Growing Speedcubing and making it more Spectator Friendly

[cuberswoop]

Now somebody changed it to "recreational activity" which is probably even better.

Now imagine how accurate Wikipedia would be if we argued about every sentence.

 

[EdyuFrostpawGH]

i would sign if this was a petition

 

[ender9994]

I always enjoy when this topic comes up in the forums every few months. My opinion is that cubing is a sport, but I also believe that the definition of a sport is completely subjective, fully open to interpretation, and varies largely based on the source you are using. So take that whatever way you want. AKA, if you believe it is a sport, you are 100% correct. If you don't believe it is a sport, you are 100% correct. I will add some comments to what others have said just for some further food for thought, but like I said above, I believe everyone is correct.

Chess is not a sport. Speedcubing is not and will never be a sport. The definition of a sport in my mind includes these 3 qualifications:

- Strenuous physical activity (can be measured by increased heart rate, body fatigue, etc.)
- Competitive atmosphere (everyone is trying to be the best)
- Objective scoring system (points, time, etc, SUBJECTIVE JUDGING DOES NOT COUNT! I could get into a whole rant about how dance and gymnastics are not sports because of this, but I won’t do that now.)

The thing that both chess and cubing are missing is that they are not a physical activity. You can argue that “no, it works your fingers, and my fingers feel tired after a comp,” but I’m sorry, that’s not good enough. You could go as far to say that cubing does not include a competitive atmosphere because of how supportive we are of each other, but I don’t think I’d go that far.

That being said, cubing is a great activity to grow, both in competitors and spectators. Certain events can be very friendly to spectators, such as 3x3, 4x4, 5x5, and 3BLD.

Of course, this post is just my opinion, and by the looks of the poll at the moment, more people will disagree with me than those that will.

Out of curiosity, where does subjective judging start/stop for you? It seems like football (subjective referees), tennis (Mostly played without tech and just uses line judges who are subjective), baseball (ump discretion), and many other sports would be disqualified based on this criteria. As an additional point, isn't just saying 'increased heart rate' subjective? Mine certainly goes up when I compete. What is the cut-off for a sport? In terms of being a physical activity, what portion of the body needs to be activated to be considered a sport? We would need some concrete numbers here to not be subjective. The human body has ~600 muscles, of which the hand has ~30 of them.

Chess isn't a sport. Almost nobody thinks it's a sport.

It's a mind sport. It strains your cognitive thinking abilities.
You can't sprint for an hour straight because you are physically exhausted.
You can't play chess for hours on end and keep your edge because you are mentally exhausted.

Is a mind sport not a type of sport? It seems to have sport directly in its name. Or is this a pluto-dwarf planet situation?

Ahh yes, let’s take our source from the website that anyone can edit. Wikipedia is obviously the only source you could find that claimed that speedcubing is a sport, otherwise you would have found a more reliable place to get your information from.

I am surprised that no one has brought this up yet, but in the WCA Vision, it references speedcubing as a sport, which seems to qualify as that better source you were looking for.

 

[SollsIsCool]

I made a thread about this on the WCA forum, decided to also post it here.

The speedcubing community generally seems to disagree with the idea of speedcubing as a sport.
I think it’s a great idea though, growing speedcubing will always (ok, maybe not always, but most of the time anyway) be a good thing.
However, there are a lot of things that need to be done before this.
The main thing that needs to be done is to make it be spectator friendly. Competitions as they are now are not. My idea is making a couple of types of competitions. There doesn’t have to be only one official type; multiple of these could be official, just different versions of competitions.

My ideas:

1. A Public Competition: This is just a standard WCA comp, where you have rounds. In the first round, anyone can compete. Top x qualify for Round 2, and top x qualify for finals (unless the comp has more rounds). Finals should be head to head and live-streamed for most events, like 2-7, as well as 3Bld, Pyra, Mega, Skewb, Clock, Sq-1, and OH. The problem is that finals might take too long, but there is a simple solution: just have less people qualify for finals. For example, instead having the top 16 make finals for 7x7, just take the top 4, or 6. (Unless you have enough time.)
   Because this keeps comps open to the public and not only for the elite solvers, I think this is an idea that would be fairly popular, and it is already happening in some places. (Most comps that I go to, in the Bay Area, California, are live-streamed and have head to head finals. They do only have head to head finals for 3x3 though.)
2. Nation vs. Nation: This is just a country, making a team of the best cubers in the country, competing against another country, head to head, in a relay. This could be only 3x3, like the Nations Cup, or have different competitors solving different types cubes/puzzles. This has proven to be something that is very spectator friendly, as the Nations Cup has generally been really exiting to watch when it has taken place at major comps.
3. Cuber vs. Cuber: This would be like the monkey league. Cubers who qualify will compete head to head against each other to find the league champion. I’m not going to explain the format now, read it here.

I think this could work. It wouldn’t be hard to implement this, it would greatly benefit cubing, and increase the chances of it being accepted into the Olympics (go read that thread on the WCA forum here)
What do you guys think?

Totally great idea

 

[gsingh]

I made a thread about this on the WCA forum, decided to also post it here.

The speedcubing community generally seems to disagree with the idea of speedcubing as a sport.
I think it’s a great idea though, growing speedcubing will always (ok, maybe not always, but most of the time anyway) be a good thing.
However, there are a lot of things that need to be done before this.
The main thing that needs to be done is to make it be spectator friendly. Competitions as they are now are not. My idea is making a couple of types of competitions. There doesn’t have to be only one official type; multiple of these could be official, just different versions of competitions.

My ideas:

1. A Public Competition: This is just a standard WCA comp, where you have rounds. In the first round, anyone can compete. Top x qualify for Round 2, and top x qualify for finals (unless the comp has more rounds). Finals should be head to head and live-streamed for most events, like 2-7, as well as 3Bld, Pyra, Mega, Skewb, Clock, Sq-1, and OH. The problem is that finals might take too long, but there is a simple solution: just have less people qualify for finals. For example, instead having the top 16 make finals for 7x7, just take the top 4, or 6. (Unless you have enough time.)
   Because this keeps comps open to the public and not only for the elite solvers, I think this is an idea that would be fairly popular, and it is already happening in some places. (Most comps that I go to, in the Bay Area, California, are live-streamed and have head to head finals. They do only have head to head finals for 3x3 though.)
2. Nation vs. Nation: This is just a country, making a team of the best cubers in the country, competing against another country, head to head, in a relay. This could be only 3x3, like the Nations Cup, or have different competitors solving different types cubes/puzzles. This has proven to be something that is very spectator friendly, as the Nations Cup has generally been really exiting to watch when it has taken place at major comps.
3. Cuber vs. Cuber: This would be like the monkey league. Cubers who qualify will compete head to head against each other to find the league champion. I’m not going to explain the format now, read it here.

I think this could work. It wouldn’t be hard to implement this, it would greatly benefit cubing, and increase the chances of it being accepted into the Olympics (go read that thread on the WCA forum here)
What do you guys think?

This thread has not turned out the way it was meant to. The title is a bit misleading, which is totally my fault. I'll change it.

It does not matter if you call speedcubing a sport, hobby, mind sport, etc. It does not change anything. Call it whatever you want.
This thread was meant to be a place to discuss how to grow speedcubing, make it more spectator friendly, and potentially make it a job for top cubers. I'm asking you guys to please stop arguing about the status of speedcubing as a sport. Read my original post (judging from the discussion in this thread, most of you haven't), and bring the discussion back to the intended topic.

So, how do you guys think we can make speedcubing more spectator-friendly?

 

[Thom S.]

Is a mind sport not a type of sport? It seems to have sport directly in its name. Or is this a pluto-dwarf planet situation?

I'd consider Mind Sport a type of Sport. Some need it to be completely separate because feelings.
I'd say it's a finger thumb situation where every mind sport is a sport but every sport is not a mind sport.

So, how do you guys think we can make speedcubing more spectator-friendly?

This gets asked before every Worlds, US/Europe/Asian open and as Red Bull it makes the Event friendly for Spectators.

We as the community haven't yet found something we agree on is bith spectator-friendly and doesn't inconvenience the competitors. In what I have read over the years, of course. Worlds 2017 did Livestream more generic cubers instead of just the top. Seems good, but would non-cubers, who watch for the sport look at a bunch of 12 second 3x3 solves? If no, we need to only broadcast the elite. If yes, then the elite is too fast to be interesting.
It leaves us in a situation, where cubers already don't input any information of Top 100 times in every event and need Reconstructions, slow solves and whatever to take in WHY that solve was a technical and physical marvel. When Cubers and Non-Cubers look at the solve in real time, it might as well be just a nice screen with the time appearing.
It certainly looks impressive, but instead of taking in why that guy is as good as they are, you have seconds to see colours change and then a good number shows up.

 

[xyzzy]

Seems good, but would non-cubers, who watch for the sport look at a bunch of 12 second 3x3 solves?

Anything under 20 seconds looks plenty impressive to non-cubers, really… unless they happen to personally know someone who's faster, in which case they might not be so impressed.

It leaves us in a situation, where cubers already don't input any information of Top 100 times in every event and need Reconstructions, slow solves and whatever to take in WHY that solve was a technical and physical marvel. When Cubers and Non-Cubers look at the solve in real time, it might as well be just a nice screen with the time appearing.

Interesting point. Imagine if we could have commentated reconstructions on live streams!

 

[Timona]

Interesting point. Imagine if we could have commentated reconstructions on live streams!

Do you mean after the solve or during the solve? The Cubicle livestream for Rubiks NACs had Live commentary, but it was limited tho, since you can only see so much from a spectator POV. Maybe this is where smart cubes come in...

 

[Nevan J]

Do you mean after the solve or during the solve? The Cubicle livestream for Rubiks NACs had Live commentary, but it was limited tho, since you can only see so much from a spectator POV. Maybe this is where smart cubes come in...

imo smart cubes have a long way to improve, rn they are not so accurate as sometimes they can mess up tracking moves, we'll just have to wait for a better smart cube. also because the WCA doesn't allow to use smart cubes, i don't really know where spectator friendly-ness will end up

 

[xyzzy]

Do you mean after the solve or during the solve?

You can barely finish saying a whole sentence during the solve, so…

I was thinking more of a brief solve analysis shortly after the solve is done. Not currently feasible for multiple reasons, but it's still less unfeasible compared to an actual live commentary.

 

[gsingh]

If no, we need to only broadcast the elite. If yes, then the elite is too fast to be interesting.

The monkey league only had the elite. And almost everyone enjoyed that. The elite is not too fast to be interesting.

 

[baseballjello67]

but max didnt compete

actually, why didn't he?

 

[Garf]

Oh! Sometimes at baseball games, the people do this boat race on the big screen, or they interview a player, or they do a ketchup/mustard race (don't ask)
The point is that between rounds/events or something, you need to have the viewers engaged. Like a person solves a Rubik's Cube blindfolded, or two people inspect a 2x2, spin around 10 times, then solves said cube, etc.

 

[Thom S.]

And almost everyone enjoyed that.

Did almost everyone enjoy that or did almost every cuber enjoy that?

 

[mookiemu]

I made a thread about this on the WCA forum, decided to also post it here.

The speedcubing community generally seems to disagree with the idea of speedcubing being more like a traditional sport.
I think it’s a great idea though, growing speedcubing will always (ok, maybe not always, but most of the time anyway) be a good thing.
However, there are a lot of things that need to be done before this.
The main thing that needs to be done is to make it be spectator friendly. Competitions as they are now are not. My idea is making a couple of types of competitions. There doesn’t have to be only one official type; multiple of these could be official, just different versions of competitions.

My ideas:

1. A Public Competition: This is just a standard WCA comp, where you have rounds. In the first round, anyone can compete. Top x qualify for Round 2, and top x qualify for finals (unless the comp has more rounds). Finals should be head to head and live-streamed for most events, like 2-7, as well as 3Bld, Pyra, Mega, Skewb, Clock, Sq-1, and OH. The problem is that finals might take too long, but there is a simple solution: just have less people qualify for finals. For example, instead having the top 16 make finals for 7x7, just take the top 4, or 6. (Unless you have enough time.)
   Because this keeps comps open to the public and not only for the elite solvers, I think this is an idea that would be fairly popular, and it is already happening in some places. (Most comps that I go to, in the Bay Area, California, are live-streamed and have head to head finals. They do only have head to head finals for 3x3 though.)
2. Nation vs. Nation: This is just a country, making a team of the best cubers in the country, competing against another country, head to head, in a relay. This could be only 3x3, like the Nations Cup, or have different competitors solving different types cubes/puzzles. This has proven to be something that is very spectator friendly, as the Nations Cup has generally been really exiting to watch when it has taken place at major comps.
3. Cuber vs. Cuber: This would be like the monkey league. Cubers who qualify will compete head to head against each other to find the league champion. I’m not going to explain the format now, read it here.

I think this could work. It wouldn’t be hard to implement this, it would greatly benefit cubing, and increase the chances of it being accepted into the Olympics (go read that thread on the WCA forum here)
What do you guys think?

All great ideas! I'm not a competitive cuber, but I wanted to take my son to the last WCA comp here, but it was only open to competitors. So I figured I'd ever, but the even I would have entered, 3x3 bld, wasn't even on the event schedule!
WCA gotta do better. My son loves cubing and wants to go see a competition as a spectator in person, not just online.

 

[Thom S.]

All great ideas! I'm not a competitive cuber, but I wanted to take my son to the last WCA comp here, but it was only open to competitors. So I figured I'd ever, but the even I would have entered, 3x3 bld, wasn't even on the event schedule!
WCA gotta do better. My son loves cubing and wants to go see a competition as a spectator in person, not just online.

Many competitions are being held in venues that enforce a strict person limit.
So the admins decide between more competitors or more spectators.

 

[Tabe]

All great ideas! I'm not a competitive cuber, but I wanted to take my son to the last WCA comp here, but it was only open to competitors. So I figured I'd ever, but the even I would have entered, 3x3 bld, wasn't even on the event schedule!
WCA gotta do better. My son loves cubing and wants to go see a competition as a spectator in person, not just online.

This is usually a limitation of the venue itself or a decision being made between having more competitors or allowing spectators. It's a delicate balancing act at times.

You could, of course, also organize a competition yourself so that you son can attend.

 

[gsingh]

Found this thread from a while ago on the WCA forum.

World Cube Association

The World Cube Association governs competitions for mechanical puzzles that are operated by twisting groups of pieces, commonly known as 'twisty puzzles'. The most famous of these puzzles is the Rubik's Cube, invented by professor Rubik from Hungary. A selection of these puzzles are chosen as...

forum.worldcubeassociation.org

I'll copy/paste it here for anyone who doesn't have an account on the WCA forum.
"The WCA Board is proposing a new format of a Head to Head event. Here are the major details:

1. This event would be run in 3 stages:
   a. National Qualifiers
   b. Continental Qualifiers
   c. World Final
2. This event would not be part of normal WCA competitions and it will be held separately.
3. It is likely that only top cubers in a region would be eligible to participate in this event as the main purpose is to create a spectator friendly format.
4. The format of this event will be limited from 1 to 3 WCA events."

So, what do you guys think about this? This is basically the same thing as comp type #3 in my original post, and I am personally all for it.

 

[Kaedenthecuber]

in singapore we always have head to heads in 3x3 finals

 

[Anthonycube]

I'm just after thinking of something. Commentary sounds like a good idea, but if the commentary is like the monkey league, non cubers would have no idea what is going on. Like imagine a non cuber trying to make sense of "Oh he locked up on the T Perm"