It was announced that there might be competitive games in the 2024 Olympics. “But they are already playing games in the Olympics. What games are they talking about?” Well it might be a shock, but they are planning to add video games to the Olympics. The debate over this gives both sport and video game fans something to consider. 

The Olympic games were created in the 1890’s with an inspiration of replicating the ancient Olympic games which were a celebration for the ancient Greek God,  Zeus. Throughout time, the event was always changing to be a great competition to show off the athlete’s strength, physical abilities and skills. On the other hand, video games were made for entertaining the people. It wasn’t until 1972 when the first competitive video game was created. Thereafter, the genre began to grow having players compete against each other with goals varying by game. People even held competitions to show off a player’s skill: hand eye coordination, quick thinking, and even teamwork. With these two types of similar events, it’s easy to see why people are considering combining the two. 

If and when the International Olympic Committee adds video games to the Olympics, there will be a various amounts of benefits. One being a larger variety to the games. With this addition to the games, it gives the competitors more variety with different goals, different types of entertainment to the viewer, allows more people to join the Olympics. Allowing video games in the Olympics will not only showcase physical strengths, but also bring intelligence, quick thinking, reaction speed, and more teamwork to the competition. With the endless creativity of imagination, it could even lead to a mix of both athletic and digital events. Additionally another advantage for this change is that the competitors will have less of a chance to be harmed. With non physical events, a competitor won’t get too tired from over-training their muscles and will lower the accident rate in the physical competition. It won’t completely eliminate the dangers in the physical aspect of competition, but it lowers the rate out of the whole competition. Hopefully with these positives people will support this addition to the Olympics.

However all pros must have cons. A con for this extension onto the Olympic games is the increase of “Haters”. The term “hater” is the meaning of  a person who really dislikes a thing or a person. In this case the two things are relevant. There has already been cases of people who dislike video games in the everyday lifestyle. If the two activities were to combine, fans on both ends could become frustrated. Unfortunately in this world, people will have hatred in them, so it’s not impossible for a video game fan to hate sports and the Olympics and vice versa. As a result this could lower the popularity of this event or worse, having fans of each activity at odds with each other. The worst downside, however is the Olympics may lose its purpose. If video games were to enter the Olympics, it will not be a competition that it was originally made to be. The Olympics was made for great athletic abilities and skills, not for pushing buttons to control something that isn’t physically real.  And with the expansion of technology, it means the expansion of viruses and glitches. Unfortunately this allows matches to be easily rigged or sabotaged more readily than a physical match.  

With both positive and negative effects it will be hard decision to place video games into the Olympics. While people wait for the the great announcement to see if video games will join the great event of the Olympics, there are two things that are certain. It will have a great change for both good and bad and there will always be people to both agree and disagree with this change.