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Professional Gaming League Raises $10M
Carl Bialik from WSJ writes "Major League Gaming, aspiring to become the official league of professional videogaming, raised $10 million in funding from Ritchie Capital, and named Matthew Bromberg, the former general manager of Time Warner's Moviefone and AOL Games properties, as president and chief operating officer, the Wall Street Journal reports. 'The championship match for MLG's second season will be held this weekend in New York, where individuals and teams of gamers will battle against others in fighting and shooter games like Microsoft Corp.'s Halo 2 for a total of $100,000 in prizes. ... The company says it is in discussions with various cable networks about deals to have its competitions carried on television. "We want this to be covered as a circuit," said Mr. Bromberg.'"
Watching people play video games on TV?
It is bad enough watching people in real life while waiting for your turn...
The three most boring activities:
Listening to someone describing their dreams
Listening to someone describe their workout routine
Watching someone else play video games.
Seriously- I think that much like building models or programming, playing games is fun if you are doing it, but who wants to watch someone else do it?
Than again people watch poker and golf on TV....
And All I Ask is a Tall Ship And a Star to Steer Her By
Could you spell "know" right? Seriously... it isn't that much to ask.
It's like sex, except I'm having it!
watching your older brother hog the controller wasn't bad enough..
Just like South Korea? Will we have our own 24/7 dedicated gaming channels?
....
If we are trying to be like South Korea, I would rather have in home fiber to more homes then just what verizon offers in the NE
As a lifelong gamer with a deep respect for the field and a belief that games are a form of art that will eventually be accorded that status by society as a whole, I can tell you that I have absolutely, positively no interest whatsoever in watching other people play games. And I doubt a lot of other people have either.
This sounds a lot like major league soccer, that new sport (not so new to the rest of the world) that hasn't caught on in spite of long effort. Or women's basketball. And if venture capitalist thing that something being zany and hi-tech is enough to make it worthy of funding, they should remember the XFL, eulogized and dissected in Brett Forrest's Long Bomb: How the XFL Became TV's Biggest Fiasco
Now there will be whole new cliques of "console jocks" who stuff those who can't beat them at Smash Brothers Melee and Grand Theft Auto into lockers.
Whose dumb idea was professional gaming, anyhow? We make enough people rich and arrogant for being able to play inconsequential games as is.
I been a "professional" gamer for 15 years now, i should get in on this competition.
"That's what makes it a sport," says Mr. Sepso. "It's not chance. It's really based on skill."
No, that's what makes it a game, though he did narrow the definition a bit by stating that Halo, et al are not games of chance.
game n.
1. An activity providing entertainment or amusement; a pastime: party games; word games.
2. 1. A competitive activity or sport in which players contend with each other according to a set of rules: the game of basketball; the game of gin rummy.
Yes, 2.1 mentioned the word 'sport'. However, compare this inclusion with the definition of sport:
sport n.
1.
1. Physical activity that is governed by a set of rules or customs and often engaged in competitively.
2. A particular form of this activity.
2. An activity involving physical exertion and skill that is governed by a set of rules or customs and often undertaken competitively.
3. An active pastime; recreation.
To sum up: (video game) != (sport).
(All definitions supplied by http://www.dictionary.com./
I want to drag this out as long as possible. Bring me my protractor.
I'll bite. I'd actually like to see something like this. However, it's probably going to suck as they have to deal with the most vile species known to man, gamers. Not only that, but anyone who seems to take a swipe at this kinda thing (*cough cough ARENA cough cough*) generally picks the most brain dead, socially inept, personality vacuums that they can possibly find (so in otherwords they pick perfect examples of most of the yahoos you find taking a swipe at professional gaming). Plus you know it's just going to be halo and instead of anything interesting (some of those korean starcraft matchs are actually rather exciting, of course seeing as how I'm still and age of kings fan the subtle nuances of halo 2, perfect dark zero, and counter strike are lost on me).
Because there's nothing more exciting than watching a room full of Ritalin-addicted 14-year-olds "pwn" each other at Halo all day.
As if MLG players don't already have big enough egos as it is. Now we'll do even more to make them even more full of themselves. I think the first requirement for anyone who wishes to be part of MLG is to announce, frequently and loudly, how they're better than anyone else just because they're "pro".
I had enough of this MLG crap when I was playing Halo 2. I hope they stay there while the rest of us move on to other games.
"You know your god is man-made when he hates all the same people you do."
Disclaimer: I am terrible at shooter games, so consider me biased if you must.
As much as I love video games, there is no excuse for it being your main pursuit of life (playing them, that is - video game creation makes total sense to me as a career). And it is getting ingrained as a part of our children's culture.
I mean, seriously, has anyone looked at a picture of this Jon F4ta|1ty (or however his baby1337 ass choses to spell things) Wendell guy? He has the same "I'm the badass of the world" expression that those idiots with thier $20k civics with $30k of upgrades on them look when they get out of their car.
I mean, seriously, eat something beside pizza, drink something besides red bull, go outside, get a suntan, and get some bruises playing sports with friends. If you have any, that is.
I'm sick of kids contending that being a gamer is a valid counter to being an athlete. All the kids I used to play video games with all played sports.
Now that my head is no longer primed for explosion... this really is rediculous. Gaming is fun. Have tournaments. Have a cash prize. But poker should not be on TV, and nor should videogames. Heck, curling and pool are pushing it as it is, but at least they require some physical skill.
If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.-TJ
And when people compete in CPL games they tend to play better games than HALO... I'd say professional gamers by and large consider HALO a complete joke, as they will this league.
My 3D Texturing Skinning work (under construction)
You're off by a couple of decades. This was done with the Atari 2600 back in te '80s - it was a flop. Nobody wants to watch OTHER people playing video games on TV.
Hey, give me $10,000,000 and I'll be happy to go through the trashpile of history looking for the next money pit.
I think that you could make a video game that would be fun to watch.
But it would be very different from current video games (it wouldn't just be "Halo, but displayed on a lot of screens), and probably would be a lot less fun for the players to play. Consider how American football's rules get tweaked periodically -- that's not to make the game more fun for the players, but to make it more entertaining to watch.
Among other things:
*) You probably want some kind of "edge" or advantage that goes back or forth. In most televised sports, there's some sort of "ball position" on the field. It's not fun to just watch someone twitch faster than someone else with a rocket.
*) I think that a televised game probably has to be team-based. A fan can empathize with a team more than one person.
*) The rules would have to remain pretty much the same for a long time, so that viewers can learn and appreciate them. You can't just be playing the latest and greatest video game out. You need a game that stays the same for many years (maybe with slight tweaks to the rules, and obviously the renderer could be improved).
*) I don't think that simple twitch games would do so well. A typical good FPS player is hard to appreciate by anyone other than another FPS player, and it's not much fun to watch. In something like hockey, there are lots of things interacting that make for good slow-motions. In Halo, the question becomes who aimed and clicked at someone else first.
*) There needs to be one point to focus on. Maybe a "capture the flag" style game would be a start, but just watching people shoot other people means that there's no focal point to watch. In major televised sports, there is one ball or puck or whatever to watch that the camera can follow.
*) There needs to be several different types of skill that work together. People like being able to think through the high-level strategy, given some measureable characteristics of the players. In baseball, you have fast people and power hitters. In American football, the characteristics of people who play different positions are striking. In a game, you don't have much by way of physical differences, and most of the mental tasks are fairly similar...you have people who are good at shooting other people. That means a bunch of interchangeable clones doing pretty much the same thing. There are a couple games that vaguely have some efforts in the idea of necessary classes, like Team Fortress.
*) Most televised sports have breaks of some sort -- penalties or between plays, or whatever, that allow slapping advertisements in to fill the gaps. Not many video games have anything like this.
The only games I can think of that try to be appealing to people watching them have been arcade games, and those usually did that by avoiding repetitiveness and constantly throwing new content up on the screen. That kind of "novelty" approach doesn't really apply to a sport.
Basically, what I'm saying is that while I think that it's possible to make a videogame broadcast-based entertainment franchise, it would not be the sort of thing where people just play the same games they do at home and then get paid for it.
Any program relying on (nontrivial) preemptive multithreading will be buggy.
between
{
Watching someone playing baseball on TV or
Watching someone playing chess on TV or
Watching someone playing golf on TV or
Watching someone playing poker on TV or
}
and
{
Watching someone playing computer game on TV?
}
It's just a prejudice!
Your ego is Matrix!
Sports are too energetic for the current generation to anything but stare at a TV, now even computer games are too energetic. hehe.
Deleted
If the concept worked, this show would still be on the air. Quite simply, watching other people play video games sucks.
who cares, lets see how they do... watching madden nfl gaming "playoffs" on espn during the college football season was actually pretty cool. You got to follow these people that had a chance to go meet professional athletes that they would play as with the team on the football game... then depending on whether they won or lost they got to stay with their team which was actually the bus that they travelled to different sites on. It was like survivor with video games. Will this ever take off? I frankly don't care, it'll probably find its own niche. 15 to 19 year olds will always be interested in this kind of stuff IMO. We'll see.........
Let me be the first to say...
BOOM! HEADSHOT!!
MLG got a $10 million dollar cash infusion? And another CEO took over? Great. Because to be honest, they were terrible in the public relations department when it came to late or missing checks. Now they can finally pay the players that are owed thousdands of dollars over several communities.
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MLG has a history of not paying up in some of their events, for months, or even years. Here is a example of what the fighting game community had to go through, and why the relationship with them soured today because of thousdands of dollars due over months - in some cases, YEARS. They are finally starting to pay up now though, and some people -still- havent gotten their but they were quite close to filing suit.
I know some other communities didn't get their money as well, but I don't know their status or if they got it or not - I can only talk about the Tekken Zaibatsu community.
http://www.tekkenzaibatsu.com/forums/showthread.p
The article mentions that a total of $600,000 will be given away as prize money..... but they raised $10,000,000, so what happened to the rest of the money?
If there is money to be made off of this, how long before major game makers take people watching people playing games into account during design.
The watching of the game doesn't have to 100% live, it could be delayed. I'm thinking a server simply ships all the commands going on in a game to a replica, or several replicas that then can have many cameras attached. Major matches could have millions wanting to watch, and mostly live.
On top of that you'll want commentators. Replay and a lot of other things to really make watching the games fun.
Next I think is scoring. Using counterstrike as an example you can take wins and types of wins into account to score. I'd say you have 10 matches. Each team plays 5 matches as terrorist, and 5 as CT.
If you defuse the bomb you get 2 points, if you win by killing everyone you get 5 points, and so on.
Of course this would lead to a point where someone could win the game in less then 10 matches. My point is that we need to start thinking about these things to make matches close, and interesting to watch, not just play.
The final match should be Super Mario Bros. 3!
RTS game competitions would be interesting. Some games would work really well, like StarCraft, Age of Empires, etc. Some like Battle For Middle Earth II would be awesome to watch 8 people dueling it out on. Epecialy if you had a running commentary on it for the viewers (this would need to be hidden from the players though). That would be more down my alley. But watching a FPS? Yawn...
Man is the lowest-cost, 150-pound, nonlinear, all-purpose computer system which can be mass-produced by unskilled labor.
If curling can be an olympic sport than video games can be considered a sport
In the next 20 years America will be fatter than ever.
But there will be a lot of leet haxors.
I can see it now. FPS Doug. Cause all the kiddies already love him.
"Night8talk3r52 is coming around the corner, remember, he's the only one left on his tea BOOM HEADSHOT, BOOM HEADSHOT BOOM HEADSHOT BOOM HEADSHO[out of breath]! Counter terrorists win."
How do they convince people to fund something like this? It's just going to be money down the drain, and any 14 year old could tell you that.
This is something already available for Half-Life/CS and Source Engine based games. It's basically a delayed proxy that allows people to connect and watch matches as if they were in the server. As for scoring Counter Strike is generally played as follows: - A match is 2 halves, 15 rounds per half. - Each team has 1 half as Counter-Terrorist, 1 half as Terrorist. - Terrorists win the round by having the bomb explode at the bombsite or by eliminating all the CT's - Counter-Terrorists win the round by eliminating all the T's or preventing the bomb from exploding (e.g. defusing it after it's planted) - First team to get 16 rounds wins. If it ends up in a 15-15 tie usually overtime of 6-10 rounds (3/5 per half) are played until a team wins. It can be an extremely exciting format especially when you have 1v1 situations in the later rounds of a match. I'd compare it a lot too a shootout in hockey. What makes it even more exciting is that you can completely reverse roles when the terrorist gets the bomb planted in a 1v1 situation and it puts all the pressure on the CT to get to the bomb and defuse it.
Any of the enjoyable viewing that I've done has been over the shoulder of the player in question.
... I'm not really sure. ... but in my opinion, it's still gotta be better than watching bowling on TV.
It gives you an opportunity to hear their reactions to the game, as well as see the game from their point of view, with the same resolution (although from a greater distance).
Although I could see some interesting displays foer spectators (quadrants, overhead view of the map w/ all players marked in one, top two player's views in the next two quadrants, and another one cycling between strategic points / player views / game statistics), it would require massive resolution to have the necessary clarity. (could also do stats as a scroll, or something like the NASCAR thing along the side of the screen)
Maybe it could be pulled off with HDTV
Build it, and they will come^Hplain.
Major League Gaming is notorious for not actually paying out its prize money. Amongst their Tekken 5 tournaments, alone, there are guys still waiting to be paid for tournaments they won nearly a year ago (http://tekkenzaibatsu.com/forums/showthread.php?t hreadid=85134)
Don't you hate pants?
I'd definitely rather be playing, so don't get me wrong here...
But when we were playing SoFII on some of the better teams' servers, watching them scrim was actually really rewarding. Watching the little clever tricks people use, or watching their skill, the drama of seeing two opponents cautiously approaching the same corner from opposite sides, seeing the matches where the last man on a team actually manages to chew through half of the other team and win the round...
There are some good things to see flying around as a ghost.
HOWEVER, almost all the televised gaming competitions I've seen miss all the action. They stay on follow mode, and either constantly hop through players looking for action, or have to have an announcer point out all the stuff you've missed.
Good cameramen will make or break this. I would recommend they record a follow mode for every player, and then have several floating camera points, maybe some static at key hotspots on a level, and then a floater or two. They should then cut these together after the match, using splitscreens and zooms when it adds to the experience.
If they're willing to discard the absurd requirement of live broadcast, and want to put together an interesting watchable product, this could be really good.
(But I'm no optimist.)
if anything it's going to be techtv's or g4 (whatever the fuck it is now) having lame ass FPS tournaments. it's highly unlikely that the point is going to be to just give viewers a spectator view of the entire game, they'll focus on each player, give some lame ass interview where johnny-too-many-twinkies tells you how gaming has been a suitable replacement for actual human contact, and that he doesn't regret the fact that he's 27 and still hasn't felt anyone up because he can just buy a real doll after he kicks everyone's ass and takes home the prizemoney. then they'll show the whole 30 seconds it takes for him to die at the hands of some 9 year old korean kid followed up by post game statistics given by some girl that is way too hot to actually know anything about the games she's commenting on. but it doesn't matter because you aren't really listening, you're just watching her tits bounce as she nods way too enthusiastically while prentending to care. tune in next week for our exclusive coverage of the EA superbowl, where competitors slap each other on the ass not because it's the only place they'll feel it, but because they're afraid it might get stuck in a fat roll if they went elsewhere.
..... I've got three words for you:
World Poker Tour
This is my opinion. To make sure you don't steal it, it's covered by the DMCA.
Sport (n): Something you can die from doing. That is why hunting with Dick Cheney and carpooling with Ted Kennedy are sports.
Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
I like how the math works.
1) Raise 10 million dollars
2) Spend say a million on organizational needs
3) Give out "a total of $100,000 in prizes."
4) 10 000 000 - 1 000 000 - 100 000 ~ $8 900 000 Profit!!!
Come on, Gaming is not a fad or a trend... YOung adults grew up on this stuff and love just as much as teens now days do. Gaming rocks, because of the compitition factor. And as games get more and more visualy apealing, they will be more fun to watch. Although I admit the core group of people tuning in will be other gamers, or at least those who aspire too. TONS of people game, few get 10,000 for thier skill. People want to compete and get better, so they play against others who wipe them up, and they will most likely watch to learn and enjoy.
As for me I am just as competitive when it comes down to old school nintindo... And fragging people all over BF2 or Halo is just as fun as running and tackling somebody. (well almost) - SO hey, face it Gaming is going to be bigger and bigger, and TV is a part of that. I expect online video and stuff like that to realy boom with this stuff though. Gamers are also computer savy, (exept some console only gamers, which should have the tittle gamer removed and replaced with console junkie.
eom.
We shouldn't be watching people play the newest FPS or whatever piece of crap Microsoft churns out next. If I want to watch someone play games on a grand scale, I want to be watching them play CLASSIC games. The games that actually matter. Super Mario Kart. Tetris. Dr. Mario. That might draw in all the people who played games back in the 80's and hasn't done so since, as they'd actually recognize the games and get interested.
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0 SU CK IT MP AA
That would be fun watching a CS clan math on TV. I'm not a football fan, but I can imagine becoming like one if they started showing MLG matches... Drinking beer, eating cheez-its watching Starcraft finals.
Fark. Sorry about that. Meant to hit preview. SHould look like this:
This might be a troll, but I'll bite... I have to ask, what is it about going outside, getting a tan, and bruising oneself that is so important to growing up? (Aside from a using a stereotype to bash gamers with, that is?) What is so great about taking a football up and down what amounts to a backyard marked with spraypaint in an attempt to get it into a little colored area at the end? Or putting a basketball through a round hoop? Or using a racket to smack a little bouncy ball back and forth over a net? What possible benefit to society do any of those "sports" add? Keeping the populace appeased and happy, so that they don't look too deeply at other things?
I see no reason that professional "atheletes" should be paid as much as they do to engage in something that is supposed to be a "fun" past-time. "Love of the game" my ass- they do it for money. While we're at it, why on earth are actors paid so much to make movies? What does the next Adam Sandler film contribute to society? People choose a path in life because they enjoy it (hopefully, anyway- some people don't have all the opportunities that others do). I maintain software. Others run wiring for buildings. Some people write fiction. Others work for the government (which may or may not be another form of writing fiction- I'll leave that as an exercise for the reader).
If someone can make money playing video games, I'd say let them. I know I'm not a good enough gamer to run with that crowd and get anywhere- so I can respect their dedication to the game that they enjoy, just like I know that even though I cannot play basketball as well as Ben Wallace, I respect his skill in that area and enjoy watching him play. Everyone values diferent things out of life- you place more importance on athletics than you do on gaming. So be it, that's your opinion. As someone who has all the athletic grace of an obese cat (thank you, genetics, for making me tall and lanky but giving me no natural grace), I think I grew up just fine without playing sports. I have a "real" career, I have friends, and most importantly, I'm satisfied with myself and where I'm at. Does anything else really matter?
Hrmmm, I think the visual appeal of games, the team aspect and strategies involved, and personalities of the gamers are quite a bit different that of the 4-bit era.
If you have to debate whether something is a sport, it's not.
How pathetic are you that you follow me from topic to topic and waste all your mod points at once modding me down?
I know when the time attack movies were posted on albinoblacksheep, showing someone beating Super Mario 3 in like 3 minutes, I was impressed enough to watch, and to show it off to friends, and found most of them impressed too.
But even beyond the admiration of superior skill, people will watch anything in the proper setting. People will watch golf, bowling, billiards, hell there's about 100 olympic sports based on jumping in the air, every one receiving mad publicity.
I think it could be viewed on a variety of levels too. Some would watch just because the graphis/sounds were cool, some would watch to admire the skills of the players, some in the hopes of teaching themselves the skills used by the players. Just like most sports broadcasts.
I think this will do well here, as it appears already to do in some Asian settings.
You can get 15 minutes of fame, but you can go down in history for infamy.
Ok, so this is slightly off topic, but it is still somewhat related.
What I would like to see, instead of watching people play games on TV, is an actual awards body for the gaming industry that isn't a complete joke. You know, something like the gaming equivalent to the Oscars or Grammy's. Not that SpikeTV bull crap.
I think there is a lot to be said for the people that make some of the best games every year. Not to mention, lifetime achievment awards for greats like Shigeru Miyamoto, etc.
I'm still shocked that with as much money as the videogame industry pulls in each year, we still don't have an awards body like that. Or if there is, why it isn't being broadcast on national TV each year.
A community-oriented lyrics site
So what's your take on Golf?
My take on golf is rather similar to Winston Churchill's:
"Golf - the best way to spoil a good walk"
I see golf as a game. Using carts is faster, but that spoils the walk even further. Not using carts (and carrying one's own bag) is more like exercise but I still would not consider it a sport.
I want to drag this out as long as possible. Bring me my protractor.
So is the next step to make video gaming an Olympic event? That would be sweet. Then some company could release an updated version of Summer Games or Decathalon that the gamers could compete in...
Oh how horrible.... No wait, how ROTFLable!
But I have to wonder, did they also screw the "hardcore" mineweeper community?
Put these competitions in casinos.
Each player ponies up $20 to play in, say, an 8 person game.
House gets 20%, winner gets 60%, 2nd place gets 20%
If there were only a way to wager in team games such as Warcraft III DOTA or Star Wars Empire At War, etc. things could have that little extra edge.
Cogito Ergo Sum
Nobody wants to watch other people playing Atari 2600 video games on TV. But I think there might be some interest in competitive FPS like Q1, Q3A, or CS.
You haven't seen Q3A if you haven't seen demo videos of some of the best players in the world. What these guys accomplish is borderline magic. Eg., keeping other people mid-air for a couple of seconds using only rockets and grenades is quite a rush - for the player and the spectator.
Please believe me when I say that I have done those things myself and have seen my clan mates do some mindblowing stunts.
I wouldn't under underestimate it just yet.
"All you have to do is be fragile and grateful. So stay the underdog." Chuck Palahniuk, Choke
One hurdle online gaming has to overcome is the low lifespan of each game, from my experience they tend to have a mainstream competative lifespan of about 5 years max (Starcraft being the only exception I can think of). This makes it hard to justify resources spent on promoting leagues if they're only going to last one or two seasons.
The Beast is Unleashed!
Even people with a mild interest in Street Fighter can appreciate the skill that took.
I don't play games so I have a question about how spectator friendly these games are. It seems to me that games need a way to have an outside view and hopefully one controllable by a director. Is anything like that available? Ideally I would think you'd need several controllable chase cameras that could be used to watch the action from multiple angles so that I production staff could follow the action and show replay/highlights.
This is called a "tool assisted time attack." It is done for a completely different reason than a speedrun, and shares more in common with the art of claymation than game-playing. With claymation, you are working against gravity, the heat of the lights, your own dexterity, etc. to achieve a series of "perfect", artistically representative frames. With a T-ATA, you're working against the game engine, the input ability of the emulator, and other such things to create a sequence of perfect inputs (button presses) that recreate the artistic experience in the "player"'s mind.
Tool-assisted time attacks don't actually take much devotion to accomplish; they're simply a hobby. The main factor reducing the necessity of such devotion is that, having learned the tricks and secrets of one game, it becomes much clearer and simpler to discover the same kinds of tricks and secrets in other games.
For a few of the more impressive examples of this (don't take this whole thing as a plug, please): NESVideos.
That is a decent chunk of change, but they stiffed me for dj'ing for them. I dj'd for them in Seattle over a year ago at an event in the Rainer Room and they never paid me the $150.00 they owe me for it. It was in August of 2004 and I dj'd a set for them Saturday and when I showed up Sunday they had 107.7 the end's street team there dj'ing on a puny system compared to my twin peavey 15" cabs. Since I was replaced at the last minute Lorenzo said she would pay me half, $50 for that day on top of the $100 for the previous day. Thankfully I wasn't out much more than parking money and my time. Lorenzo said she would have accounting pay me by check if I sent her an invoice. I kept sending invoices and got no response other than we will send it in two weeks. Every time it was we will send it in two weeks. I have dealt with Lorenzo, Michael Sepso and Sundance all to no avail. Voice mail messages have not been returned and they have not paid me. They paid out ~$250k in prizes or will pay that out and they can't afford to pay a dj $150!! Again, I have sent numerous emails and gotten an email from Michael Sepso saying that it would be taken care of but I have yet to recieve payment. It's not a lot of money but I really needed the money at the time and ended up having to put my dj gear in a pawnshop to pay bills.
~live life like you mean it~
Wow, so much hostility towards this idea. I've been living in South Korea for about 5 months now where they have a gaming channel, and I must say that it is quite interesting to watch, nd it is a *huge* success here. I have no doubt that given time, it will be a success in other parts of the world too. So to all the people who are saying it will fail, you will be surprised when it does do well in the US.
Tally Ho cards