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World Series of Video Games Cancelled
Goobergunch writes "The official site for the World Series of Videogames is now indicating that the WSVG, including planned events in Los Angeles, London and Sweden, has been cancelled. The WSVG included competitions for Guitar Hero II, Quake 4, World of Warcraft Arena, as well as Counter-Strike and Warcraft III. From the announcement: 'The continuing challenges of securing adequate revenues to sustain the production of the WSVG's large scale events and television programming, in a very crowded field of competitive gaming leagues, has prompted us to re-evaluate our direction as an organization. Unfortunately, the decision is to cancel the remainder of the WSVG season, as we shift our focus solely to growing our online advertising network of websites, which currently reach seven million users each month. '"
As if thousand of gamers who sucked at sports cried out and where then silenced
Ask not what you can do for your country. Ask what your country did to you
Why not make it more like the World Series of Poker tour where people show up at a venue and pay a fee that goes towards the total pot and the profit or the organization and they sell the TV rights to some cable network and or go halves on the ad revenue.
This should come as absolutely no surprise to anyone. The WSVG was insultingly dumbed-down and content-free ("Wow! Was that an ice block?!?"). I'm a semi-serious WoW player, and my friends and I all found their arena coverage to be completely devoid of any meaningful content. I realize that their aim was to attract a wider range of viewers, but "normal people" don't give a rat's ass about competitive videogaming (and probably never will in the US), and people who do care would probably prefer coverage and analysis from people who have actually played the games before.
Just look at the judging methodology for the Guitar Hero competition: ten points each for style, technical correctness and difficulty, each determined by a single judge. Two of the three judges were D-list celebrities who had probably never even played Guitar Hero. The extensive statistics provided by the game after each song were completely ignored in the decision process. The whole thing was structured much more like an episode of Nickelodeon GUTS than a serious competition designed to determine the best player.
The 2:1 commercial-to-programming ratio couldn't have helped, either.
In short, the whole thing was a commercially oversaturated, content-starved mess; I'd like back the hour of my life that I spent watching it, and no one will be the least bit sad to see it go.