There are only three sports: bullfighting, motor racing, and mountaineering; all the rest are merely games
I don't agree on the object-level of the quote, but the distinction between sports and games is something I've been thinking about for a while.
I've always felt an aesthetic attraction to sports that feel more real, for lack of a better word. Sports that contain a gamified essence of fundamental human activities. Running, fighting, climbing, throwing, cooperating, etc.
Under this aesthetic preference, things like ice hockey or tennis feel very contrived. Don't get me wrong — ice hockey and tennis are very fun — both as a player and a spectator — but they feel more like a game than something like wrestling, running, etc.
Thinking more about this recently, I think a slightly more general question to ask is "to what extent are the skills the sport encourages applicable to activities outside this sport, and what is the relative importance of those skills within the sport?"
The latter question gets at the idea that a sport like tennis encourages good cardio, running, some amount of strength — but those are all secondary to your tennis-specific hitting technique that doesn't carry over to any real-life endeavor.
What do I mean by real-life endeavor? Javelin throwing probably translates pretty well to hunting woolly mammoths. But we don't hunt woolly mammoths anymore.
Nonetheless, I think our evolutionary history tracks pretty well with the kinds of things I find aesthetic in sporting activities. It's in the DNA, so to speak. Ice hockey is not in the DNA.
Ice hockey has plenty of elements that are in the DNA — team cooperation, general athleticism, fighting, etc. But it also has a lot of hockey-specific game techniques.
Sports like running have the highest overlap with real life, and the fewest game techniques. Running still has a few — e.g. the starting pose and takeoff are game-specific. You don't see any tribesmen chasing down gazelle in the Serengeti waiting for the starting pistol. But the bulk of the sport translates. Just run really fast, or at a good pace, whatever.
MMA is pretty good. It has a few gamified elements. There aren't rounds or illegal moves in a real caveman fight. Rounds are added so the athletes can refresh and keep the fight interesting for the crowd. Illegal moves exist so athletes can make a career out of it and not get debilitated.
All other combat sports (wrestling, judo, boxing, etc) can all be judged relative to MMA. They're all inferior by this aesthetic criteria, but by how much? And in what ways? How could they be improved?
Most of these sub-disciplines are either 100% striking or 100% grappling. The lack of the takedown threat makes the striking arts unrealistic, and the lack of getting punched in the face makes the grappling arts unrealistic. Both are approximately equally unrealistic in my eyes.
But I think you could actually make a few minor rule-changes to completely change the sports for the better without fundamentally changing their character.
Boxing — Takedowns are legal and worth a lot of points, but fighters are stood back up immediately to resume the fight. Initiating a clinch without going for an immediate takedown is a penalty. Extended standup grappling is broken up by the ref. Just adding the threat of the takedown completely changes the game and makes the striking immediately more similar to MMA / reality.
Grappling — Being on top of your opponent and raising one arm into the air for N seconds is worth points to simulate "I could be punching you right now". This gains points but gives the opponent more opportunity to escape your reduced control. Positions like half-guard bottom in BJJ are no longer good positions, because your opponent can trivially score points with simulated strikes.
MMA — Lifting your opponent to chest height and putting them back down is worth a ton of points. In a real-life fight, you would have slammed them into the nearest rock and caused a lot of damage. Same rule can apply to boxing or grappling.
So people who just want to punch and don't want to learn how to do submissions can still box. And people who don't want to get hit in the face can still do wrestling. But a few rule tweaks would make their subset of fighting a much more realistic subset.
A few sports start pretty sporty, but get increasingly game-y as people practice them only for regulated competition.
An example is Brazilian Jiu Jitsu. It's a grappling art that descends from Judo. As such, it's practiced in the Gi (the traditional thick kimono outfit used in Karate and other martial arts).
The Gi is useful for grappling arts, because the thick cotton can be gripped without tearing, so you can do a lot of practice in it without damage. Learning to grapple by gripping fabric is actually really applicable to reality, because people wear clothes most of the time. The actual oriental style of the Gi is orthogonal. It could be done in canvas T-shirts and denim jeans just as effectively.
But competitive BJJ athletes realized you could wrap the ends of the Gi jacket around limbs to do certain attacks.
In my aesthetic view, this is a step too far, because the vast, vast majority of human clothes don't permit this. The sport was not "designed" with this in mind. The founder of Judo looks down from heaven on these moves and shakes his head. This is not what the martial art is about. But any set of rules will be exploited by people who care more about Game than Sport.
Another example is fencing. With obvious origins in real sword combat, duels, etc, modern sport fencing continues to depart from its more realistic ancestor.
In addition to adding rules about footwork, who has right of way, and more, modern foils are flexible enough to be whipped around to hit otherwise inaccessible areas like the back.
I feel like the Wikipedia article captures my thoughts pretty well:
This has been regarded by some fencers as an unacceptable departure from the tradition of realistic combat, where only rigid blades would be used, while others feel that the flick adds to the variety of possible attacks and targets, thereby expanding the game of foil.
I actually was lucky enough to recently talk to a national fencing champion and asked him about this. He was personally in favor of it, comparing it to a slam dunk in basketball. I absolutely see his point — it's fun, entertaining, and legitimately demands a lot of skill!
But at the same time, I find it really aesthetically unsatisfying on the Sport vs Game spectrum. It's very Game to me.
Judo itself has also undergone a recent bout of gamification. In 2010, the governing body of sport judo banned all grabbing of the legs. Allowing leg grabs encourages athletes to take a lower stance which reduces the effectiveness of the throws that judo is well-known for, so they simply banned leg grabs to give preference to the throws.
This change makes judo a lot more entertaining, but less realistic as an actual combat art. That's a common theme.
I'm interested in developing new sports that try to max out on both the sport and game axes. Highly applicable to reality, but also fun and entertaining. I think we could do it if we put our minds to it.
I'm also interested particularly in kids sports. Most kids sports are just simplified or shrunken versions of teenager and adult sports.
But is it possible to make a sport that is specifically designed to make kids develop into better people? Better leaders? Better followers? Better teammates? Our current set of sports do this, but I don't think they're close to optimal. We can do better.
Let me know if you have any great ideas!