"ESPN boss claims e-sports are 'not a sport'"

I agree with this guy that "e-sports" are not really sports, in the same sense that chess and checkers are not sports[1]. There are some dudes (or at least one dude posting in all of the threads) down in the comments under that article who vociferously disagree, though. Among other things, they claim that, as with sports, these "e-sports" "athletes" spend years training their skills, and that, in part, justifies calling "e-sports" sports. Well, should guys like Garry Kasparov and Bobby Fischer also be considered "athletes"? Does that make Deep Blue one of the top "athletes" in the world, then? I don't see guys like this as being "athletes" playing "sports" anymore than I do those chess players.

[1] - Though, admittedly, many even disagree with the idea of chess and checkers not being sports. For me, at least, any "sport" that requires you to sit on your ass all day is simply not a sport. Competition alone does not a sport make, in my eyes. If that were the case, then pretty much any competitive multiplayer (video) game would be a sport. Are Tennis for Two or Pong sports? Are Ultima Online or World of Warcraft or any other MMO game considered to be sports? Are Mario Bros. or Mario Kart or Mario Party or Super Smash Bros. sports? (There isn't even agreement as to whether Smash counts as a fighting game, much less a sport.) Is Madden a sport? Are WWE games sports? (Hell, many people don't consider actual pro wrestling itself to be a sport, let alone video games about it.) What about Wii Sports? It has "sports" right there in the name and at least requires you to stand up and be physically active to play it. Are the mini-games in that considered to be sports, especially the ones like boxing and tennis that can be played competitively against other people? What about any video game in which players compete for highest score, whether said games themselves are actually multiplayer or not? Are Monopoly or Magic: The Gathering sports? Are Dungeons & Dragons or Vampire: The Masquerade/The Requiem or Shadowrun (or the LARPing thereof, which requires actual physical activity compared to playing LoL or Dota or whatever) sports? Are poker or bridge sports? I would say that none of these things are truly sports, even if some of them do indeed require physical activity. Of course, that's just my opinion on the matter, obviously.

"The best CS:GO tips I've received from angry teammates"

Uh huh, and all of those are great examples of one of the several reasons why I have so very rarely played any multiplayer video games for years now, outside of the occasional Minecraft (though it's been months since I've played even that) or Star Trek Online (which I played solo anyway, and which I also haven't played for almost three months now, so that doesn't really count either). People just take this kind of shit way too damn seriously and get way too buttmad if you don't play it the "right" way for it to be any fun, at least for me.

"Sims 4 developer warns there won't be a Sims 5 if this one doesn't sell"

Oh shit, I guess I'd better run out and buy The Sims 4 right now! *eye roll*

How about you fuck off with your flaccid, none-too-subtle threats, EA. If anything, this makes me even less inclined to buy The Sims 4 than the piddling amount of inclination I was already at. Also, if The Sims 4 continues being the steaming pile that it apparently is at present (I don't know, myself, as I still haven't played it, but I've heard that it's a fairly big step backwards from the vanilla version of The Sims 3, even ignoring bugs and such, which doesn't make me very enthusiastic to play it any time soon), then I won't much miss The Sims 5 if it is never made. In any case, it's not like they won't end up making The Sims 5 anyway. The previous games sucking ass hasn't stopped them from making new Command & Conquer[1] or Dragon Age games, has it? So then, why should it matter for The Sims? Then again, those games still sold well (if not necessarily as well as the actually good games in those series), I guess, even despite sucking ass, so who knows? Most gamers these days seem to have their lips surgically grafted to the sewer pipe as it is, so I guess EA will probably have nothing to worry about with sales of The Sims 4. ¬_¬

[1] - Wikipedia says it was cancelled, but EA has said that they're going to keep at it. Maybe it won't be exactly the same game (or so we can hope), but they're still at least planning to continue making Command & Conquer games, anyway.