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Does Professional Gaming Have a Future?
mr_sifter writes "Three years ago, celebrity gamers such as Fatal1ty were bagging millions in prizes, and TV channels were queuing up to broadcast games on TV. Professional gaming looked set for the big time. It never happened, and in the current economic crisis, sponsors and media organizations are cutting costs, resulting in the closure of many pro gaming competitions (as we recently discussed) and a down-scaling in prize money. This feature looks at whether pro gaming can bounce back, and whether it will always be a PC sport, or if pro gaming on consoles is the future."
The economy is pretty bad and will take a long time to get fixed. When it is fixed, it's not going to be anything like the free ride a lot of people were used to in the past decade.
Pro gaming isn't going to be the only area. I expect actors and pro athletes to take a hit too.
Does it make sense to pay someone millions of dollars to play a game or pretend to be someone else in front of a camera while millions are losing their homes and jobs?
Take pro sports. Where do they make their money? Well. One way is selling tickets to games. But ticket prices have been soaring. Here's a historical look at Yankee ticket prices. It's really insane to think a box seat goes for $250 after season ticket discounts. That's just not something a lot of people are going to be able to justify. Same goes for merchandise.
Another way that sports franchises make money is through advertising. Both in the venue, on tv and through endorsements. Many people are spending less. They either don't have the income they used to have or they need to save more to cover the losses in their savings and retirement plans. It doesn't matter who endorses that new toy/car/carpet/whatever. People will be buying less. That means less money is going to be spent on advertising and we already started seeing advertising budgets cut.
The economy grew too high, too fast with nothing to support it. The current administration and previous administration kept pumping money into the system to keep it from collapsing. That can't go on forever. We're not going to recover from it. The best we can hope is that all this money that is being printed is being used in a way that will go into new industries that can help fill the void all these scammers created.
Dual Opteron < $600
Piloting drones for the military, or one of those rovers on the moon or another planet, or submersibles used for underwater repairs or construction or treasure hunting, or robots that work with bombs or hazardous materials, and things like that. It's not professional gaming, but gaming will prepare you for those jobs at least as well as anything else will
Just imagine... professional porn watching, and you can tune in and watch your favorite porn watchers watch porn. And, the professional stamp collector watching channel - exciting action, watching those philatelists lick hinges. Why, soon EVERY leisure activity can be a spectator sport. Watch people read the latest exciting novels, watch them watch movies. Watch people watching people watching people watch TV!
Hey here's an idea for a new show - Guitar Hero Hero Hero! Watch someone pretend to watch someone pretend to play guitar!
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The Spike Channel is trying to capitalize on this with the show "Ultimate Gamer". I saw one episode and the show seems more like MTV's Real World than any real gaming competition. While that kind of show doesn't appeal to me, I think I can see what they are trying to do. How do you create a delivery system around a game that makes it interesting to watch? With sports you can go to the field or watch it on TV and in either circumstance you are watching something that is dynamic that engages your attention. However, with video games, all the action is on a screen whose images are usually suited for only viewing one side of what's going on (Blue Team only, or Red Team only). There are way to switch back and forth between the players, but that hardly is smooth. Also I don't know about you but watching my friends play Halo 3 is nowhere near as fun as watching a ball game.
But I think it will take a leap forward in culture and technology before eSports takes off (a generation or so) when gaming is seen as something normal that most everybody does,
Why a generation or so? In my age bracket (40-50), the oddball is someone who does not play computer games of some sort.
The "problem" (as I see it) is the medium. How much has baseball (for example) changed in the last 50 years? Only a tiny handful of outdoor sports have gained enough popularity over the centuries to become viable professional sports.
The closest thing to a timeless computer game I've encountered is Rogue/Nethack. It is boring as hell to watch someone else play. As much I like World of Warcraft, there is no way I would pay to watch someone play it and all of the videos (with maybe one exception[1]) are fairly tedious to watch.
Your other comments are pretty much spot-on, this one, I think, is off.
[1] The video of the dwarf knocking people off a bridge in a battleground with hard packed snowballs was funny, but not sport.