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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.
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of practise for someone to achieve a professional level 'worth watching' status in games and by then that game would be outdated.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!
New year Resolution: Don't change sig this year
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
and it said to WTFM
"Professional Gamer?" What, they are state licensed?
But seriously, with all that press coverage, and repetitive stress injuries, expect to see PG's form basic organizational structures, like unions, licensing boards, nickname boards!, and stuff, before developers/computer programmers ever develop just one of those.. sheesh!
Cover your eyes and click this link!
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?
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.
"The main purpose of the documentary 'Modern Day Gamer 2' is to ask whether we will ever see gaming become a mainstream spectator sport."
Ahem, JAPAN.
Heck, we'll even throw S.Korea in there.
You need a FREE iPod Nano
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.
To avoid an unnecessary page load on their server, here's a direct link to the bittorrent version.
I used to play Desert Combat a lot a while back. I started playing with a clan (to get the whole 'teamplay' experience) who were involved in gaming league. During these games, there would be two spectators present, one on either team. These two specs would do a play by play of the game, both in contact with each other at the same time, and they would shoutcast these matches to the masses. These broadcasts also had a slight time delay to avoid cheating by either team.
One of these shoutcast groups is Team Sports Network you can listen to live games, or download past matches.
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
Ripping an new rectum in the fabric of spacetime.
You misunderstand. Windows is not evil, just crappy. It's Microsoft that's evil.
You have edited his comment so that it seems he is saying that it doesn't take effort to play games at the professional level.
This is not even close to what he wrote. Since you seem determined to misrepresent the author's actual sentiment (or maybe you just misread it and didn't realize that your edit grossly distorts what he wrote?), here is the complete thought:
(Emphasis mine.) Please, read it again. You will see that the author stated that IT IS NOT THE CASE THAT PEOPLE ENJOY VIDEO GAMES VICARIOUSLY. The author does NOT state that it is not the case that it takes effort to play at the professional level.
Please, read the comment you are replying to next time. Slashdot thanks you.
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
--
Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
"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.