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."

Comments

Re:watching games might not be so popular.

[dnaumov]

"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.

The Real Reason for Spectators

[globalar]

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.

Re:watching games might not be so popular.

[NevermindPhreak]

i think spectator sports are popular because they play the game so well, not because of what they went through to get there. i really could care less if the teams in one sport trained ahrder than the teams in another sport, i just really care about which sport plays hardest.

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.

Re:watching games might not be so popular.

[ePIsOdEOnline]

"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.

Well, there's an easy way to fix that.

[Inoshiro]

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 :)