a puzzling way to start off an article that is trying to

convince the reader to agree with the writer.

Later in the article, Matthew says, “Video games are not a sport. On the loosest

imaginable definition, a sport involves not only skill and competition but physical exertion and at

least the possibility of injury.” (Walther 2018) I think that this is the highlight of the article. It’s

the only part where he really uses a logical argument to his advantage. I would say that there is a

counter argument with video game technology giving us motion controls and the fact that as

weird as it sounds, professional gamers do actually get injuries like straining a muscle in their

hand. Even then, he makes a very good point. Unfortunately, he fails to capitalize on it, when

right after he says, “Even darts and pool and ping pong are, in the broadest sense, sports. Sitting

on a couch interacting with your television set is not a sport, otherwise watching CNN with your

grandfather would be one. So would self-abuse.” (Walther 2018) Instead of backing up his claim

with some more facts and logic, he instantly goes back to his distained feelings for the gaming

community. I think he had an opportunity to support his argument, but instead he focuses more

on his bias towards gamers. It’s the sarcastic mockery that I as a reader don’t find appealing at

all no matter what my opinion is on the topic.

As I was reading this article, I noticed that other than that one piece where he uses a

logical explanation, he only seems to use emotional writing and not only that, but it didn’t

connect with me as a reader because it felt so biased. I was hoping that Walther would end it

with a satisfying conclusion, but it was more of the same. “Video games are, in other words,

another of those illusions we peddle to convince people that the world's problems do not exist.

Sports, by comparison, are very much of this world. Compared with what's going on inside a

PlayStation the most insignificant Saturday afternoon baseball game between two clubs with
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losing records is a thing of epochal significance, brimming with meaningful human drama.”

Once again, he seems to be writing more about his distain for video games rather than why they

shouldn’t be considered a sport. It makes me question why he gave the article that title. I also

don’t understand his argument. He claims that video games are just a pastime we use to convince

ourselves that the world’s problems are nonexistent. While I can agree with this, he thinks that

sports are completely different and that they are very much apart of the world’s problems. I

disagree because I think that we also use sports as a way to get away from our day to day life’s

and problems.

Both video games and sports are very similar on the competitive level in my eyes. They

both take a lot of skill, hard work, and believe it or not talent. As someone who really appreciates

both, I’m not sure I’m ready to say that video games are a sport due to the lack of physical

excursion that most competitive video games have. After reading this article, I don’t think it

tipped me on to either side. I didn’t feel Matthew’s writing style had an emotional appeal to any

audience that looks at the subject unbiased. I think that if he focused more on backing up

evidence rather than his personal opinion on video games, it could have had a much larger

impact on my opinion.
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Works Cited

Walther, Matthew. “Sorry, Nerds: Video Games Are Not a Sport.” Image, The Week, 4 May

2018, theweek.com/articles/771213/sorry-nerds-video-games-are-not-sport.