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Major League Gaming Has A TV Deal
Gamasutra reports that the Major League Gaming organization has signed a deal with the USA network to televise some of their competitions. From the article: "League programming, available at MLGpro.com all year long, will culminate in seven one-hour episodes that will air on the USA Network during the holiday season. In addition, the company also announced a MLG Pro Invasion Bus Tour, which will kick off in the summer and make 100 stops around the country. The Tour features MLG pros traveling across the U.S. in search of the next generation of professional gamers."
What are they smokeing...
Oh well... USA hasn't exactly had there finger on the pulse of anything but daytime reruns for years.
A fool and his money are soon parted I guess.
I don't give a damn for a man that can only spell a word one way.
Mark Twain
No longer were people satisfied with really playing sports, they play sports games. Now, we just watch other people play sports games while the restful audience slowly melts into the seat cushions to become some vile, disgusting, sentient ooze.
So how long before there's a Sportscenter-like show recapping all of the previous day's highlights? I can't wait to see the week's best pwnings!
All you need is John Romero to challenge the gaming community to be his "bitch" and every basement crawler will line up for the privilige. I wouldn't be surprised if some chick who strongly resembles Duke Nukem lay claim to the prize.
The fun in games is playing them NOT watching other people play them.
The "fun" in TV is living vicariously through other people, NOT doing something fun and interesting for yourself. While I think "major league gaming" on TV is a stupid idea, many couch potatoes across the country will have something else to watch for a minute or two as they flip channels.
24 beers in a case, 24 hours in a day. Coincidence? I think not!
I think the idea that it was signed to USA is very good. The key reason being the fact that USA is owned by NBC. This gives an avenue for gaming to cross over into major networks.
So how long until EA steps in and locks up MLG so only they can produce officially licensed video games?
The only thing I hate more than hypocrites are people who hate hypocrites.
Look at G4TV -- they have shows like Cheat (in which that cute girl talks about game cheats), and others (including ST:TNG). There's lots of shows that may appeal to us gamers, and I am glad at least G4 is trying some of them out.
Zhrodague.net - I do projects and stuff too.
Why do I get visions of MTV style garbage?
The hosts will be second teir rap starts and third teir actors.
There will be many "Bawls" jokes.
This prophesy is complete. The Oracle will now retire to the Vomitorium.
All I want to know is how much does a professional gamer expect to make in a year? One that does not 'work' for a specific gaming company. Sponserships and whatnot are different, but I wouldn't count the people who actually play games (normally by testing them) for a company on an annual salary basis. Anybody have any ideas? I'm sure the top three in the country make $500k or so a year, but is there actually a pseudo job market?
Hey, it's Monday. And a damned Oracle can spell things any way the damned Oracle feels like. Now get the hell off the holy compound!
It depends on the game. I don't want to watch people play your averge FPS for 30 minutes, that'd put me to sleep. I can't think of anything I'd gain by watching it, and it moves so fast that unless you're working the controls you probably can't follow it. I WOULD be interested in watching the really good high end guilds do some of the more complicated raids from WoW/EQ/etc. Watching that many people move in coordination is usually pretty impressive, and may help us casual types raise the bar a bit. Any idgit can do Molten Core (WoW) or Bastion of Thunder (EQ), but not anyone can do it really well.
We can all go out and play football instead of watching it, but we probably lack the coordination and teamwork the pros have from practice.
When I played Tribes 2, me and most of my teammates would sit and watch T2 recordings all of the time. We did this because we wanted to get a look at different tactics and strategies, I suspect this won't be much different.I would also listen to shoutcasts of the matches as they happened, which I found to be pretty entertaining.
But what I want to know is, why the hell do you discourage this type of development? Are the networks not trying to cater to gamers more? Would you rather them not? Bitching about shit doesn't get anything done, ever. If you want improvement, suggest them.
Tribes 2 died because of people like you, btw.
They call me the wookie man, I guess that's what I am
I'd say the same about sports, yet the NFL and NHL and NBA seem to find no shortage of viewers.
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
Okay, personally, for the most part, I think this is going to suck. Just watching someone else play from the FPS perspective, listening to some over excited basement dweller scream "OMG did you just see that!?!?"
What would be much more entertaining would be to run in like a football game. With a dozen camera operators around the level, and a production studio switching cameras, runing replays, and poping up stats windows. Then get some sports announcers to comment on the progress, and fill them up with trivia knowledge on the players, clans, levels, and games.
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
Since everything happening inside a game of, say, CS is already digital, you would have a lot more options to present useful data. Want to know how fast the one guy shot the other while they were meeting at a corner? Take the frame the first pixel appeared in the winner's viewport and subtract it from the frame he pressed the fire button from or the frame the loser's HP reached zero. Want to know at which distance the encounter happened? No more funny perspective math and guesstimates, just simple Euclidian geometry.
But maybe the problem is that western mainstream's recognition of gaming culture is, as of yet, less mature than a public CS server. As long as certain elements of society succeed in connecting violent games with the rise of the Antichrist or whatever, digital gaming will never be treated as a serious sport and thus never receive coverage worthy of a serious sport.
The grass is always greener on the other side of the light cone.
I guess I should not be in the least bit surprised an announcement regarding video gaming and television was signed to a cable station that is NOT G4.
Yes, G4 is going to be just Spike 2 in a few months. Probabably a few months to a year until all video game programming is wiped out.
... that it's not in the least bit exhilarating: Daigo's comeback KO
Now I'm not saying there's a huge market, but personally, I love watching fighting game match videos.
Gaming is different from most other pastimes in that its source material is copyrighted by someone. Nobody gets royalty payments when a football is shown on screen, but what about if Mario or Lara Croft are?
There are a couple of possibilities here.. either game publishers can get paid for their work being featured, or they can consider it free advertising and give it up for free or (more likely) sponsor the competition somehow.
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I love the fact that people are screaming how boring this would be to watch? Has anybody watched 7 card hold'em - how popular is that when the content is 10x as boring. It is all about editing the content down to bite size exciting scenes. I for one would love to see some CS matches from the best players in world on TV (yes i know you can download matches).
The entry barrier to playing sport is a lot higher than turning on the computer.
Also with sport you're watching something real, that's actually happening, that depends on your own body and the laws of physics, not some pixels that with the flick of a switch could completely vanish, based on arbitrary rules that could be changed with a single update or sequel.
Imagine if every few years, the rules of football were changed, so the field went from 100 to 200 yards, the ball was made three times lighter and four times longer, the laws of gravity and momentum changed, and the number of players double or halfed. Some people played the old game, and some people played the new game. And every now and again some 'patch' came up so that a few games here and there had different rules. No-one would bother watching it, let alone working out what the rules of the week are.
Most video games sell at most 5 million copies, capping the number of fans around 20 million. If the networks have the option of airing sports with a potential 50 million fans or 20 million, you're going to have a hard time convincing them to go after the smaller market.
I've played a lot of games, but I don't plan on watching on TV. It'd be like watching chess without the suspense. There is just no way to make it into good TV. It might be another thing to sit with my pals and enjoy watching two of them duke it out at some game we all like, because I know I'll get my chance at the winner, but I have no interest in watching people I don't know play video games.
"Tribes 2 died because of people like you, btw."
And here I am, thinking it was because the damn thing would never properly run on my computer, even after applying an endless series of patches.
Bill Clinton: Pimp we can believe in. - The Shirt!!!
Hate to tell you but G4 is gotten rid of most of its gaming roots. The survivers from before the merger are X-Play and Attack of the Show ( which really isn't a surver but what "The Screen Saver" mutated into). The CEO in charge of the merger was fired because ratings are horrible and new management brought in to clean up the mess. The new management has no intrest in reviving any TechTV or game based format. No one is intrested in a format that will get eyes away from the format, ( in plain english TV competes with console games, you can do only one at a time. If the TV tells you to play games you have to stop watching TV.) It is NOT like watching a show about movies because those are review shows in which you watch TV to help you decied what movie to see. At that point you have already decided to watch a movie but are using TV to help decide which one, so TV tries to recapture you for 1/2 hour of reviews. X-Play might survive because of this. They aren't tell you to playing games so much as telling you which games to play. There is nothing in X-Play to get one excited to play games, but watching footage of people playing will get you excited, you will turn on the XBox/PS2/GC/360 and play. You will also be no longer watching TV and thus they will have LOST viewers, not gained. Losing views means losing advertisers, which means NO MONEY. Face it, Gaming TV is DEAD! Perhaps a game based network might make it as IPTV but never as a traditional TV network.
Why? two reasons...
1. Only two games as far as I can tell from the website will be played; Super Smash Bros. Melee and Halo 2
2. From the FAQ at the site."Why doesn't MLG have tournaments for PC games?"
Major League Gaming is a competitive console gaming league. There are a huge number of other leagues and tournaments for PC games. As such, MLG does not stand to gain much by holding tournaments for PC games. With exception to fighting games, which are historically considered arcade games, competitive console gaming is relatively new, and MLG is a pioneer in that part of the industry. Competitive console gaming is also open to everybody, as it has a lower barrier to entry as compared to competitive PC gaming, in which those who have the funds necessary to purchase the latest hardware can have a rather significant hardware-based advantage over others.
In other words it's going to be joke!
When I start to see Ladders to a playoff for different types of games (FPS, RTS, or ideally a game with a combination of the two, for example Battlefield 2) which encourage cooperative, strategic play with teams. Why not model the game play to be broadcast like the most successful sports programs on tv today? e.g. real football or soccer game. You have a coach/s giving direction and the over all strategy to the game being played (RTS), and the team members executing the strategy given by coach by it's players working as team (FPS). Then to be able to watch, comment, critique and enjoy watching the teams strategy and game play as they face off, again just like a real sports broadcast. Only then do I see something of this caliber take off to become successful, and not watching 15 sec clips of a players game then 20 mins of background side stories about the players
Sig
The entry barrier to sport is generally lower than video games, financially speaking. A set of sporting clothes, a bat and a ball can be had for way less cash than a high-end gaming PC.
The entry barrier to the pro leagues, as far as skills are concerned, is the same for both--you need to be one in a few hundred thousand, at least.
You apparently aren't aware that sports rules and physics have changed arbitrarily over the years. One of the big debates in baseball is over the fact that the change of materials used for bat and ball over the years has altered the balance of the game. Similarly, tennis has become a lot more boring, with fewer long rallies, since racket technology led to ever faster balls. Formula 1 racing has rules that have been revised arbitrarily on numerous occasions.
And of course, America made up its own 'football', arbitrarily changing the game completely from that played in other countries--and most play the old games, not the new one. College football and NFL football have arbitrarily different overtime rules. In 2001, the NBA arbitrarily changed the rules of basketball to allow zone defense. And so on.
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
I have no interest in watching other people play video games. I have no interest in watching other people play sports.
My point wasn't that watching either of them was interesting; rather, that the same arguments for boringness applied to both, and that in spite of how we both feel about them being completely uninteresting, there are plenty of people who disagree.
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
...a simulation of an afternoon over your annoying cousin's house as a kid who would never let you play his video games, but instead insisted you watch him instead...
How did they know what I wanted?
Judges and senates have been bought for gold; Esteem and love were never to be sold.
I'd say the US is more than ready for gaming TV.
I wouldn't be suprised if it's a smashing success for advertisers. For gaming ads, you couldn't hope for a better concentration of the target market. Virtually everyone who sits down to watch MLG Halo 2 matches on this show will be a Halo 2 player. The same will go for whatever other games MLG runs tournies for.
You apparently aren't aware that sports rules and physics have changed arbitrarily over the years.
Yet the laws of physics and human physiology, and the general object of the game, have remained constant. In a computer game, all that changes with a single patch.
And of course, America made up its own 'football', arbitrarily changing the game completely from that played in other countries--and most play the old games, not the new one.
Those changes have taken centuries. In the computer game world, games are released and outdated within a year, replaced by something completely different. It'd be like if every season, the NFL decided to revert to a spherical or rectangular ball, a triangular or ovular pitch, goalposts half the size, and played the game in a zero g environment with laser guns.
Those are the sorts of change we're talking about. I can't think of a single computer game which was popular fifty years ago, and is played today with pretty much the same rules, objectives and physics.
...so long as you show stuff that is entertaining not just to the hard core gamers but to the masses as well.
Like Daigo Umehara parrying out of certain death
Endless? They ended quite abruptly if I remember correctly. There were many factors, I'm sorry I lead you to think otherwise. But at one point in time there were a few hundred who played competitively (these people were able to run the game)
They call me the wookie man, I guess that's what I am
The physics of baseball changed; the objectives of basketball changed.
And the response is, so what? Reality TV shows are launched and outdated within a year, but millions of people still watch them. People still watch the Olympics, even though sports are regularly cut from the list and new ones added. Football supporters will watch the finals even though completely different teams play every year. People like variety.
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak