Which is which? I'm not going to beat a dead horse, you can look at my comments in the other thread for my thoughts on StarCraft itself, but I'm going to speak generally on RTS:
I look at RTS as a sort of dance that eventually becomes a contest to find the better dancer. Even so, the better dancer may lose, and the better dancer may dance better and lose simply because the dance was better losing than winning. A loss has no real-world consequences, and as such, the sort of person I'd like to work with has no fear of losing. Only fear that the game will be uninteresting. I play for war stories, not to win.
Of course, games where one gets trounced tend to be uninteresting, and as embarrassing for the victor as the loser.
A really good pianist can literally bring me to tears with the skill and feeling of his art. No RTS player, no matter how brilliant, will ever do this. I admire Olympic athletes but an artist that can make me look at the world in an entirely new way or make me feel something I've never felt before is on a different level, IMO.
Some of my most treasured memories, even years later, are epic games with friends at the peak of our skills. You may not see the art in it, but that doesn't mean there is none.
I've had many of those myself, but the original question was why most people have more respect for pianists than gamers and the answer is that most people find the Moonlight sonata moves them in a way the goose juggler doesn't.
