While this has been in the buzz for quite a while now, the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris could actually feature competitive game now. The International Olympic Committee took this a step further in their discussions which were released to create a new batch of gamers’ buzz.

 The IOC combined with the GAISF (Global Association of International Sports Federations) to host this discussion in the Olympic Museum in Lausanne. This was conducted as part of an eSports Forum to build a dialogue of joint understanding between the two parallel universes – which now plan for a synergy.

There were over 150 representatives from the gaming community who attended the event. This included celebrity gamers like Jacob Lyon of the Houston Outlaws; which is one of the well known Overwatch League teams. Some other well-known individuals in the crowd were Nate Nanzer, the commissioner of the Overwatch league and a former NBA player, Rick Fox.

The participants of the event, which tends to change the future of sports, spoke about the opportunities for this collaboration. The elephant in the room was also addressed naturally – whether gaming is even a sport. The forum, however, didn’t need an answer to this question as it wouldn’t have taken place if they hadn’t figured out already.

Previously, the IOC only said that they looked forward to the synergy of both communities because of the possibilities of increase engagement from the world. Now, however, the goal of this discussion was to actually develop pathways for the gaming industry into Olympics. The result was the formation of the ‘eSports Liaison Group’ which will act as the communication channel between both the industries. It is the job of this group to identify the best pathways of a possible future merger.

While this new committee looks for these pathways, the next discussion is planned for October. This next meeting has already been named an ‘Action Forum’, which speaks for itself. It will be held in Buenos Aires and will be attended by members of the Youth Olympic Games as well. This not all; another meeting is scheduled in Switzerland in November which will have 206 of the world’s Olympic committees. Another of these meetings will also be held in Tokyo.

It will finally be in December that the IOC will bring forward the vote of whether eSports will be included in the 2024 Olympics. 2019 will, therefore, be the year when games will be decidedly placed into the category of sports (or not). Last year the IOC President brought forward his suggestion that the violent video games may not be included in Olympics because they didn’t want to promote discrimination and violence. When gamers read this in forums, they naturally would have thought that this ruled out most of the games that are popular in the world.

Bach had however suggested earlier on that games like NBA 2K and FIFA are more along the lines of appropriate. While these games have a considerable fan following, they are nowhere close to the games which feature violence, like Fortnite and Overwatch!