Why Do Some Sports Vanish and Some Sports Survive? | Hacker News Reader

Why Do Some Sports Vanish and Some Sports Survive?

nautil.us

40 pointsprostoalex40 comments

What I find interesting is that the person who would design the game dynamics for a new sport and the game dynamics for a new video game, like call of duty, essentially have the same job description. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_design

What's even more interesting is how deep game design actually goes in human culture/history. Anything competitive between humans could potentially be modeled as a game. You could even think about war as a game (there are rules, teams). I could imagine ancient humans saw hunting as a game. Play is also super important for the proper development of children.

As for why some sports/games survive while others fail, I'd argue that it's the same reason anything designed lasts the test of time, gets replaced, or becomes obsolete

If you are interested in taking this idea further, all life is game, I'd recommend the philosophy book 'finite and infinite games'. Can be applied to all kinds of aspects of human life, eg a startup is a game played by founders who win with a successful exit.

With this philosophy text, Carse demonstrates a way of looking at actions in life as being a part of at least two types of what he describes as "games", finite and infinite. Both games are played within rules, as agreed upon by the participants; however, the meaning of the rules is different for the two types of games. The book stresses a non-serious (or "playful") view of life on the part of "players", referring to their choices as "moves", and societal constructs and mores as "rules" and "boundaries".

In short, a finite game is played with the purpose of winning (thus ending the game), while an infinite game is played with the purpose of continuing the play.

When thinking about games I have a feeling that it channels our survival / killing instincts into symbolic versions to gather the benefits (new strategies, pleasure, bonding, physical improvements).

I don't think all life is a game in this way; with a game we hold ourselves to the rules for their own sake - the pleasure we get from play is that of acting within the sandbox we've defined. It is a sketch of life, a model, a way to explore an idea. In the context of a game we might be adversaries, but I am intimately aware of the boundary, and that we are at play - our adversarial relationship is not "real". We often say, "It's just a game", and the just is crucial to the difference.

This is different from social mores, which are boundaries we respect because transgression has consequences we care about. There are real ends; it's NOT just a game. There is no space or context beyond what happens in life, as there is in a game (taking place within the shell of the true life).

The purpose of play, and playing games, is to prepare us for the actual contests with outcomes that we are invested in.

Of course we might USE play, and games, as tools in the course of achieving real ends (like the Olympics as a goal for furthering peace), but this is different from those ends (peace) being a game in themselves.

> This is different from social mores, which are boundaries we respect because transgression has consequences we care about. There are real ends; it's NOT just a game.

This just means the games can nest. In the innermost game, you treat social mores as rules to follow and try to excel within them.

But there is a surrounding meta-game where you weigh the pros and cons of transgressing the mores and consequences that leads to. In that game, the mores are no longer rules and transgressing is now a move.

Around that, yet another game where the moves are putting effort into changing social rules. And so on.

Except they don't nest. There is no boundary between the social mores 'game' and the transgression 'game', no point where the consequences are contained and the outcome doesn't matter. You're declaring them to be a 'game' because i am evaluating outcomes, but they aren't the same - the results continue to matter to my life.

Winning a large chess tournament with a significant cash prize would also matter to the rest of your life, but that doesn't mean that chess is not a game.

No, it means 'winning a large amount of money' is not a game. The chess doesn't matter in this scenario.

Why would you do that? It sounds very schizophrenic to me to make one self have such a distance to normal social and emotional life that one represent it to one self as a game. To treat a social overstep as a rule break instead of understanding emphatically that you have caused hurt i would consider schizophrenic / autism.

I think it is much more healthy, in a mental health way, to not re-present life and instead experience it directly.

For what it's worth, I'm not arguing that one should look at their life entirely this dispassionately. Just that their are multiple levels that we operate in where we deal with rules and consequences.

I don't mean "game" in the sense of "doesn't matter what happens". I mean it in the sense of "players interacting within a rule set".

Note that empathy and the feelings of others are hugely important parts of all of the games we play in life. An anecdote: my youngest daughter is one of the sweetest most naturally empathic people I know. She was playing Candyland with her older sister and won twice in a row. This got her sister mad because she wants nothing more to win. But my youngest daughter wasn't trying to win—Candyland is a pure chance game—and what she really wanted was for everyone to have fun. So she told her sister to play again and that she promised to let her win this time. She was trying to play the metagame of maximizing everyone's fun.

I don't think the article answers the question it presents.

The only answer it seems to provide is "When cultures disappear, their sports disappear with them."

I think the answer to the question in the title would also answer a lot of similar questions:

"Why do some car makers vanish and some survive?"

"Why do some board games vanish and some survive?"

"Why do some X vanish and some survive?"

> I don't think the article answers the question it presents.

You sure? I didn't need to read further than this quote to answer "Why do sports die?":

  "In areas adjacent to their temples, young men engaged in 
  a ball game, known as ōllamaliztli, that concluded with 
  the bloody sacrifice of one of the players upon the temple’s 
  altar. Whether the sacrificed player was a winner or a loser 
  we shall never know."

I wouldn't try out for that sport ;-).

Money. If the organization that governs your sport doesn't lobby the right people, your sport will stop getting coverage. Without coverage you generate no money. Read: wrestling and the olympics.

I agree that money plays a part, but in terms of wrestling, it'll still do fine without the Olympics because of MMA. And as MMA becomes more mainstream, it will be more influential than a sporting event that's broadcasted once every four years.

Also, high school wrestling enrollment has been holding steady.

http://www.nwcaonline.com/nwcawebsite/savingwrestlinghome/fa... (click on the male participation pdf)

Lobby all you want, but if people don't like to watch the game or participate in it, lobbying won't help it stay alive.

In that sense, money is just a proxy for interest.

I think wrestling is back on? But the broadcasts definitely should be improved. First they should hire someone like Joe Rogan for over-the-top commentary. If the problem is too many competitors, then start merging weight classes. There are definitely potential fans around for entertaining combat sports.

>> If the organization that governs your sport doesn't lobby the right people, your sport will stop getting coverage. Without coverage you generate no money.

Likewise if both of these things happen (getting money and coverage) there is still a huge chance nobody watches and you still lose

Read:

- US Soccer (NASL and the MLS)

- The NHL

- The X-Games

MLS has been doing rather well. Attendance has been increasing steadily for the past decade[1].

The NHL, while certainly not as popular as the NFL or MLB, is pretty consistent as far as attendance numbers go, comparable to the NBA [2]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Major_League_Soccer_attendance...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Major_League_Soccer_attendance...

Soccer and hockey have strong, motivated fan bases. They lack a great business model for TV.

Football is fucked long term. Liability is going to shut down the recruitment funnel, and the implosion of TV revenues will wipe out the big money.

Soccer lacks a great business model for TV? Someone'd better tell Sky Sports!

Spooky was presumably referring to American Football, which is wildly popular but faces some significant questions about the long-term safety of the sport to players.

I should have clarified for American TV. They haven't figured about a way to pause a soccer game long enough to run 25 minutes of commercials per hour.

Baseball is particularly good example of how they do this. Go to a major league game and things randomly stop... A lot. Go to a minor league game, and they are in continuous motion. The games are usually much shorter.

American football is a tv show that involves a ball. As TV goes, so does football.

The money usually flows the other way - from broadcasters to the leagues/associations/federations for the broadcasting rights. And broadcasters will bid only if there's a reasonable assumption of unbundling that bid and reselling it to advertisers in 30-second increments with some margin. XFL is a good example of big money going into a new league with little to show https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XFL#End_of_season_and_failure

Wrestlers have been monetizing their skillset within MMA for years. They can literally walk into a cage and win matches early in their career because they have tons for formal training

While we're wondering why some sports fare better than others, anyone want to lay odds on the long-term survival chances of the wild and wacky game of Buzkashi? It's the sport where your team, on horseback, tries to get the goat carcass into your opponent's goal.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buzkashi

Geographic spread seems to help with sports, so is this still a regional specialty, or are there buzkashi sides in the Afghan diaspora? Most importantly, have the blue blazers homologated a Standard Buzkashi Goat? /s

A bit of off-topic but I've always wondered if e-sports could be perdurable as well since the interest of the developers goes towards making more money than making it better (improving its rules, adjusting times, etc.).

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