Would you consider DDR/ITG a 'sport'?

[Reincarnate]

I think there is a difference between a sport and a game. Sometimes an activity can be strictly a sport (e.g. running), strictly a game (e.g. chess), or both (e.g. football). In the case of DDR/ITG, I think a strong case could be made for it being a sport and a game, albeit a very unusual form.

I mean hell, many say, nowadays, that dancing is a sport, etc. I think it's just one of those things where we're so used to "sports" being defined by football, baseball, soccer, hockey, tennis, etc -- activities where you move around some sort of open field -- that everything else feels niche. But really, I think a better way to look at it is that some forms of sport are just more mainstream than others, but they need not necessarily confine themselves to the form of "open-field" team-play.

tl;dr, sure, it's a sport. But I wouldn't bother saying that to people unless I wanted to get laughed at.

[justaguy]

is pacman a sport

no

[wildfireskunk]

Originally Posted by justaguy

is pacman a sport

no

is DDR pacman

no

[Anaru]

What you guys don't get is..

The answer to this question (as answered by FFR) = yes.
The answer to this question (as answered by people who don't know much about DDR in the first place) = no.


Sorry you guys have to hear this but I'm sure almost everyone else besides people of the DDR/ITG/FFR/SM or whatever community would not call DDR/ITG a 'sport'.

I think it is though. Same argument goes for e-sports (LoL, Dota, CS, SC, etc)

[Reincarnate]

No. Those are strictly games, not sports. No physical exertion.

[Anaru]

300 APM IS NOTHING TO LAUGH ABOUT.


grumble grumble..

[MrGiggles]

physical activity: check
improves physical condition: check
provides entertainment: oh god check
winner identified by objective means: check

Yeah I guess it's technically a sport. West Virginia has been using DDR as a fitness tool in public schools for a while, and is an official sport in Norway according to wikipedia.

[Wineandbread]

I basically agree with Reincarnate's first post. You can call it a sport and that's fine and all, but it has such an insignificant community to back it up.

That being said, if ESPN decides to showcase stuff like poker, billiards, and cup stacking, who knows. (o:

I mean, it isn't like billiards isn't entertaining (to some people) and require skill, but they don't fall under the traditional definition of sports. Taking a page out of good ol' Wikipedia: "Some non-physical activities, such as board games and card games are sometimes referred to as sports, but a sport is generally recognised as being based in physical athleticism."

I don't really see a need for DDR/ITG to be defined as a sport in any case. I think that it is just more related to the category of 'competitive gaming'; DDR/ITG require more physical exertion from the players, but in the end they are still games. And that's not really a problem given the rise in competitive gaming in recent years. 'ESPORTS' like Starcraft (iirc one of the last MLG gets like ~50000 people max on their stream) or League of Legends (~200000 live viewers online for the last Dreamhack I think?) have pretty considerable audiences online, and even on TV or stadium in Korea (I forget which final this was exactly, but I remember it was 2005: http://www.themarysue.com/wp-content...tadiumqm17.png).

Competitive gaming shares many similar characteristics of competitive sports. But they're still a long ways off from being lumped into the same category imo. It's not a matter of being similar, it's a matter of acceptance from society and the willingness to treat games as sports, which comes hard for a lot of people.