When could we watch video games played in Olympics?

Today a story about "video games and Olympics" was published on the BBC news website. According to the story, the creator of Blizzard's World of Warcraft claimed that competitive video gaming (e-sport) should be included in the Olympic Games as video games are well positioned to be a spectator sport.

With the improving quality and technology of video games, now this has become a huge industry that brings a large amount of income and professional e-sports events are attracting millions of audience. A recent major final held in Seoul, South Korea, filled a stadium of 40,000 people - with many more watching either online or at meet-ups around the world. However, video games are still struggling to win over those who follow more physical sports.

Before the 2014 Incheon Asian Games in South Korea, the request of adding e-sports as one of the competitions in the Asian Games was rejected. In the comments, some said that the way how e-sports are played does not accord with the feature and culture of "real sport". And the "playing" of video games is regarded as "just a game" by many who support the refusal of introducing e-sports to competitions. When I firstly heard the news report on radio, the commentary indicated "how would games be possibly brought into one of the most important sport event in the world?"

Indeed, the definition of e-sports is still remaining in a controversial situation. The difference between e-sports and physical sports is significantly obvious. However, in this case we need to ask ourselves what is sport? Is it only on a physical level or it also requires the competition of mind? Actually, I would say that if we don't allow competitive gaming to appear on either the Olympic or Asian Games, why would the competition of chess be allowed? It also seems not as physical as football, athletics or swimming. And for many competitive sports, like basketball, football and volleyball, every completion of actions is based on the control of our brain. Therefore, apart from physical training, these sports are also competitions of mind. 

But honestly, in terms of the watching of e-sports, this might not be an unfamliar thing for many spectators, especially for those traditional sport viewers. Firstly, they need to understand the game. If you don't know, let's say, Warcraft, you would only be watching several units fighting and there are some effects showing on screen. Video games are not as popularised as as other classic sports and there are indeed people who never play video games.

Not sure whether e-sports would win its chance to show up in worldwide sport competition in the future, for me, I still hope this would come true one day as having been a video gamer for more than 10 years. Maybe one day when video gaming becomes also physical and people would change their comprehension on it, we would see a golden medal obtained by a e-sports player standing on the Olympics awarding stage.