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

watching games might not be so popular.

[civilengineer]

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 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. People enjoy these sports vicariously. That is not the case with gaming. Gaming is something people like to take active part in. That's the whole reason games are so popular. It would take lot of years of practise for someone to achieve a professional level 'worth watching' status in games and by then that game would be outdated.
Anyway, I will correct my opinions if there are wrong by watching the documentary. Thanks!

Re:watching games might not be so popular.

[irc.goatse.cx troll]

Rooting is simple -- Go for which ever teams are from your country. I'm hoping Team3D takes CPL winter this year and really shuts up everyone that thought they went downhill because of losing CAL finals against TSG 13-4.

Gaming is much more active than something like baseball from the spectating perspective -- In baseball someone throws a ball, someone else hits it, they run around a bit, repeat.
In CounterStrike, You have a sniper watching through the middle entrance trying to see any counterterrorists running to defend bombsite b, then telling his team which side to attack based on that, then you have the perfectly layed out teamwork involving very intense situations (last round of overtime, you're the only one alive vs 3 enemies and you only have a pistol, lose this round and you're out of the running)
CS and Chess also both have something going for it -- They're both games of strategy rather than steroids. No matter how good your twitch muscle is, if the other team can predict your every move and force you to make mistakes then you have no chance.

As for whoever said gamign doesnt take years to master -- Watch any playoff match. If you ever ended up playing against one of them, You'd get shot through every wall you try to run by, if you were lucky enough to make it past a corner you'd instantly have a bullet in your head.
Even of all of the pros theres a small amount that have a chance at winning, theres a good discussion going on in the forums at GotFrag? about that right now.

Watching is much more enjoyable to from a technical standpoint -- Watching on TV is purely passive, watching a live match on HLTV lets you be the cameraman, watching whatever part you want, with the ability to go into an overview mode or watch first person and see exactly what someone else sees. Watching a pre-recorded match gives you all of that AND the ability to pause/rewind/fast forward (who needs TiVo?).
You can also learn from watching. Traditional sports have all been played so long it is very rare you'll see anything new, but with e-sports there is constantly a new change or two to throw things up, so now we have new crazes like 'the money game' (purposely losing a round after winning for X rounds in a row so that they stop getting so much money on each loss, but only after taking out 4 of their 5 teammates then have all of your team hide so that they have to buy a new gun and you dont.). Any team can take this new knowledge and apply it to their lower end matches (with varying degrees of success), but with most sports theres nothing to do but bet on a team and drink a lot of beer.

I doubt that professional gaming...

[xSquaredAdmin]

will become a spectator sport for strategy games. Most people, except for those who are quite into the game, don't have the attention span to watch people set up their bases etc. They just want the battles, in most cases. Most well-played strategy games can go on for well over an hour, and I just don't think that people are willing to wait around for the big battles. They'd rather just see the highlight reels. But for action games, I think that there is a potential for this to happen, because, right off the bat, you are able to start fighting, without having to build up defenses, which means that people get the action immediately. Also, you respawn as soon as you die, so the length of the action can be controlled.

Title Suggestion....

[_ph1ux_]

instead of "Modern Day Gamer 2"

"Modern Day Gamers Go Gold"

MMORPG "PVP" and FPS tournaments

[mao che minh]

For many, these two "events" are already spectator sports.

I once saw about 200 people crowded around an arena watching a collection of gladiators fighting to the death for a cash prize. We were all placing bets and shouting at the combatants. Some people actually missed work to come witness the battles.

None of us were actually "there", at least not physically: it all transpired in the virtual world of "Ultima Online".

That was three years ago. I wonder how large the gatherings are now?

Gaming Book

[dolo666]

A pretty good book to read if you are interested in gaming professionally, is Monster Gaming, by Ben Sawyer. Not only does it outline the competitive online gaming community, it delves into mods and other cool stuff like customization & configuration. The book has a foreword by Angel Munoz, the founder of the CPL, and cover art by Id legend Paul Steed. While Monster Gaming is not about becoming a CPL athlete, it is about being a better gamer.

The number of wicked web links in there is enough for any gamer to drool over. I've been thinking of doing a Slashdot book review of it, too.

But some may say.....

[reality-bytes]

But some may say that the players, sat at their PCs are the personalities.

Having spectated at a few UK Lanparties, I can say that the 'players' are genuinely a mixed bunch and generally a very personable lot. (After all people can *hit* you if you misbehave on a lan).

The thing that makes major players so popular in many sports is marketing - in the UK we only have to look at David Beckham to know how true this is.

Having said that, Beckham is working for and living with a team in Spain.............go figure :/

Try fighting games

[Anonymous Coward]

Recently, Shoryuken.com held their Evolution 2k3 fighting games tournament in California State University, Pomona. Over a thousand gamers came to take part in 9 different fighting game tournaments ranging from Street Fighter III : 3rd Strike to Soul Calibur 2 for cash prizes worth over $20,000.

You might want to check it out at

http://www.shoryuken.com/evolution

Apparently the event was a success and many gamers had fun hanging out and taking part in the tourneys. The site has a forum called EVO2k3 Aftermath where you can view their personal experiences about the whole event. It seems pretty interesting and would be a perfect example of games becoming mainstream. On a side note, these gamers videocam their games and of great players in their own efforts to improve themselves.

The site also offers a DVD of their previous tournaments (they have been running national tournaments for more than 5 years), so gamers can watch top players go at it at their own leisure. Judging from their success, I don't doubt professional gaming is not possible.