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Is Gaming Really a Spectator Sport?
njkid1 passed us a link to a GameDaily article on the upcoming DirecTV Championship Game series. There's big prize money at stake, dozens of teams are flocking to the banner of the event, and promoters are talking the event up as something that can't be missed. All of this begs the question: Is competitive gaming a spectator sport? Is the culture of videogaming conducive to mass-market entertainment? Will Counter-Strike matches draw enough of a crowd to maintain advertiser interest at future events? What's your read on this new entry into American gamer culture?
A lot has to do with how the event is presented to the person's interested.
1. Firstly, you really need people that are interested in the sport. If there are 5 people that still play doom, it may not be the best candidate for a media event.
2. Once you have a loyal throng of fanbois just waiting to absorb all the godliness of the event, you still need to present the event in a way that attracts them to it.
A very classic example of how NOT to present sports coverage was when Fox started to broadcast hockey. If there are any Hockey fans out there, you know what kind of unmitigated disaster that was. The camera work was bad, the glowing puck was really annoying and it just didn't have the same feel that more traditional hockey broadcasters had already learned to do right (at least in Canada, eh?).
Find a format that people seem to like. Be flexible in the beginning allowing for glaring problems that fans may have. Once you get that winning format, tighten it up so that people watching from event to event will feel comfortable with how the program flows. This will go a long way in encouraging existing viewers to tune in again, and it allows those viewers to effectively talk about whats going on without them having to second guess themselves.
3. Choose your medium carefully
Can anyone here see a problem with video game championhips being broadcasted over the internet? Wouldn't one assume that it is: 1. cheaper, 2. reachable by nearly 100% of anyone that would care to watch it anyways.
Just putting it on the idiot box doesn't automatically make the event any more attractive to watch. I tuned into the spike VG awards one time and I couldn't watch 5 minutes of it before being so repulsed I had to kill it. It just seems that the plain text end-of-year awards on web pages holds my attention longer than their monkey show.
Thats about all I have to say about that. In conclusion, yes it -can- be a good idea, but make damn sure that what you're selling is something that your fans would actually watch.
Bye!
I've done competitive gaming for Counter-Strike and Counter-Strike: Source (currently in the Cyberathlete Amateur League Invite division for CS:S), and I believe that its proven that gaming can be a spectator sport. I've watched big matches via SourceTV, seen them broadcasted with commentators over the Internet through sites like http://www.egln.net/, http://www.source-radio.net/, and http://www.fragtv.net/ and have been seen spectators in the triple digits connected to the same medium to watch that match. However, I know that almost all of these are gamers, and most play that specific game itself. While that's somewhat true of real spectator sports (almost all sport spectators have played one sport or another in a league, and a lot of football fans at one time played football), it not nearly as extreme. Thus, there's a lot larger market for real life sports. Not to mention that watching real life sports can be social, such as going out to a ballpark with friends or even watching the big game around a TV. Watching e-sports over the net on your computer, even sitting in a voice chat with your friends who also are watching, isn't all that social. Also, you usually have to be pretty involved in that game to truly appreciate the depths of a team and the skill of the players. On the other hand, gaming has many of the same fundamentals of what make popular pro sports good spectator sports. Take a game such as Counter-Strike: Source at the top levels. You have a strat caller (quarterback) that calls plays at the start of a round and audibles during a round, you have AWPers (flashy like homerun hitters), assault riflers (get the job done, like grinders in hockey or like playmakers that set things up), and even managers that handle all the out of game operations and sponsorships. Teams also need strong teamwork, chemistry, and a good playbook to be great at the top level, just like pro sports teams won't do well with just a collection of skill (i.e. Detroit Red Wings). The potential is there for gaming to become spectator oriented, but due to the limited scope and diversity (Quake isn't anything like Starcraft and likely won't share many spectators) it won't become huge like real life sports. Even without massive spectators, professional gaming will exist due to the ability of sponsors to concentrate on some pretty specific demographics. If you look at current gaming sponsors, its pretty easy to get a big return on a small investment advertising your hardware, new games, delivery food, energy drinks, LAN center, etc. to gamers and their spectators.