Playing games in this virtual sporting life

While the coronavirus has been lifted off a number of sporting activities, including football, boxing, tennis and mixed martial arts, because of restrictions on large gatherings and social distancing, spectators of such events must perforce view them online, thereby depriving the participants of the adrenaline rush of playing to a packed hall or stadium.

Addressing this shortcoming, a Japanese app, at the touch of a smartphone button, allows viewers to roar their approval of a point or a goal scored, or boo their disapproval of a penalty awarded, through a pre-recorded programme that plays through amplifiers located around the venue, adding rousing auditory verisimilitude to the contest taking place.

Ingenious as this ploy is, however, it could be hijacked by hackers and hecklers wilfully to demoralise one or the other side and disadvantage it vis-à-vis its opponent.


That virtual simulation can have not only its virtues but also its vices has been revealed by an e-Formula racing event held in Berlin, in which the judges discovered that the winner, who took a suspiciously long lead early in the contest, had handed over the controls of his computer-model car to a professional e-racer and had to be disqualified.

Such cautionary cases suggest that there is a thin line separating simulated sportsmanship from gamesmanship, virtually speaking.