Movement compression, sports and eSports

AbstractIn this paper I argue for the usefulness of the concept of ‘movement compression’ for understanding sport and games, and particularly the differences between traditional sport and eSport (as currently practised). I suggest that movement compression allows us to distinguish between different activities in terms of how movement quality (in the sense of the qualities the movement possesses, rather than that the movement is of ‘high quality’) affects outcome. While it applies widely, this concept can in particular help us to understand the persistent idea that eSports are in some key way distinct from traditional sports.Keywords: movement compressionsporteSporte-sportsphysical movement AcknowledgmentsI would like to thank Don Oxtoby for his comments on an early draft of this paper, and Veli-Matti Karhulahti and an anonymous reviewer for their helpful feedback.Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.Notes1 To a large extent I resist the idea that competitive games of any kind have a required level of skill ‘built in’ to them. Instead, the skill level required by any kind of game is dependent on the relative skill levels of the opponent (Hemmingsen, Citation2023).2 I recognise, of course, that shooting isn’t a wholly uncontroversial case. However, it is an Olympic sport, mostly uncontentiously. By contrast, I am absolutely certain that still now the idea of including eSports in the Olympics would be highly contentious.3 Of course, haptic technology in controllers goes back a long way. Fonz (Sega, Citation1976) was the first game to incorporate haptic feedback, with a vibrating steering wheel; and haptic feedback became a standard feature in console controllers from 1997 on, with Nintendo’s RumblePack for N64 leading the way (Khurs, Citation2017). More recently, the Playstation 5’s DualSense controller advertises itself as providing highly precise haptic feedback, and arguably leads the pack currently. However, I think it’s fair to say that this kind of tactile feedback doesn’t come close to approaching the veracity of the audio or visual feedback in most games. For instance, Ekdahl and Ravn point out that ‘When a player reloads a weapon, no tactile feedback is provided; if a player runs into a wall, no physical resistance is felt (although one is seen); if a player is damaged, no physical pain is felt; et cetera’ (2018, p. 7).4 Importantly, I am not saying here that I think Robo-Football is the same as football: they are clearly different games. The issue is instead about categorisation: is Robo-Football a sport, or an eSport?5 By ‘action’ I mean ‘game action;’ that is, actions that are intended to produce some kind of effect on the game. So, a soccer defender scratching their nose as they move up the field as their forwards take the ball towards the opposing goal may be an action, but not the kind I’m interested in here.6 PGA Tour 2K21 also has the option of using motion sensor controls, but here I’m focusing on play with an ordinary controller for purposes of illustration.7 The most interesting cases, to my mind, will arise from future games in which the movement compression is so low that is exceeds human beings’ ability to control their movements, i.e., even top players find their movements represented with as much sensitivity and their skill allows. In such cases, the movement compression has become so negligible that sports and eSports have ceased to be meaningfully distinct.