In particular a comment from ManchuCandidate:
“Hmmm, there's cheating scandals in the sport. Check. Seems pointless to add them into an already bloated Olympic sched like ballroom dancing (unless you are the utterly corruptable former head of the IOC Juan Samaranch.) Check. If the Olympics bans Red Bull/other energy drinks and Cheetos then there will be a PEDs issue. Check. Domination of the sport by a few select nations for easy gold medals. Check. Way cheaper infrastructure wise than the luge or bobsled runs. Plus.”So eSports might not be as physically demanding as traditional or modern Olympic sports, but seem to satiate all other criteria for it. The benefits of computer games have been widely documented and discussed, and they are surprisingly similar to the benefits of physical sports. After all, to be good at anything on a professional level you need to put a lot of time and training into it. Like athletes, most professional gamers train for hours every single day in order to keep their reflexes sharp, teamwork smooth and anticipation skills up to par. Because video games are not just about point-and-click shooting, they are about being quick, careful and accurate. But most of all, being a team player. Being able to understand the movements, intentions and abilities of your colleagues and opponents. Knowing where to be and when to move for a maximum effect. It is more than quick fun, it's tactics and strategy. Some games more so than others.
And that last bit is what really throws the idea off. The choice. How do you decide which games to include? Even singling the genre down to 4X you meet a plethora of popular options. Every game's supporters claiming that their game is better than some other game with the same mechanics. But you can't have every game in a competition. Especially one already laden with other events. Even large tournaments have a rather limited selection of games that are competed in. The versus-mechanic means most games will require a series of events similar to football championships. Dragging even one of those events into the Olympic games would be lacklustre. Dragging many would be even worse.
More importantly, chess is not an Olympic sport. Neither is Xiangqi. Or any other simple game that requires lots of thinking, but not a lot of physical prowess. I mean, if you want easy, play checkers. But keep it out of the Olympics. They have their own tournaments and that is just fine. Just like eSports, or however you like to call them.
