Which Games Should Be Olympic Esports? | Design Club

Good time zone internet. Hello and welcome to Design Club, the only game design show on the internet that seeks to talk about the Olympics without talking about the Olympics. I am your humble host Will, joined as always by my pal Jeff. Say hi to the people, Jeff.
Hi to the people, Jeff. Hey everybody, I am Jeffrey Zakin, the studio director of Extra Credits and long-time game designer. And as a quick note up top, this stream is in no way sponsored by the Olympic Committee or the Saudi government.
That is a
had a recent split with the e-sports federation, which I think makes a lot of people happy.
Yeah, that's that is a very interesting. That's actually the cause of our discussion today is that I started thinking about the Olympic e-sports when Matt and I began talking about the split on breakfast and I thought it would be a really great opportunity to revisit not the world that we expect to live in, but the world we want to live in when it comes to international sanctioned competitive e-sports in the

style of the Olympics, right? Now we know that there's a bunch of like Every time the Olympics happens, there's a bunch of stuff that takes uh the focus off of the sports as is kind of designed, right? The Olympics are sort of just like a big international venue for dialogue and discussion and international politics to like be writ large on a sports stage. Today, we're not focusing on any of that. We're just focusing on the games uh because we have some ideas.
I want to talk about breakdancing should be in. Like that was amazing last Olympics.
Okay, wait, wait, wait, but that's in in the Olympic Olympics.
Yeah.
So, we're talking about the e-sports Olympics. Are you suggesting that breakdancing get a virtual Are we going to I just I have this image of someone trying to VR breakdance and just smashing a headset. Cuz like that's what's going to happen.
PaRappa the Rapper too?
Yeah, no, okay, yeah, sure. Competitive Parappa the Rapper.
Um

So
us already.
Yes, you have. Congratulations.
Video game and like part of this feels weird to me like there are video games, there are games that have become e-sports. Usually, you know, and there are also competitions in the game space with things like speed running or looking for high scores with things like even going as far back as Pac-Man.
Mhm.
Kinds of things, but not everything that people play for competition is an e-sport or honestly, I think would be interesting to put in an Olympics
Yes.
that involves video games. And by the way, this is the official Olympic Committee saying how how {slash} if should we put video games into the Olympics.
Yeah.
So
And so, this is us weighing in on that because that's very different than Riot being like, "Cool. We've now got League of

Legends and Valorant." Both of which are, you know, e-sports style games.
Right. So, uh in fact, let's let's jump to um what was in the 2023 Olympics? If you've If you're watching this in the VOD later, that thumbnail is actually from the 2023 e-sports Olympics. Um so let's let's look at what they've included before and then we'll talk a little bit about the the what we think games really need cuz a lot of this is it feels like e-Olympic e-sports games are an odd subset of streamable games and we'll talk a little bit more about that as we go. So, in 2023 there were
10 games.
10 games. Tennis Clash
Mhm.
Tic Tac Bow
It's funny how many of these I've never heard of.
Right. WBCE Baseball Power Pros. By the way, that's in all caps except for the E in E Baseball.

Mhm.
Um chess.com, not chess, chess.com, okay?
Mhm.
Uh Zwift, which is a cycling um simulator that come that you do on a bike. Just Dance.
Yay, a new one.
Um right. Gran Turismo, okay, or two. Virtual Regatta, which is a sailing game. Virtual Taekwondo, that's on the thumbnail. And the last one, which appears to my eye to be the single most incongruous with the other nine that we have named, Fortnite.
Which is listing as shooting.
It's the shooting game.
I'm curious actually, knowing nothing about this, we probably should have looked it up. Was this competitive Fortnite? Was this free-for-all or was this like target range shooting using the Fortnite engine?
Right. I have I have
says shooting next to it.
Well, okay, so like both of those are options though, right? Cuz we we could talk about I'm going to Google this

while we talk. Yeah, yeah, yeah, right, right. But both of We should point out that both of those are legitimate options. There are team sports, right? They're team competitions in the traditional Olympics. And it's not unreasonable to suggest that team Fortnite's a thing. Or they could have like a shooting range cuz shooting sports are also in the regular Olympics.
here we go.
Uh-huh. You ready for this, Will?
Yes.
According to the Google AI overview,
Oh god.
which for this I actually trust. Like
Sure.
something that's a web scrapable thing. Fortnite was included in the 2023 Olympic Esports Series as a shooting event at the Olympic Esports Week in Singapore held from June 22nd to 25th. The competition was an international event featuring 12 players from the 2023 Fortnite Championship Series who competed on a special Fortnite creative island to test their aim accuracy, not a traditional battle royale format. As reported by olympic.com.
Okay, but then like there's a game that's literally so much better for that

than Fortnite, but sure. Um the there's an aim trainer program that is fantastic. If you ever want to be get good at um first-person shooters, it's a free aim trainer program that's available on uh Steam, and that would be a better test of accuracy because it has all of the metrics built in. It's very good. Um so, using Fortnite for that feels a little bit like your challenge is to pull as many nails as possible with this pair of pliers. Like yes, you can, but why are you using that tool for that job?
When they list the winners' names on the website, they list their actual names and then in parentheses, they use their handle.
Yeah, right, of course. Right, okay. Great, great, great, great.
I'm also trying to figure out if there's there's 12, but there's only 11 listed finalists. I wonder, was there a disqualification?
Bum, bum, bum. Disqualified for illegal dancing, probably. It's Fortnite. Um so, okay. So, that's that's where we're starting from. We're starting from that list of 10 games. Those things are what

has previously been decided are e-sports for the Olympics. Okay. So, let's let's start from there.
Mhm. I am still minorly amazed at
Yeah, I'm still a little
of this.
Right. Well, and and so, I think for most people, they'll have heard of at most half of these. I think most I think half is generous. I I'm going to say if you're plugged in, half. If you're not plugged in, like three, and those are chess.com, Just Dance, and Gran Turismo. Um
And Fortnite.
Yeah, and Fortnite. So, four, right? Um And so I I definitely like it's so it's so interesting to me that that's the list. Okay, so what what kind of games are we looking for just to start with, right? So, we've got games that have a distinct ability to easily judge a winner.

Right? We don't have there's not a ton of like victory points style wins here, right? There is a clear and decisive winner when the competition is finished. Whoever crosses the finish line first, whoever scores the most points in baseball. Just Dance is probably the most nebulous, but Just Dance has built-in scoring, so it's probably head-to-heads in that.
Mhm.
So, that makes a kind of sense, but what we're not talking about is we don't want to do like if you can't clearly declare a winner that is obvious, we probably don't want it, right? So, that
Maybe.
Well,
let's take Olympic diving or Olympic gymnastics. There are plenty of games in the actual Olympics Olympics that are scored by judges,
Okay.
human judges,
Sure.
that have a set of guidelines. Actually, fencing is like there are still human judges that watch
Correct.
fencing for right of way and other things in addition to the electronics.

Correct. Uh old scho- um before electronics were invented and we fenced using chalk. Very old school fencing uh was done in
Mhm.
So, also I should also clarify I fenced at the collegiate level for years and wrecked my knee doing it. And know a fair bit about fencing, so I have some expertise in this area. Um
Same actually. Will Will and I over index on knowledge of fencing.
Right. Um it used to be called uh four blind men and a liar. Um because there was a head judge and four people who were watching for touches. Um and the way it That is a great example.
literally stood in the corners. So, two the two on this side would watch this fencer and the two on this side would watch this fencer with the judge in the middle trying to watch everything.
Trying to watch the action to determine right of way.
Actually, football, baseball. I mean, so as soon as we actually start talking sports, which is what the Olympics is, almost always there are human judges involved, some of which are following very hard

set rules like baseball, and some of which are trying to interpret moves done like in gymnastics and diving.
Ice skating's another one, right?
Ice skating, yeah.
Right. Uh the those are all um like any sort of I'm going to call it an artistic performance that is judged in the moment. Yeah, right.
Or even things like how well how many hits landed.
Right.
Or you know, how well was it done for like winning a boxing round.
But I feel like when we're talking about this, we should acknowledge that there is some amount of advantage here in the fact that we're dealing with e-sports rather than the regular sports in that we have injected another individual, we've injected computer scoring.
Mhm.
Right? And so that's
only means it works if the game is getting played as the designers made it to be played.
Correct.
Take Fortnite shooting range right there

or other games that you know, if you can judge dancing,
Okay.
are there other games that you judge based on artistic merit as opposed to the score that the game assigns it.
For instance,
Mhm.
um competitive Minecraft speed building in creative mode. You are given half an hour and a blank world, please build us a thing based on a prompt. Is that an e-sport? It might be. Right?
Anything could be an e-sport.
Right. So, yeah, right. But, but in the same way that like it is up to some judges to interpret an artistic effort on the part of competitors, right? That is an element of this that we can't really ignore.
it's up to the organizers to lay out to lay down a specific set of guidelines. Like let's hop over to League of Legends for a moment. So, one of the biggest e-sports in the world

is entirely dependent on how Riot currently has tuned their characters,
Correct.
has tuned their jungle, and amongst other things has tuned their which lane are you allowed to be in? Like they disliked people doing lane swaps and like making the game boring for the first 10 minutes. So, they've increasingly piled on oh, if the wrong people show up in top lane, there will be penalties.
Right.
Um kinds of things or and or drafting rules. Like the new rules as of this year for the e-sports scene was in matches of more than one. Like a series of three or five, there are no repeat champions allowed to be selected.
right. I forgot they did Highlander. And by the way, I love that. It's the best.
Oh, yeah. Like so much more interesting to watch and like if you know somebody's really good at another champion, your team might select them purely to deny them that champion for the entire rest of the series. But, those are all I won't say arbitrary, but

arbitrary decisions made by a governing board. In this case, the Riot both the dev side and the e-sports side on how the game will be played. Because even the base game that there is, they can basically say this is how it counts for these tournaments.
Right. And and I think that there is an additional sort of complicating factor here, which is timing of balance patches.
Oh, yeah. Like
Any any live
organizes patches around big competitive events to try and not
after having some fairly spectacular mistakes
Correct.
to not patch in the middle of big tournaments or other things.
And I believe both Valve and Blizzard have said "YOLO" and pushed big patches to different competitive games in the middle of major tournament scenes that they were running. I think Starcraft II got a balance patch in the middle of Worlds one year, and as I recall, there's been at least one emergency hotfix patch in the middle of probably a majors for Dota. Anyway, um

so those are all those are all factors that we have to like think about, right, when we do it, but I don't want us to get too bogged down in those because those are all fundamentally, I'm going to say logistical concerns, right? Look, we could solve a lot of these in some way, right? We could we could ask all the, you know, companies involved to to not, you know, hotfix for this week or whatever, right? Or have isolated computers that are on a LAN and not connected to the internet and whatever.
And we'll come back to part of my thoughts on that later, but okay. So our base base level question is, what does the game need to have to be included
Yep.
as an Olympic style e-sport game?
Yes.
And so, Will, let's start with the really high-level question. What's an e-sport?
Any game that can be played any video game that can be played competitively.

But that's every video game.
Correct, which makes it a useless distinction, unfortunately, right? Because people have made very non-competitive games incredibly competitive, and people have done things
Minecraft, excuse me, not my Minesweeper
Mhm.
be a competitive game if somebody put an organizing set of rules around it for people to play.
I'm waiting for one of our community members to pop up because we have someone who competes in organized ranked competitive Minesweeper internationally in our community.
Wow.
That exists. Right, but like my point is that that exists, right? So, unfortunately, that's a little bit hard, right? Because you can make it a Now, it might be better to say any game which is designed with competition and determining a winner in mind.
But that would, for example, get rid of Tetris.
Mhm.
It wasn't designed with competitive play in mind.
Uh
Neither was Pac-Man.
Tetris has head-to-head.
Neither would

But
Certain versions of Tetris do.
Right. So,
There are a lot of I think half of the games that were listed on the Olympics thing weren't actually designed to be that.
I I also think that that's true. Well, okay, let's let's ask another question. Does a high score, does the ability to determine a score, a numeric value for play, for meeting certain requirements, does that count as a way to to make a game competitive? Like like
So, let's start. That's actually the history.
Yeah.
So, video game competition, like there used to be a there still are a lot of high score competitions where basically kind of like leagues or tournaments around you know, who can get the best Pac-Man score. But a lot of the old ones happened asynchronously.
Sure.
You know, Bob gets the high Pac-Man score witnessed by enough people that he can submit it, and then that's the new

score. So, it There There used to be a lot less people gather from around the world to see who's the best at so-and-so. And that's kind of what the high score initially was.
Right.
But that's I'm honestly going to say in some cases a little boring because like who can play Pac-Man for you know 97 minutes in a row perfectly to get one point you know 100 points higher than the previous person isn't let's just call it riveting play and we'll come back to that in a minute. I want to But like I think one of the definitions of eSports is it's organized competitive playing of video games. So I think what is evolved from high scores um into kind of eSports is what games currently have people decided to put together organized competitive play

around. And almost every eSport currently has leagues, seasons, like the publisher / developer support or I mean there there's kind of a certain amount of requisites for what most people consider eSports.
So we're going to have to throw some caveats on that though, right? So that is organized by someone who has control over the game because or or we're going to have to admit speed running. And speed running is sort of the most interesting corner case in all of this I think. So we may deal with that in its own segment later.
It's entirely its own segment because speed running is a very different style of thing.
Correct. So everyone who's been chomping at the bit to hear us talk hear us mention speed running, hang tight we're going to get to it, right?
It will be addressed.
Right. So okay, so the um Okay, so it needs to have some sort of structure to competitive play.
Right.

And I mean so the biggest genres currently for eSports are MOBAs, first-person shooters, fighting games, card games, and Battle Royales.
Okay.
So what all of these have in common is they are designed for with the exception actually Excuse me. I was going to say for lots of people, but that's three of the five two of the three of the five. MOBAs, FPSs, and Battle Royales are all designed for large amounts of people coming in, where fighting games and card games are almost always one-on-one duels.
Yes.
So, we can support both within there. Well, some of the biggest games in the world for that are League of Legends, Dota 2, Valorant, Counter-Strike, Overwatch. Like for what you hear people talking about playing competitively as an e-sport.
Right.
Um there are And I mean, certain games have tried. Like for a long time, Clash Royale really tried to push its competitive
As
scene.
As in Clash of Clans. They like flew

people out
Yeah.
to the Supercell world headquarters one year to have a Clash thing. And by the way, it's really interesting. One of my favorite things about e-sports is when you figure out that like the person who's in charge of like the biggest, most successful clan in Clash in Clash of Clans is like a stay-at-home mom from Iowa. And you're like, that who just does it for fun in her spare time and is just incredibly good cuz she's got spare time to put in it, right?
Well,
has the time and the like aptitude.
Right. And yeah, has time and aptitude and has developed that skill set because that doesn't fit a lot of people's uh mental model of what a competitive e-sports player should look like, right? But then there she is and she's just shot calling for her entire team doing Clash Clash of Clans and winning. It was hilarious. Um
Which is great.
Yeah, it's it's great.
And that does get to part of the competitive nature

on some of these. And actually that's going to bring me to another thing I want to benchmark and come back to.
Sure.
Does there need to be a level of physicality involved? Because I would argue for example that Clash of Clans sure, precise tapping for a couple things, but it's very low quantity of input. Um compared to something like playing competitive Street Fighter.
Or virtual taekwondo.
Yeah.
Right. Yeah, like I
And so when you say Olympics, Olympics kind of brings part of the baggage or that comes with Olympics is it is usually a heavily physical thing.
I'm going to disagree right off the rip because they put chess from chess.com in there and you can play that with an eye tracker.
Well, no, I'm talking about the real Olympics.
Yeah. Oh, yeah, yeah, for the real Olympics, sure, but like
But I'm saying if this is the Olympics, if we are saying the Olympics coming in, does that imply a level of physic

Actually, we can come back to that. A level of physicality
Yeah. I'm I'm going to say that it doesn't and I I I will take that position when we get there. Um
Yeah. But so I guess esports what we're coming to is it's a it's currently a thing people have kind of decided on
Yeah.
because let's be realistic. The games that are doing well at esports have been have big publishers support and deep pockets to support creating leagues and salary teams to go play that is in promotion of the game itself. Like for most companies esports is a marketing expense
Right.
that gets other people to come play their game or to keep playing their game.
Right.
It drives up interest in the game.
Right.
And so the therefore the ones that we currently have all revolve around that in some way or another.
Yeah, and I think this also lets us sort of begin to winnow out some of the things that like sure could technically be there, but we have an instinct that they

shouldn't be like I'm going to go out on a limb and say that while it is technically possible for there to be Mario Party at the eSports Olympics, there probably shouldn't be.
Mhm.
Right? As an example of something that we can like begin to winnow out with the idea of there needs to be more organized play, there needs to be more organized um recognition of skill and um ranking of skill into different strata as we go. Um
Yeah.
Yeah.
By the way, this also isn't us saying video games should be Olympic in the Olympics. This is talking to the point that if they're going to be, what games should there be? There was a comment saying, you know, which has a stronger case for inclusion,
Yeah.
you know, the NFL or you know, or the American football or eSports.
Like
Because I I don't know that we're qualified to weigh in on that one, but if there are going to be Olympic eSports games, this is what we're kind of interested in talking about.
I also think that baseball has a unique place in the eSports Olympics because

baseball is a hugely international sport, right? There are
That and soccer
Yeah. Baseball and soccer
the two most common let's popular recreational
Right. And then
things that people go watch and that
Right. And then behind them we've got like cricket and rugby and then
Cricket, rugby, American football.
Oh, excuse me. Basketball is probably just under
Yeah.
soccer and baseball.
Get What is it um uh uh jazz? NBA jazz? The two-on-two one where you got like the It was the arcade style like I want that. I want I want that. And I you have to play on an arcade cabinet. Anyway, sorry. I got distracted for a second, right?
Okay, so basically from our from the way the definition is right now, like eSports as it exists in the world is large company, large medium medium to large companies supporting a game that they have designed to be an eSport, and it's a marketing expense for them, and they support it to help further game. I

think we can afford to go a little broader on what we're including.
Yeah.
And so, theoretically, the sky is still the limit.
Yes.
Does that sound right, Will?
Yeah. Um okay, so there's a there's an interesting question, too, uh which I think I have a pretty easy answer to, which is uh should a video game translate explicitly to some real-world equivalent? Because they made the the idea of the 2023 games was that each of these 10 games directly correlated with a sport or game that is already present in the Olympics, right? That's why they did Fortnite shooting range, because that's like um a any rifle or pistol
Yeah.
Tennis, archery, baseball, chess, cycling, dance, motorsport or car racing, sailing, shooting, and taekwondo. I don't think car racing and chess are in the actual Olympics.
Those two are new inclusions, but the

others all are.
Yeah. Everything was pretty much mapped to something that people might more traditionally call a sport.
Yeah. And so, I I don't think we need to stay in that realm, but it is interesting to note that up till this point they've been I think we need to have some treatment, because I think that gets into the question of how palatable this is to an audience, right? How do you bring people in, right? How do you get How do you get your mom to watch the e-sports Olympics?
Yeah.
Right?
I think, by the way, the Olympic Committee made the wrong decision on that. I think watching a computer simulation of somebody play tennis is just doing actual tennis a disservice and actual video games a disservice.
I agree. Especially because they chose not like I definitely think they chose some very interesting ones. Gran Turismo is a good choice. Um I loved the virtual taekwondo

actually and we'll get to that as like an advantage thing uh eventually. I loved the idea of putting chess in but like Zwift is already covered by the fact that there's cycling in the Olympics and Zwift is literally just cycling on a cycling on a virtual bike. Like it's a bike that's designed with resistances to mimic uphill, downhill, whatever. I don't know that we need that, right?
Or tic-tac-toe for archery.
There's already archery. You could play right, yeah. So so those things maybe don't do the best of all.
what I want to see is if it maps to a real-world thing, it is in some way transformational.
Yes.
Like it takes it and in some way ups it. Like I honestly I think the taekwondo VR is cool, but I think it should just be regular taekwondo. Like I would rather see that spot taken by something else.
Okay.
Okay.
I think there's a bigger discussion to have about

uh long-term competition and mastery of martial arts without risking competitors getting injured in the international stage. And I think that that's like the interesting angle for that conversation. I don't know that it belongs here, but I did want to inject that when we're talking about it cuz like I think that I think that there might be a carve out for taekwondo, but I don't think it's enough to like have a competition.
was the taekwondo head-to-head?
Yes.
Or were Okay, they weren't like fighting a computer computer opponent.
I I watched it. It's two people essentially shadow boxing using VR headsets to compete on opposite sides of the stage at the same time simultaneously. It's just non-contact. Which is kind of an interesting use of that.
It is, but what it also does is it weirdly throws out blocking and other things because there's no like
There's no physicality.
Yeah.
Yeah.
If this was if they had some of the force feedback

and other mechanics on top of it, the haptics.
Yeah. Weirdly, um, sword fighting games are much better for that because blocking the sword translates more cleanly into the VR space than like the full body tracking for taekwondo. But, I think I think our point stands that if if it is to be a an analog to a another sport or activity that is present in the Olympics, it needs to be transformative. Otherwise, why are we doing this?
Yeah.
Right? So, doing one-to-one clones isn't like it it isn't it, I don't think. Um Okay. So, and then the the next question is
Just jotting that down as a note. Um
And then the next one
the next one is like how I'm going to go up or how official do the games or formats need to be? In other words, like the Fortnite one, let's make a shooting range in Fortnite that's using Fortnite to do a thing.

Like
Right.
That's a thing Fortnite can do, but that's not like the official how to play.
Right. And I guess this is the other place where speed running comes up, right? Because if we say it has to be official, then we've just cut the legs out from under the idea of including speed running. Which I think is one of the most So, I I'm going to I think
I think I'm going to argue about disqualifying speed running for a whole other category later.
Yeah.
Um but Yeah, I mean and like
That also means
Gran Turismo, sure. Racing mode is a mode that is involved in that. You know, if you're going to go play that archery Tic Tac Bow game,
Yep.
that is at least I'm pretty sure you can play it the way that that game was designed to be made. You're not making up we're using this game with this, you know, mod or subset of rules. Because I guess part of it is otherwise

the sky's the limit. You could say fastest Baldur's Gate non-combat or, you know, only 10 deaths allowed run. Like, okay, cool. I'm going to put a word salad on a game
Sure.
to turn it into a competition.
Right. The Smash Brothers problem. We can make it real easy. The Smash Brothers problem. Are we playing Super Smash Brothers? Are we playing Super Smash Brothers Final Destination no items no fox?
Mhm.
Right? Like now, especially because in depending on which Super Smash or which which Smash circuit you're in, different characters may be banned. That's weird, right? So, that is sort of a problem, right? That that I think we need to be able to say that you should be able to if we're going to be playing a game, we should be able to select the play mode pretty cleanly. Like as sort of a general principle. I don't know that that's like a hard and fast rule, but it the less word salad we have to include to make it translatable to a viewing audience, the

better, right? It's cuz cuz think about like Summer Olympics. This is the men's 50-m sprint. Great. Awesome. Who's doing it? How long they're doing it? How they're doing it? Done. Right? This is not like
Actually, though, it's tricky though, cuz like Gardner just brought up a thing I was about to bring up. Like, if you were going to put Magic the Gathering
Mhm.
in the Olympics for the moment.
Mhm.
Like
I'm against this, but go on.
I know, but like there will always be a word salad there. Like, which format? Because that says Magic has printed a whole bunch of cards, which cards are allowed, you know? Um, are we doing the, you know, are we drafting? Are we coming with constructed decks?
And that's uh exacerbated
constructed deck formats is it?
Right. And this is exacerbated, of course, by the fact that Magic's own competitive scene is a mix of formats, depending on which event, in which location, and which level of quali-

which level of competition it is, right? So, there will be events that are the first six rounds are uh format one, and then on day or the first eight rounds are format one, and then when you get to day two and you you move to a completely different format for day two, and then the top eight is like a another like it's it's a lot, right? And so I I think it is a valid question.
I don't even know if I want to bring in like used hardware or hardware used. Like, if you're playing League of Legends, you show up with your own keyboard and mouse, the one you're familiar with, but there's a list of acceptable keyboards and mice because you're not allowed to like have big programmable, you know,
Right.
things in your mouse. You're supposed to be, yeah, macros, thank you. You're supposed to be play- playing it yourself.
Yes.
And that would be true like on fighting games. Do you have to use a Xbox controller or are you allowed to bring in

A hitbox.
Yeah.
Right. And if it's a hitbox, how do you verify that it's not one of the hitboxes that cheats? Uh some There was a problem for a real long time where you could input left and right on a hitbox simultaneously, I think, which you can't do on a controller, and then remove one of them to immediately move the other direction. It it's incredibly powerful in the hands of a professional. And so, that's like an example of a piece of technology that needs to be banned because it offers an advantage to some players that others don't have access to.
Yeah, and like it may just be a thing that like this Olympic e-sports sponsored by Razer. You will be using the Razer this Razer mouse and this Razer keyboard. Practice up, buddy.
Right, yeah. I also think that Air Force is correct. There is a list of acceptable shoes in track and suits in swimming, right? Cuz remember there was the Summer Olympics like, I don't know, forever ago where everybody was in the neck-to-ankle like full body uh super high-tech performance swimwear

and it was like, you know, hundreds to thousands of dollars per suit and then they banned them, right? Fencing goes through so many gear changes. They've changed so much about the gear even since I started fencing um as another example. So, I I think I'm okay with having gear restrictions baked in and that that is part of the sort of expectation of the Olympics is that we're okay with having those things.
I have tracks a bit. So, like the official format's like selecting a play mode pretty cleanly and less word salad or both I think strong goals.
Yeah.
I don't think they're hard and fast rules.
I agree.
Um and caveat this, does the company who made the game need to consent?
That's a really great question, Jeff, and I think the answer is probably, but for the sake of our exercise, I don't think we should assume that any given company given its

previous inclinations would object. So, like yes, they do need to, but when we're talking about games, let's not dwell over much on whether or not they
Right. Because for example, if they had to, well, and the one of the reasons I say this is there's a couple of reasons. One, if you're playing a Nintendo game, Nintendo is famously not terribly interested in like they might change their mind if this was the Olympics. Right. Like But um there are definitely groups that have to run independently because the publisher or developer is not interested in it.
Right.
But, there's also a lot of games where to literally run the competition, if you said, "Okay, League of Legends or Dota is in the Olympics." You would need Riot or Valve participating with you to make sure that it worked for the way you wanted to set it up and run it. And etc.
Yeah. Uh
Like or Epic for Fortnite or like there's all

sorts of ones where if you want to be able to run it smoothly on like a world stage at Olympic caliber level, you're just going to need the support of the people running it.
Right. Correct.
You know, you don't want Epic being like, "Oh, sorry, it's patching time."
Right.
"We were supposed to be streaming this live to millions of people."
Yeah. Yeah, I agree. Okay, so there's uh Okay, so then I think our next question is uh how much skill does the game require? And that can be both physical skill and mental skill. And I'm going to say that for the eSports Olympics, I am going to go all of the way out on a limb.
Okay.
Go out on a limb and I'm going to state the spiciest possible uh uh case, which is that on that approved list of hardware needs to be a broad and deep list of accessibility controls so

that physical ability requirements for games which participate in the eSports Olympic are as low as possible. I want the Xbox I want the Xbox accessibility controller and the PlayStation accessibility controller on every list of approved equipment for every game.
Doesn't that mean though that we're going to have a whole bunch of macroing problems?
Not necessarily.
the reason that a whole bunch of those work as well as they do
Mhm.
is that you can write macros to compensate.
Sure. You can have a
that
Um a macro in this case is you have one button press that simulates several what would normally take several button presses in the design of the game.
And or joystick or thumb pad movements.
Is that any different than saying that you have to play with advanced controls in Street Fighter? Right? Cuz Street Fighter Street Fighter 6 has two control modes. One that is more complicated and has a higher skill

ceiling and one that is less complicated and has a lower skill ceiling but does also have a significantly lower skill floor to allow people to play. And it's the difference in skill ceiling by the way is at a very it's not as big as I think some people think it is. Right? So I'm I'm I'm okay with that. I think that the I think that the downsides of macroing some things are pretty significant and the um if people want to do that, that's okay because that is I think that making the games as accessible as possible is my one of my primary priorities here. But like I accept that that is a potential complication. I just don't know that it stops me from wanting that.
But so I won't disagree there but it was also the like well I think when bowling got trialed in the Olympics, yeah, a lot of people were like sure bowling's a sport but it doesn't

feel like an Olympic sport.
Sure.
Like there is and to take nothing away from good bowlers because good bowlers have trained hard but the physicality of the bowling is very different than say the physicality of somebody who can run 100 m quickly or you know, play something like baseball.
Sure. I'm going to go back to they did this when they put chess in the eSports Olympics. Like when when we
No, no, hold on.
Sure.
Like this isn't judging this is what should it be, not what what weird 10 games did the eSports group pick last time?
Okay, so then the follow-up question to that is do you think that chess should not be in the Olympic eSports?
I'm not sure yet because chess is also not a traditional video game.
Sure. That's very true, but it also we don't have a place for games that are

purely games of the mind in the regular Olympics, right? In the summer and winter games we have many games that do require a high degree of strategy. Please don't get me wrong on that. Right? There every race game every race is a huge amount of strategy and preparation and teammates working together. Yeah, every team game, right?
Games that are purely mental games don't currently have a place in the summer and winter Olympics. So if we're going to include those, those go here and I'm a big proponent of that.
Yeah, like that alone might include it in. Does So but and that's kind of what I'm But let's say for a moment let's say so chess I can get more behind than say Clash of Clans. And one of the reasons for that is Clash of Clans and not even Clash Royale, but Clash of Clans is basically the only decision you're making is what am I bringing?
Mhm.
And where do I drop it?
Yes.
After that there's you're pretty much

just watching your horde tear around and um
Right.
wrecking buildings.
I also think that Clash of Clans and Clash Royale should be uh the sort of lightning rod for a discussion um monetization and how much we want to like bring that in because unless
we could also say that like almost every other competitive game when you're playing at this that level everything is just unlocked and given to you which is one more reason for publisher support.
Right. Like and I think that's a good point like Riot uh Riot has tournament League accounts that just like have all the stuff.
Yeah.
They just have all the stuff. Yeah.
And Riot's League is also a good example of a game that short of unlocking champions nothing else gets unlocked.
Right.
Like what most of what people pay for are cosmetics.
Yeah. And and for some games
cosmetics don't affect the gameplay.
Right. And for some games it doesn't uh there are no gameplay affecting unlocks, right? Uh Valve games uh Halo as other examples or

at least Halo didn't the last time I looked at Halo multiplayer but it might have since because it's been a hot second I'll fully admit. Um Okay. So So if we're okay with that and we're back on the the question of like physical or mental stuff. I also think that one of the problems is that we have this like smell test sort of going on where we're like does this feel like an Olympic game? Does this feel like an Olympic sport? And I don't know that we're ever going to be able to like get to a satisfying place on that. Right? I think that the higher the skill ceiling is the better for games that are mental games, right? Um Example, I don't think we should have competitive digital nine men's morris. But I do think competitive digital chess is good. Right? As an example.
here's another one. I think these games should be physical and mental but not social.

For example, I think Among Us is not an Olympic style game.
I think I'm okay with that. Yeah, I I I think I think I'm okay with that.
Or werewolf.
Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Absolutely. Then we're we're we're saying that social elements, especially because one of the biggest problems um one of the biggest things that the Olympics solves is uh language barriers, and language barriers would be an absolutely massive part of that, and I don't want that to become part of the this game.
Right. Or teams being like, "That's the Russian players. We dislike them this year."
Right.
Or that's the, you know, like having countries with traditional rivalries or other things be like, "Oh, we're eliminating them first just because."
Yeah. Um Yes. Uh okay, okay, okay. And then and then
Actually, um really quick, Cloud Imper,

that's why I said or that's why I was saying that the skins are mostly don't affect it. There are definitely As soon as you start recoloring or other things in a game like you don't get a skin that makes you, "Hey, my magic is 10% more powerful." But you're right, there absolutely might be a skin in any number of games that
There have been probably
makes it harder to see a projectile or an animation or something else.
Yeah. Oh, that's one I hadn't thought about. And I love I love this idea. Geoguesser. That's a fantastic idea and a very Oh, that's very interesting. Uh unfortunately, I think we have to all agree that Rainbow Road is banned because No, that's not fair to whoever doesn't get Rainbow Road on their team. Okay, great. Um
Oh, that that reminded me of another um

I'm writing it down.
Yeah, I think that
with encyclopedic knowledge or trivia. Because say you were going to go play competitive um Trivial Pursuit.
Okay.
A good player would just go read all the cards.
Or a Scrabble, same thing. You don't actually need to play the language that Scrabble's in, you just need to memorize the Scrabble dictionary for that language.
Right. Scrabble I'm actually more down with because it's at least players have to play off what the other player does. Something like Trivial Pursuit
Uh unfortunately, I would agree if that were true. Top end Scrabble eliminates opponents.
Oh, okay.
Top top top end and don't YouTube rabbit hole chat, don't don't worry about it. Um it's it's essentially solitaire boards.
Oh, okay.
It's It's very weird. Uh but yeah.
Yeah, like games with encyclopedic knowledge are basically things where you could just go read the entire volume of

answers.
Yeah. Oh.
To me are just out.
Yeah, I I think that that's fair, right? Um I think that that is a reasonable thing to to say that like it's not it should not be like a memorization. There should be a application of skill in a context
Right.
thing.
Skill and strategy.
Yeah, skill and strategy and tactics. Okay. And then
So, yeah, basically um Physical and mental, yes, but not social. No games with encyclopedic knowledge. We want something that feels like an Olympic sport. The higher the skill ceiling, the better. Um and I'm going to say some degree of physicality when playing is nice. And that could be clicks, timing, reaction, etc. I'm saying is nice, not required.
Yeah, I'm Yeah, yeah, I I think I think like Well, especially if we're going to include like cuz we're going to have to

include a MOBA and we're going to have to include an FPS. And the obvious answer, by the way, to all of the fans of both of the companies is that we include League and Counter-Strike. That's the obvious answer. Counter-Strike is longer, has a deeper history, and is I would argue more broadly applicable than Valorant, and League has a much bigger following and is much easier to follow than Dota. That's just how that falls out, right? But like that's sort of a practical aside.
And readability.
And yeah, and and that's actually our next topic, which is readability. Um how cuz as someone who streams games professionally 5 days a week here on twitch.tv/extracredits, there's a problem. And that problem is the information horizon. So, let me explain this to you. There is a density of information at which viewers who are not deeply ready into the game you are playing cannot understand the game.

This is a different level for every game. A great example of this is Civilization. If you understand Civilization, you are probably capable of glancing at a any individual screen of a Civilization game in progress and gleaning something about the state of the game. If you are not, it is an incomprehensible wall of symbols. Right? In the same way
Yeah, I'd say the same even like Slay the Spire.
Yes.
If you're hopping in, you know, to somebody who's 80% of the way through a run and are unfamiliar with it, and you see a line of artifacts across the top, and have no idea what is currently in the deck,
Correct.
like you're going to and they're playing at that player speed,
Right.
to watch a whole bunch of things flash across the screen and have no idea why.
Especially if they're playing with a keyboard instead of a mouse.
Yeah.
Um and that's actually one of the reasons why the um there's an extension that was built for Twitch to allow people to mouse over the screen and look at the relics. It's one of the reasons that's the one of the top mods for Spire is because it makes it

approachable. But that's not at stake here in the Olympics because we do have to think about televising and people can't mouse over things on the television. Um
Currently.
Yeah, currently. Maybe soon. So, there's um
So, some amount of intelligibility Let's see. Or um how should is this how possible does the game have to be? Um how what?
Yeah, how possible? But I also think that that goes into our question of how interesting does the game have to be to watch because interest is a function of understanding in a lot of cases.
And actually, I have a different meaning for that.
Sure.
Which So, possible I think we're just going to say reasonably.
Yeah.
But also maybe like watching fencing for a lot of people is unparsable at a high level.
But it has the blinky lights, Jeff. It has the blinky lights. And one of the lights goes on and
You can You can tell once a thing has

happened. Swords get waved around and then one player screams and then the other player screams and then
Yeah, right.
They both pointed each other and say they got a hit.
And people are bringing up some very good examples from the traditional Olympics, right? Mereth is bringing up curling. That's a great one. I can answer one of these. Fussy says I have no idea why people leap at the goal. There's a crease outside which inside you which you are not allowed to step. So, you leap over the line to throw. If you make contact with the ground before you throw the ball, it's illegal. But you can leap over it to throw. It's kind of like being out of bounds. Anyway. Um
Oh, similar to like catching in football. American football where you can the ball can be out of bounds but as long as your feet are touching in-bounds when it's caught,
Yeah.
it's fair play.
Right. Right. Right. Right. So, there's
Almost all games have
some amount of minutia around
the thing, but um so, possible we're hoping for more

possible than less. When I was saying interesting to watch,
Sure.
um and maybe I run this into the next one of like how playable or relevant does the game have to be?
Sure.
Like I'll combine these together. Like there's a perfectly fine case for saying Pac-Man's been around forever and people recognize that game. But, I would argue that watching
40 or 60 people all go play Pac-Man for hours on end is boring.
Yeah.
Because it's all going to look the same. Like, if you go watch a couple games of Counter-Strike, players are going to choose different strategies and movements. There are not optimal patterns to play like there are in a lot of old-style games that just you learn the you learn how the computer moves. And so, especially for single player, you know what they're going to do. You know that ghost is going to turn around

this corner. You know which way between left and right it will pick because you know the patterns of how it was programmed. And the same with some of the old Mario Brothers and or just a whole bunch of the older games. You could have competitive Galaga or Missile Command or Centipede. But, I think they're just going to be boring I mean, no disrespect to the game. They are fun to play, but watching a whole bunch of people who know exactly how it works at the highest player all play it in a row,
Uh-huh.
I think doesn't make for good entertainment.
And that's where I have a solution for you, Jeff.
Okay.
Have you heard the word of Tetris 99? Hear me out. Hear me out. Hear me out. We take all of those old games and we ask the publishers, cuz we've already gotten publisher support, to make them Battle Royale style games, right? And we revive the classics such that skill in the original is very important, right? If you can't tease spin in Tetris 99,

you are not getting as far as you could if you would, right? There's like a very high level of skill there. Um Uh and we just do it that way for like eliminations and then we do like a head-to-head at the end and we call that good.
Does it have a social aspect? Can you unfairly target certain players?
Uh I guess in
or four players all collude to say, "That guy's the best. We're going to make sure that we knock him out."
Only if you Yeah. Only if you could figure out who was who and they can take measures to make sure that that doesn't happen.
Not really. All the people who have agreed to could go left left left at the beginning as their secret signal and then you know who's equivalently on your team and not.
Mm. But then we run into the same problem that we run into a lot of other stuff, which is that collusion is like a weird thing in competitive sports when uh working together
not in Olympic ones because it's pretty

much always You're not playing five teams simultaneously against each other.
maybe that's a requirement. Maybe that is the requirement then that we don't have more than
That it goes head-to-head. It's always a head-to-head.
Right. Yeah. And uh Chad is pointing out that there's can be collusion in cycling. Also true.
Yes, and in running. Actually, cycling
Anything where drafting is possible. And I don't mean picking a card, I mean being behind someone so that they're taking the wind instead of you.
Right. So, but if If head-to-head, it's a lot harder. Like if it's team one versus team two in baseball, even though there's five other team or six other teams in that round, team one isn't going to sacrifice its ability to move forward but to do something to team two.
Yeah. Yeah, so I think I think we're sort of like which sort of raises the question of

whether or not we can do Olympic Battle Royale's. I do think that's a question that I want to like tackle at some point in this because I think that it ends up running into a bunch of these problems that we've discussed. Right? Um but let's let's go back to the interesting relevant uh playable thing, right? Cuz I led us off of that momentarily, unfortunately. So the interesting relevant the interesting relevant playable trio, I think is very apt, right? Because some things, weirdly, have stood the test of time on that much better than others. Mario. Super Mario Bros. has a speed run, right? Even a no glitches speed run.
Oh, hold on. Save the speed run. Let's get to speed run after this.
Well, all I'm saying is that more people would recognize and be willing to sit through a play through of Mario.
I don't know.
Than Pac-Man. Just for time.
I don't think either of those would attract a big audience.
I don't think they would, but by sheer virtue of the fact that Mario is a 10-minute game and Pac-Man is like a 90-minute game, then there is a difference there, right? So

like the popularity of characters and the history of the games aside, there is some amount of we need to make this I don't know about you. What All right, show of hands in chat. Who watches all of an Olympic biathlon race? Olympic biathlon, for those not in the know, is skiing and shooting. And it's very long. It's like cross-country skiing with like breaks to shoot targets, right?
But so is yeah, or golf.
Right, right, right, right. but
Golf survives on TV as do shooting like the other ones because they cut between all the competitors and they have them staggered.
Right. And even then, I would argue that for a current generation, it's not very um compelling even with all of the editing tricks to cut between competitors and to keep the action rolling. I would say that those things still don't meet the task, right? So
I I think there are whole sports that the most view parts are the highlights.
I think that's true.

Right? And I guess if we're aiming at something else, if we're aiming at this interesting playable relevant trio, I would say that one of the ways that we could do that is by cutting down on the number of those events. That we can keep things short, that we can keep things action-filled enough.
Aim should opt for shorter play time versus 180-minute runs.
Yes.
Like fastest, you know, fastest solution of Fallout: New Vegas is and we'll get speed runs again in a minute, but is not I think an interesting thing, but for me, honestly there would have to be a really compelling reason to use a game older than I would say 10 or 15 years old.
It's sort of an arbitrary cut off, but yeah.
I'm picking a
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
very arbitrary one.
No, no, I'm saying that we would have to establish an arbitrary cut off.
or Mario Brothers in for nostalgia value, I don't think is what the Olympics or what I want out of an Olympic video game.
Yeah, I agree.
I want high action, single or team play,

lots of drama, lots of head-to-head, lots of excitement, not people running patterns for 180 minutes to see if they can perfect a high score kind of thing.
all the dots hidden behind the garbage and then win. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah, and maybe to me that's like part of the feel of the Olympic game is that it's um high action high action, high drama, less patterns.
Right. So, I see a lot where we are almost at uh the point where I think we're going to start talking about individual games, and I see a lot of good suggestions.
So, say say those suggestions for another couple minutes.
Yeah. We we got to deal with We got to deal with
That's playable relevant. Yeah. So, I really think um like more more recent games rather than nostalgia games.
Right. is a big deal.

Uh and then
I'm just taking notes cuz I'm kind of interested to look back later.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Um One of the things, let's see. Are all of these games games where we can explicitly measure wins?
I think so far we have not suggested a game that does not include a specific way, either through score or through head-to-head competition, that directly awards a winner at the end of the competition.
Right. Well, there have been things like gymnastics and diving where and others where judges look and rate points.
Right. I I think that that we should not do those personally. Um I think that like we have We have tools to avoid that, right? Because there like it's it it has been such a thing in the Olympics for such a long time that and the Russian judge gives it a two is like a joke, right? We don't need to inject that into If we're starting over fresh, if this is the world we want to see, right? Let's not

inject that, right? We have We have computers to do that for us. Let's not do that.
Mhm. Um Do you want to talk about speed running before we get games listed or not?
I I want to do I want to do point three real quick, and then um just cuz I think that is going to come up uh and then and then we can um let's do some games, and then we'll talk
seconds. I have a cat who sounds like they have found a weird thing.
You you go I'll explain. One of the things we wanted to bring up because there was some confusion about this is that one of the concerns that got voiced a lot when we were talking about this in Twitch chat and between me and Jeff is the amateurs only clause. So the amateurs only clause is a thing that used to exist in the Olympics that barred anyone who had taken money for playing the game or sport professionally from um who was in any way a professional athlete from competing in the Olympics. And that clause has largely been erased and de-toothed and like is not a thing anymore since the '80s, but that

is not necessarily the most obvious thing to the layperson watching the Olympics. So for instance, were we to settle on League as one of our ideal dream eSports, Faker could show up. Right? That is a thing that's possible. Now, that gets into a whole other question of like um eSports athletes from and like competing in countries versus being from countries and that whole thing, but it is worth noting that there the the amateur clause is um not as not as much a thing anymore and we're going to say that for the sake of this discussion, it's just not a thing at all. Um Okay. Uh
Actually, I need the TLDR. What was the TLDR on who's allowed to be an Olympic sport athlete?
TLDR is it used to be amateurs only and thanks to a long series of political machinations from like most of the world in some form or another, we're going to say that it's not a thing for our eSports.
Cool.
Because it's functionally not a thing.

This is largely If you're interested in the history, it's fascinating, um but the real reason is that you could have professional uh the the USSR essentially had a class of professional amateurs who were being taken care of by the state but weren't directly being paid for being athletes, but they were able to train full-time, which was an unfair advantage over against other countries who were not providing that same levels of support to their amateur athletes. And so, things got that rule got ground down over time as people found exceptions and removed it. Yeah.
Um and for a lot of people it was weird for a while because you'd have like professional baseball players who were very good, but couldn't go to the Olympics. And so, when you'd see Olympic baseball with none of the best players in the world.
Right. You You'd also defeat some of the watchability, right?
Oh, yeah. You don't get the big names.
Right. If I tell a league If I tell someone who watches League eSports regularly that there's going to be a new league tournament at the Olympics

Mhm.
and they're like, "Oh my gosh, that's great. I can't wait to see Faker." and I go, "Oh, sorry about that." They're immediately out. They've immediately checked out. Like That's it. That's They're done, right? Because the person that that is the reason that they're interested in watching those broadcasts can't compete. Awful for awful for marketing. So, let's just not do that. Um okay.
Agreed.
So, let's start talking about individual games. Now that we've kind of winnowed out the kind of thing that we're talking about so we don't get like, "We should play Mario Party."
want me to do a super quick recap or no?
No, I think we're good.
Okay. Do you want to talk speed running before we get games or no? Or do you want to end with speed running?
Let's end with speed running cuz I think speed running is like a whole heap of exceptions. All right, I've seen uh uh I've seen a bunch of really good suggestions. Let's start with one that I saw from uh unknown no name over on YouTube, which is Rocket League.
Ooh.
Banger suggestion. Absolutely the kind of thing we're looking for. For those unfamiliar, Rocket League is flying car

soccer or basketball. Rocket League, I think example
It's car soccer on where the cars have all sorts of jump jets and stir and fun things.
Flying car soccer. The car's flying.
Flying makes it sound like they always fly. It is a ground-based event where the cars go aerial. Okay, but
know when the last time you watched Rocket League was, but they're in the air more than they're not. Um No, I'm kidding. But but no, that is exactly the kind of thing that I think we want, right?
I'm going to throw Counter-Strike.
Okay.
Is it a no? Okay.
Is Counter-Strike a non-starter because it's people shooting at people?
Ooh.
Which is kind
Here's my answer to that. No.
I I think I agree, but I did want to bring this up.
And the reason for that is this is video games. One of the longest-standing traditions of video games is that we run around shooting each other in a safe environment where nobody actually gets

hurt.
Agreed.
There are all sorts of war games and combat games and other games. So, while I personally am not a fan of guns, I think you running around and shooting each other in a virtual environment is a great way to do it safely.
I agree. I think I think this this will probably be a place where um the IOC gets like a little about it, but that's that is a logistics problem for not this stream. So, we're going to say that games where you shoot other people are okay for this stream, even though we recognize there's a lot of IOC politics around that.
Because that would also then eliminate games like in League of Legends a couple of the characters have guns. Just like a couple of them have spells and swords and like would having a gun eliminate
Yeah.
And also, there is shooting as an Olympic sport.
Correct, but it's not people shooting at people.
Yes.
Okay. Um I I think I think I'm definitely on

board with Counter-Strike then. Then the next question becomes, Jeff, can you defend League being approachable to a non-League player as an Olympic eSport.
Um, I think in the same way that you could approach football. Like my wife still looks at football, having not grown up in the United States, and it it is incomprehensible to her.
Okay.
Two groups of large men go smashing to each other regularly. And sometimes a ball gets thrown, and sometimes it doesn't.
Okay.
And
Sure.
Like I think the same was probably true for a lot of people watching cricket.
I think that's very true as well. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Okay, that's a good example. Then yes, yeah, I think League So, I think we get we get the the big two of the big ones.
Yeah.
Actually, those are all three really big relatively big eSports. Um
Okay, so we have a MOBA, we have a shooter. What do you call Rocket League?
Rocket League is in its own category. It's sort of like a sports game kind of ish.
Unique, okay.
I would say it's unique. Okay, let's do

some single-player ones. I saw people mention uh Rumble, which is a VR fighter um game that focuses on legally not earth bending, but it's definitely earth bending, which is kind of a cool idea. And it's kind of got like a sumo ring style vibe to it. I think that's like a good possibility.
So, what would you call that on I'm giving I'm looking for a rough genres just so to make sure we don't end up with like five MOBAs as in
say it's like a martial art. I think it's like a VR martial art kind of. Um
One of the reasons, by the way, I would approach the I like that better than virtual taekwondo
Yeah.
is I think you know, a VR fighting game that you have to play in VR is a better video game Olympic entry than a translation of a real thing into that.
Right. Okay, which then brings up the obvious follow-up, which is Beat Saber. Yes.

Mhm.
We're going to we're going to suspend all questions about copyright strikes and logistics around getting the rights to perform songs or to track songs specifically for the Olympics. We're going to suspend all of those. We're living in a dream world where all of that's possible. Beat Saber absolutely makes it in as a um as an exemplar of the rhythm game genre.
Um let's see. Beat Saber is I'm classifying by the way we have solo, head-to-head, and team.
Yeah.
With the three entries. Beat Saber is we're talking about solo. We're not talking about any
Cuz it's score, right? You could have everyone do it at the same time for score, but it's still score.
Uh and that's a rhythm game, VR rhythm.
Yep. I I think uh if we want a head-to-head rhythm game, it's got to be arcade cabinet DDR with the bar. It's got to be arcade cabinet DDR. I don't know what else it could be. If we're looking for a head-to-head rhythm game,
Mhm.
100% cuz like

that stuff is wild. If you've never watched people who are truly good at DDR play DDR on a DDR cabinet, you are missing out because that bar behind them isn't to prevent people from running into them, it's so they can support themselves while they can't support themselves with their feet. It's wild.
So, I have a question on that, Will. Does that fall into the pattern problem? In other words, and I'm not saying this to exclude it because I I think DDR would be a ton of fun to watch, but is the fact that you can in the same way with Guitar Hero, Rock Band, DDR, etc. go memorize equivalently memorize the playbook, and is this therefore a reason to bring in subjective judging? In other words, does DDR also need a set of judges saying not just how good was your score, but as a multiplier like in gymnastics, how good was your performance?
Okay, that's one option.

Okay.
In order to keep the no judging thing, my suggestion was going to be you don't get to know what the song is. You don't get to see the chart until x amount of time. You get to listen to the song and look at the chart once, right before you go, and then you got to go. And that develops a different set of skills than rote memorization, right? Cuz I
Oh, so you'd say they would put new songs in that were not currently in the game, specifically for the Olympics. And you'd have to keep all competitors in a black box cuz they'd still all need to play the same song. Correct. Because if you gave each one a different song, some might end up being inadvertently easier or harder.
Correct. And someone
on this, but I'm just the deal would take extra work because it does fall into the problem of being a pattern game like Pac-Man.
Yeah. I I think I think that that's fair. I I also think that someone brought up, by the way, that that would be a great opportunity to highlight Eurovision songs. Genius. No notes.

Um okay.
Actually, does Beat Saber fall into that problem, too?
Oh. I I would say it could. Again, same solution. We do like a new song with a new chart for that specifically. Right? Like that is always going to be a problem with rhythm games, but it's also always a problem with um races in like F1, right? That's already a problem in that knowing familiarity with the course is a thing. Right?
I think familiarity with the course is okay, especially if you have multiplayer. Because as soon as you throw in multiplayer, like you're all Anybody who plays basketball, baseball, soccer, rugby, etc. is familiar with the course. Volleyball, it's the other players, like the course is just the course. The playing field is just a playing field.
Yeah.
It's what the other players do on it that makes it the sport.
Yeah. I think that's fair.

Um
Let's see. What What other soul
Street Fighter. Okay, so let's see. I'm just Right now some of the most popular games in the Oh, we don't have a Let's see. Well, League of Legends, Dota 2, Valorant, Counter-Strike, Overwatch. We don't yet have two of the most popular three. Okay, we've got a mobile, we've got an FPS. That's two of the five most popular genres currently
Right.
for esports games. We don't have a fighting game yet.
Tekken.
kind of do with Rumble.
Kind of do with Rumble. I'm going to say the head-to-head fighting game of choice is Tekken.
Mhm. Because Tekken and Street Fighter both have huge followings.
I'm going to say that Tekken
Tekken and Mortal Kombat, but
I I I think that Tekken has uh a better chance of succeeding and I also think that uh the perception of Tekken is as a incredibly like absurdly high

skill ceiling game, which I think fits our criteria.
Mhm. Let's see. What is
Yeah, people are talking about Street Fighter.
Street Fighter though is more recognizable and popular. Like, if you were going to take a hundred random people whether they played games or not and survey them on Because Street Fighter's had movies, it's been in honestly, it's I think Street Fighter is a more popular game. Tekken may be a better or have a higher bar on the fighting.
Yes. And Street Fighter 2
might argue Street Fighter just because of its cultural familiarity.
Right. And Street Fighter 2's out, y'all, cuz we said current games. We We would want like the current version. We're not going back a version, right?
Same with the current version of Tekken.
Yeah. It would need to be current version Tekken and current version of Street Fighter. We're not going back back. Virtual Fighter is also good. Yeah, something in like the uh King of Fighters is another one. But something in that range, right? Something in that not

directly linked to an external IP, is its own IP, um has a very high technical skill.
Skullgirls.
Yeah, right.
Like if if I was having to make the decision, like running an Olympic committee, I would pick Street Fighter every time.
Okay.
Because I would be wanting to bring in a game that the more the most people knew about and or played as a kid and therefore could would come to watch to watch high-level play.
I think understanding why someone wins in Tekken might be hard. You understand the method by you understand the reason that they won. They reduced their enemies' HP to zero while maintaining HP themselves. Understanding why they were able to do that might be hard for Tekken versus like big flashy combos in Street Fighter.
Mhm.
Right? Like and the Daigo Parry is so legendary, right? That like that helps.
Mhm.
Even though you can Daigo Parry super easily now cuz they changed how blocking works. Anyway, um
Man,

that's one of those things that wouldn't have been a fun to have been there.
Yeah. Oh, for sure. It is it is among the most legendary and then the crowd went wild moments in all of esports history.
Yeah.
Like it's Evo moment 42, I think. But it's also just called the Daigo Parry in which a competitor named Daigo full parried Chun-Li's hummingbird kick and then returned with his own ultimate to win on magic pixels levels of HP and it is
Yeah.
For those unfamiliar with the hummingbird kick, he basically had one hit point and if you block if you
Yeah.
Parry, you take a hit point of damage, but if you do a special way of blocking, you don't. And there's like 20 or 30 attacks involved in that combo that yet yeah.
Yeah, it's it's it's very it's
say it's like one of the mini faker moments, but there have been too many of them.
Yeah. Uh okay, if we eliminate all of the faker moments that involve the words shurima shuffle, how many faker moments are left?
Oh, still there's a couple. Yeah, but

yes. He some of his Zed play
Yeah.
is um
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Anyway, um let's not go let's not go too far down that
So for fighting fighting is a hard one.
Yeah, it is because like people want to see uh smash. Smash doesn't work for a bunch of reasons. Number one is that the removal of a core gameplay feature of smash in order to make smash competitive doesn't really work well with this, right? Because it's you're playing it in a way that it's not intended to be played and we kind of brought that up towards the beginning that we want like we said you want you to be able to pick the way you're playing from mode select and not need to go in and do an excessive amount of customization. So like you got to go in and do like no items only four stock on only these maps in their omega forms or not in their omega forms or and these characters are banned and whatever. And like that is a problem.
smash isn't as interesting to watch one on one because it was made to be

a
Yeah.
party game.
Yeah, and you can't do any of the older smashes for because they're not the most current in the series. And wave dashing is atrocious. Also wobbling. How do you going to deal with wobbling? You can't. It's fine. Um so uh let's see.
So fighting I think is the only one we haven't just straight out said yes, this.
Yeah.
Um who just brought up
Sirius brought up RTS's Age of Empires II or Starcraft. So it has to be the most current one. So it would be Starcraft II. I I'm
I I say it doesn't have to be the most most current, but
I played Starcraft when I was in high school, Jeff.
I know.
Uh I guess Yeah.
I I'd I'd say that should be within 10 or 15 years. I think Actually, here's I guess what we should say. I think it should be a game that is currently available to easily play.
I think that's better.

Because most people could go play Pac-Man if they hunted it down, but it's Yeah, easy easy to play is tricky.
Yeah. I don't think it's C&C. I don't think I think it if it if we're including an RTS, it's either it has to be Starcraft. I don't think there's another viable RTS to include if we're going to include an RTS. Um also uh Sora asks about wobbling. Wobbling is a thing with Ice Climbers and it's stupid. Uh essentially, you can infinitely grab someone uh and there's if done correctly
infinite loop.
You cannot break out of it. It is awful. It is one of the problems with Like you have to amend around it, right? Like either competitions ban Ice Climbers or there are like very arcane rules on what counts as wobbling.
Don't worry, we're going back to human judge.
Right, ban Ice Climbers. It's easier, right?
Starcraft or Starcraft II.

Yep. Um
Let's see. So, we got that. Um so, we we added fighting game. Um
How do we do card
are one of the most watched esports.
Yeah.
What were you about to say? I'm sorry.
going to say card games.
Okay.
Um I'm going to go I'm going to go in a very unexpected direction.
Okay.
I don't think any card game is good for this.
Hm.
And here's why. They're all way over the complexity horizon in a way that the others aren't because it's incredibly cerebral in the same way that chess is, but with pieces that don't necessarily make sense. For instance, Magic has the layers and there have been cards in recent printings that involve layer interactions and it's not intuitive. Right? And that's bad. And Hearthstone involves a bucketload of RNG and creating cards out of nothing and that's not easy to watch. Um and those

are the two that I would say are the most popular right now.
it would either be Hearthstone or Magic. Like I don't think there's any other
And I don't think
you're talking Olympic level And it's hard for me because both of those, you know, going back to like we're organizing the Olympics.
Yeah.
Both of those are big name draws. They are so familiar to so many people.
Yeah.
And such a valuable Okay, what do you got?
I I'm going with the bold suggestion.
Oh.
What about poker? Okay, so This is very interesting. Competitive poker where you're not betting money, but you're betting chips
Mhm.
is a fascinating absolutely fascinating thing. It does suffer some of the problem with like watching paint dry, but it is really good for helping players understand because you can show like the

overlays do so much work in making poker approachable right quickly.
23% chance of a win.
Right. There's a 33% chance that this person wins and there is highly strategic. Now, there will still be moments where somebody shoves all in with, you know,
Mhm.
I'm trying to think of like the worst possible outcome, right? You go all in with pocket kings and get dumped by pocket aces or you go all in with pocket aces and the third king flips and now you're just out of luck.
And I wonder does the random element of it and then we also have there is some level of social and collusion that is possible in poker.
Yeah, I think that those are hard. I I I agree with all of that. I'm just I want to I think it does merit consideration cuz it is a highly televised game that has high stakes and does have a lot of the other things we talked about for esports, right?
Yeah. There's also the association with gambling.

Yeah.
Like poker is a very viable. My worry for poker is there is a heavy RNG element in it. Like what you draw and you know, you can be playing equivalently a perfect game and still lose.
Sure.
Um combined with the fact that there is social and collusion
makes it hard.
Mhm.
Yeah.
Maybe there are like I could easily see a case for magic or Hearthstone.
But it has to be the digital version of magic, by the way.
Yeah, oh yes.
That that's like a that's like a beginning. It has to be arena cuz otherwise it's unwatchable. Like just straight out unwatchable.
Mhm.
Um
And too slow.
Yeah, too slow, uh unwatchable. Yeah.
So do we think any card game qualifies?
I don't think so.

Um Honestly brought up a Civ game. No, Civ is over the um Civ is over what we're calling the complexity horizon. You can't watch Civ unless you play Civ.
Effectively. The other one too is how do you judge a winner?
Right.
In Civ.
Unless you put everybody in the same game, in which case we get into the collusion problem that we've been addressing before,
Right. I mean, you Well, you could seed it. You could say, "Okay, everybody in this round, here's the seed we're playing on. You all start at the same time on your own computer, but it's also how do you then judge a winner?
Right. Because part of the problem, too, is that this is like a weird international politics thing. Either everyone has to play the same civilization,
Mhm.
or something has to give because if you're playing, say I'm playing England, and England is in everyone else's game and is wrecking them because of where England is positioned in the seed, if

I'm not playing England, then I've added a confounding factor to the fairness of it, like in the best case scenario, right?
And one of the problems with the score in Civilization, having played a little bit of Civilization, is that the score is based on how many things, and in some cases how big your empire is, how many wonders you've done, how many capitals you own, and so what it encourages is longer games.
Right. And we're already running into that.
Like, if I finish a game in 200 turns and win, I my score will never be as high as if I did it in 400 turns. Excuse me. Almost never, and often will be significantly less than if I stretched it out to take 400 turns.
Yeah.
And so what you would end up for that game is people dragging it on for as long as they were allowed to eke out the highest score, and they would no longer be playing competitively against either other players, which might get to collusion, or the computer, they would

be optimizing for score.
And that's not right.
Which, honestly, is just going to make it more like I love Civ.
Yeah.
But I think it would take a it would be a hard game to put in.
Yeah.
But it's an interesting I as a Civ lover, that'd be fun.
Yeah. Okay.
Um I'm looking at the time. I think we I think we've gotten most of these. There's like a question about Rogue likes and I think that that is a big difficult thing to tackle. I'm going to say seated Rogue likes are possible, but I don't think any currently available Rogue like fits because while they're popular in Indie spaces, they're all too Indie. To like really make an impact in a broader market.
Um Is there a MOBA hitting that fifth popular genre of current like what people like to watch currently in e-sports?
I already put League in.
Is there not MOBA or Battle Royale? Sorry.
So there's like the the logical answer

for getting people in.
Mhm.
And I think it has to be Fortnite. And I hate that it has to be Fortnite, but it has to be Fortnite. And that's kind of a problem because I don't think Fortnite's a good Olympic e-sport, but I also think that this gets zero off the ground without Fortnite.
Yeah.
Which is kind of awful, but I think it is I also genuinely think of all the Battle Royales out there, it's probably the best right now. I don't really like it, but I don't I also don't know that like any of the other Battle Royales really hold up against Fortnite.
Yeah, it's Again, as in all as somebody putting together it's like we're on the we're putting together the Olympic list of 10. I think if Fortnite isn't on there, it's people are going to look at the list and be like cool, where's my thing?

Right. And I I'm kind of with Barry on this, right? Um I'm I'm very with Barry on this because the the best way to play ranked or competitive Battle Royales is not to fight. It's to rat. It is 100% to rat until and to only take fights in which you are 100% certain that you have an overwhelming and decisive advantage and that you will not be third-partied. That is the That is the almost always tactical tactically correct way to play Battle Royales and it does not make for good viewing. And they've tried repeatedly to get them to get people to fight, but the problem is that the tactical decision to not fight remains the best one and no Battle Royales really tackled that well.
Yeah, it It's a tricky one. The interesting thing though would be Will on this. If you got some of the best people in the world and they all had that strategy, what does that turn the game into?
The same thing that competitive Fortnite

turns into, which is it gets down to the final circle and people begin fighting as the final circle closes and not before. And they only do it when they absolutely have to break cover.
I wonder if top being to uh like I wonder if Epic would end up making a the Olympic version of that where it's like 5-minute matches, this starts with this half
And it uh by the way, uh Fortnite players everywhere will hate this. It has to be no build.
Mhm.
Building in Fortnite is unwatchable to anyone who doesn't play Fortnite. So, um uh I'm looking for the
Any other games that made the list?
I don't think so right now. Um
Let's see. So, we have um the only solo game currently is Beat Saber.
Yeah.
Head-to-head, we have arcade cabinet DDR, Rumble VR martial arts, fighting is probably Street Fighter, um RTS is probably StarCraft, no card game quite made it, Battle Royale of Fortnite, team games of Rocket

League, Counter-Strike, and League of Legends. Um
Yeah. And then that gets us to the big final question. Okay. What do we do about speed running? And here's the problem. Is that speed running is very very lumpy. By that I mean individual leaderboards are run by individual communities for individual games. And speed running as a whole is giant. And speed running for individual games is specific. And so we run into this really And skill in speed running is often game specific and earned over years, right?
Right.
So
Actually, I would say speed running is almost always game specific on skill. You know, if you're a Mirror's Edge speed runner And to me part of what I think reason speed running is not Olympic style is it falls into the Pac-Man pattern problem.

The optimal thing for speed running is learning the patterns. And then just see, you know, it's like playing Pac-Man.
Right. Well, there are there are ways that you can make it approachable. You can set an upper end limit on the speed run and have players do it live for score or live for, you know, uh it's a 5-minute speed run, run your best five, highest and lowest get dropped and you sum the other three, that's your score. Um and that is a way to do it that is approachable, but I will agree that it is heavily game dependent and is therefore like really difficult because we don't have a game in the public consciousness right now that has an in-game like that does speed running well and is popular enough to make sense to do this, right? Like And And um I see people mentioning like Merith is mentioning um like MMO dungeons. No, straight out. Uh if if you're not um

Watch an MMO end game raid for an MMO that you don't play? Incomprehensible. It's so far over the complexity horizon. I can't watch wild end game raids and track anything. And I know some wild raiders who can't watch 14 end game raids and track anything. So, that runs into the same complexity problem. And those are people, by the way, who are skilled in a similar competing game, right? Not to speak of people who are completely not read in at all, right? So, I think I As much as I would like speed running to be here, I think that ultimately speed running fails because no one speed running game is large enough. Not even Mario 64. I see you in the comments already.
And honestly, I would also say speed running is niche. Like the the the the quantity of people who play video games, but watch speed running, I would say is very, very low.
Yeah.
And for the people who like it, it's great. It's very active communities.

It's fun things to watch. How do we figure out how to beat this game in the most optimal way? But almost all of these are pattern memorization, working with older games, um and honestly solo, and realistically going to be boring to watch because watching 40 say Mirror's Edge, if I'm just going to pick one, was decided. 40 people all trying to do the best Mirror's Edge thing is going to look almost identical for all of them.
Yeah.
Um Will, I want to revisit our list because Where'd that go? Um And again, I like speed running. I just don't think it's an Olympic
Yeah.
thing. Um Somebody commented, and it must have scrolled off, "I can't believe Tetris didn't make the list." What do you think, Will, about going back to the list for Tetris 99?
Well, so it can't be 99 cuz of collusion. So, it has to be head-to-head Tetris.
Okay.
And head-to-head Tetris I think works. I

think solo Tetris, the problem is we run into the
It's patterns to Well, no, it's a patterns is the wrong But
It runs into wrote, right? It becomes a uh it becomes the same thing over and over again. I think head-to-head Tetris works. I think head-to-head Tetris works as a possible idea. Um Also, yes. And I
I'm putting that in the category of puzzle, in the same way that like Battle Royale, card, RTS, Rumble. A A competitive puzzle game is an interesting addition to kind of this lineup.
Yeah. Um uh Also, this is true, XE. I agree. That um it would be unhealthy for the speedrunning scene as it currently exists to introduce it to the Olympics. It would be unfair to speedrunning
Yeah.
to bring the Olympics into speedrunning. Let's let the speedrunning scene be weird and wonderful in its own special thing, and we won't mess it up.
One more reason on top of that.

I think speedrunning is fundamentally anti-video game on the competitive concept, because part of speedrunning is looking for hacks, bugs, or basically exploits that were left into the game, and using those to make the fastest run.
There are so many
I mean, that that is for For any percent, any major glitches, yes. But there are also plenty of games where people have eschewed that. There are actually two entirely different viewpoints, right? One of them that gets the fastest time is often the one that you've espoused there, but there is a whole other school of thought that is glitches don't that is really just about executing that video game to the best of its ability without any glitches. And that has That is proven for like every game I'm aware of that has moved from like So, for instance, Mario 64 has a zero star, one star, uh uh uh

I I forget There's a 70 star, 120 star, and there's one in the middle there. That's like minimum star. Um and it's Like all of those exist because all of those imply a different number of glitches, right? And by the way, the difference between zero and one star is whether or not you fail a trick. There's a trick that lets you skip a level, and if you fail that trick, you have to do the level, which means you have to get a star. So, all one star Most one star runs are failed zero star runs, which is kind of funny. Um but that does exist, right? Like I'm not saying that it
But that leads us back to the arbitrariness again of what you're talking about for Super Smash Brothers. Like, okay, no Ice Climbers, no this, no this.
I agree. I 100% agree. I'm also just saying that like that is a like it's not all one or the other, and that speedrunning still shouldn't be excluded included for the reasons we've talked about, but that it is a broad and weird group of things.
Yeah. And again, I think it's great, but I also don't think it Yeah. It isn't an Olympic style thing.

Yep. Yep. Yep. Yep.
It is a competitive and explor- explorat- exploratory style thing.
Yeah. Okay. I think that is a good talk. That's a good discussion. Chat, thank you all so much for being here
Yeah.
both on Twitch and on YouTube. Comments, if you haven't already, leave me a comment. What is What game do you think should be
What did we miss?
Yeah, what did we miss? What's the Olympic esport game that like we just totally forgot about for this cuz I don't know if you noticed, but we got real distracted by chat, and I'm sure we forgotten something. So, leave that in the comments below. Also of note, next week is American Thanksgiving. There will be no stream because Jeff and I will both be off celebrating with our respective families. We should return the week after that.
Yes.
I think we're back the
Short of weirdness, we'll be back the week after.
Short of weirdness, we'll be back the week after. So, we hope that you all have a wonderful time with your families if you're celebrating. Otherwise, we hope you have a good week next week.
Be safe. Travel safe.
Yep. Also, no breakfast next week for different reasons, but no breakfast next

week either. There are no talk shows on YouTube next week at all. So, we'll see you all the week after next. I think that is everything for today. Thank you all so very much for coming. We appreciate each and every one of you for the excellent discussion, which means that all that's left is for Jeff to say bye to the people.
Bye to the people. Thanks, everybody.
Yep.