My heroic strength
"Now in this extension of my volition and my physical frame into another animal, my tyrannical instincts and my desire for heroic strength are at once gratified."

Bruce Rolston quotes Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr in the article The Killer App Of The 19th Century. Rolston writes of cybersports, and links to the original ideals of developing the mind and soul through sports, rather than the body - which was, at the time, well developed through manual labour.

Online sports can be understood as online sport-simulator games or even as collections of sports memorabilia, available online. But Rolston speaks of the developing community of competitive gaming, where some few professionals are able to make a living from their passion. The Norwegian player "Slayer" (real name Fredrik) was offerent a contract in 2001, of playing professionally in Korea for a year. (The picture isn't of Slayer, but of the world's best Quake player at the time, "Zero4".) Some of our students made a documentary about him, Alias: Slayer, and it was sent on Norwegian Broadcasting.

This emphasises the importance of understanding sports, team-sports strategy and competitiveness when we explore gaming, and not just the intellectual and very academic game of mastery and understanding.