Slashdot Mirror
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."
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.
Crushing dreams at the speed of sarcasm
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?
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.