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Documentary about Professional Gaming
Simon Bysshe writes "My name is Simon Bysshe, I'm 22 & am currently studying film at the Bournemouth Arts Institute in the UK. For the last 3 months I've been working on a unique new freely downloadable film about the advent of professional gaming [there's also a BitTorrent mirror via GameTab]. The main purpose of the documentary 'Modern Day Gamer 2' is to ask whether we will ever see gaming become a mainstream spectator sport. The film features the UK based Four Kings Wolfenstein team as they compete at the Quakecon gaming event in Dallas Texas. The film also features interviews with John Romero, Sujoy Roy (iGamesUK), Paul 'Locki' Wedgwood (Splash Damage) & many other industry/gaming figures. This is the sequel to my original documentary which focused on the growth of gaming as a sociable hobby & received over 50,000 downloads worldwide. Running time: 17minutes 47seconds. Filesize : 157MB. Format: WMV."
Running time: 17minutes 47seconds. Filesize : 157MB. Format: WMV.
How about a non-MS or non-proprietary format? Seriously, I am not trying to troll. As much as people gripe about how bad and inferior all MS formats are, I sure do see lots of WMA and WMV all over the place.
Chess is a spectator sport, and there are enormous Scrabble competitions. Gaming will never be the kind of thing that sells out a stadium, but I can imagine a weekly show cropping up on one of the "educational" channels dedicated to gaming. It would have to be edited pretty well,and do a lot of behind-the-scenes, but I would probably enjoy wat ching it.
"The reason specatator sports are so popular is that it takes a lot of years of effort and strenous training to be competetive at professional level."
...SNIP...
"That is not the case with gaming."
You have GOT to be fucking kidding me. Try entering a high-profile competition in QuakeWorld, StarCraft or Quake 3 without having YEARS of experience in first-person shooters. You'll be running back to your mamma within minutes.
I would say video gaming will never become as big of a spectator sport as the big main sports (NFL,NBA,NHL,MLB) because of one missing ingredient. That ingredient is the fans being emotionally attached to thier team and its players past and present because they are real people. When Brett Favre retires from football fans will feel emotional about it, some packer fans may even cry.
These kinds of articles (or documentaries, as the case may be) really beg the question "Why do people watch other people in activities?"
Now we have all been conditioned to answer because its entertaining to watch highly skilled professionals compete for the love of the game (stay with me), or something like that. But really, I would venture to guess that it has a lot to do with identity and community.
For example, if you watch sports, don't you sometimes or maybe even regularly mention events in the sports world to others who are interested (or maybe even not)? Do you ever consider yourself a fan, and attach it to your identity (like at a party you might say "yeah, I'm a such-and-such fan" or "I'm a big fan of sports X and Y")?
Likewise, how often do you watch events with other people? How often do you go with other people or meet them at an event? And don't you talk about it with certain groups of people? I am not a sports person, so please forgive me if you are a lone spectator. I am sure there are some.
This all revolves around what really drives masses to be spectators. I would venture to guess that their identity and the community (which are in some ways tied together for a lot people, maybe everyone) make them spectators. I would even go further to say that without these aspects, mass market spectator sports would not be quite so mass market. Sorry, I didn't watch the video - just some thoughts from a non-spectator.
One thing I've never understood is the rage over football (both), basketball, etc... Why the hell would I watch people play something I could be doing myself?
However, I listen to the Team Sportscast Network when I'm bored, and also hang out in #tsn. I like it there because it's a community that PLAYS what they love, not just listen. People who know the game first hand; a relaxed community which knows the pros personally.
I find watching games more interesting than conventional sports because the game is always changing -- they aren't limited by real life physics and laws. The rules and gameplay are always evolving overtime.
Although rules change with videogames, i find game rules to be much more appealing. Sports that require referees take away from the game, along with judged sports. The computer counts and grades players in VGs, not some dude with a whistle. If anything, I find videogames to be a more relevant sport than games that rely on referees for fundamental parts of the game such as "foul balls", "penalties" and "strikes".
In the end though, I don't really want videogames to become mainstream sports -- it'll just end up controlled and abused like the rest of the sports. Don't get me wrong, I like tournaments, and I also want the very best players making enough for a living. What I don't look forward to is gamers becoming commercialized, overglorified, cocky jerks (it's partially there already) like other other sports "heros".
people do watch counter-strike matches, but since most gamers know about computers well enough, we do in-game spectating as opposed to watching it on lower-res TVs. if there were a group that did *good* commentary, along with setting up good camera angles and having a bit longer wait time between rounds (for replays and such), then it might be more interesting in that way. gaming as a "sport" (like bowling or billards as a sport) is still in its beginning, so give it some time to see where it really goes.
"professional gamers" is an oxymoron,
This is exactly what they said to all of the state boarders and BMXers, and now look at the massive following that has become as a spectator sport. Kind of interesting though, gaming seems to be the chosen method of alternate entertainment by the professionals (Tony Hawk, et al) in that industry.
Grab mplayer and install it. Run mencode to transcode the WMV file to a different format.
:)
Once that's done, head on over to the BitTorrent website and grab the software. Run a tracker and leave a seed open.
Then post it to Slashdot in a message where you can say, "look at me -- 20 minutes of work and a little CPU time, and I made an open format version of a movie that everyone can enjoy -- plus the video's encoded smaller because of the better codec!"
This will probably net you some great karma, in addition to making your initial format question moot. It's all a matter of effort and motivation
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Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
Most people don't give a sports match their full attention. They might raptly watch the replays, they might focus more the game when it gets tense, but most people are hanging out with their friends at the same time, or eating, or switching between ESPN and CBS.
The way that televised sports cope with the monotony of the wait for action is with commentary. They'll step out of the game to give stats, a retired professional will give his take on the rookie at bat or the down just completed. Most people don't want to watch players set up their bases, but they also don't much care to watch the football players line up time and time again. Most soccer fans don't pay nearly as much attention when the ball is in midfield as they do when the players are poised for a shot on goal.
Conclusion 1: Game spectating needs to be something you can do in a group before it will catch on.
Conclusion 2: There needs to be a mechanism to give commentary and instant replays to the viewers.
Conclusion 3: Game spectating has to be flexible. It has to be something that you can give part of your divided attention to, not the sole activity of a few hours on a Sunday afternoon.
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Also, why is it .zip compressed! Any decent video and audio compression includes its own entropy encoding, so that a .zip or whatever will produce virtually no size savings.
.zip worked, that'd tell you that you did something wrong!
If you had a file where
My video compression blog
"Why the hell would I watch people play something I could be doing myself?"
do you listen to music? you could play instruments too.
watch movies? you could make your own with a digital camera's trivial film mode.
ever notice that people involved in sports tend to be avid fans of professional sports? ever notice budding musicians tend to listen to other, more accomplished musicians?
it's because they can't do what the pros can, at least not yet. they're able to command massive salaries because the audience is watching, and the audience wouldn't waste their time to watch bush leaguers.
Yes, but professional atheletes are not necessarily fit.
Darts. Bowls. Archery. Billiards. Skeet Shooting.
Not only are they spectator sports, they get international coverage. Some of them are even Olympic events. You do not need to be fit to be an athelete. Hand-eye coordination is good enough.
Professional gaming is not an oxymoron.
Computer gaming cant be as succesful with spectators as "normal" sports (football rugby etc) because: traditionally people support the team for the town they live in. gives u a sense of pride, loyalty, patriotism whatever. but a main concept of online gaming is that you can form a team with anyone anywhere. most clans dont have anyone from the same town/city, and often people from different countries. so like, which team/clan would you choose to support? I'm pretty sure it will get popular amongst people like me and you who play the games, but wont hit the mainstream.
Everything sucks except musicandstuff
You're right, it takes years of experience and a lot of natural skill to get good enough to compete professionally. Unfortunately, no matter how good someone gets few people will actually watch them play. Why? BECAUSE IT"S BORING. VERY, VERY BORING. WHY THE -HELL- WILL I WATCH YOU PLAY WHEN I CAN JUST GO PLAY MYSELF?