Should Video Games be Classified as Sports?

As the title says, chess is a sport. It requires strategy, is played worldwide, and is a competitive game. Those same principals can, and are - applied to video games. In my personal opinion, gaming takes much more mental prowess than say chess. You have to learn how your opponents play, you have to practice, and you have to understand the rules of each game - and how each game works. Unlike other sports, such as football, soccer, basketball, and etc. - gaming is not focused on one specific game. There are hundreds upon hundreds of individual games, all with completely different styles and methods of playing. From FPS' to RTS', both that are almost completely unalike - but they all go under the name of 'gaming'. Although some may not like it, and I am not sure why - gaming is now the most popular form of entertainment in the United States, going ahead of the movie and music industry. That's quite a feat to accomplish, and both the movie and music industry have been around for well over a decade - while gaming has only been around for around half of that. The difference between movies, television, and music - is that you aren't experiencing something that someone else is doing, but rather - you are the one interacting in a world where everyone is sharing the same experience with you. If we take all of this in, and add in the facts that there are formal teams, holding formal championships, and with monetary stakes and titles at hand, it would be absurd not to say that video games are a sport. The definition of sport is: "An activity involving physical exertion and skill in which an individual or team competes against another or others." First of all, video gaming has been accepted as an 'activity' because it requires a high level of information processing and problem solving. Next, video gaming does require 'physical exertion' because the basics of video gaming requires the player to manipulate a controller, which is done by utilising and moving his/her fingers and thumbs (in fact some more dedicated players may experience sores located on said appendages for this 'physical exertion', just like the players of other more active sports). In addition to this, some video games, such as those found on the Nintendo Wii, Xbox Kinect and PlayStation Move can demand 'physical exertion' of which involves the entirety of the player's body, to the extent that the video game can even be considered a form of exercise, and even more so as new technology brings more effective and realistic exercise simulators. Also, since the dawn of video games we have always known that 99.9% of Video Games do require at least some element of skill to play the game. They are NOT just something to pass the time, like watching T.V. Or listening to music which require NO SKILL. Video games include objectives which the player needs to overcome. Once overcome, the player usually receives a reward for doing so, such as an achievement, trophy or unlockable content. Finally, there is no doubt that video gaming can be an individual or group activity, with some players enjoying a story or honing their competitive skills on their own, and other players competing against each other in teams or playing together cooperatively. In fact, modern video gaming is also very sociable, since nowadays players can use the Internet to communicate and play with other people from all across the world, which allows gamers to play with friends living elsewhere as well as allowing players to meet new people and make new friends who may even be living in another country; these are the wonders of online video gaming. This brings me to my conclusion - not only is video gaming recognised as a sport by the definition of sport itself, but it even has an advantage over 'traditional sporting' which these more conservative forms of sporting will never have: the ability to play with anyone from anywhere through the Internet, making video gaming the most sociable form of sport in existence.