After months of build-up the remnants of England’s golden generation are taking their final shot at world cup glory. Rio’s out, Rooney’s fit and now only five more games stand between us and the Jules Rimet trophy.
The final is expected to attract around 350 million viewers across the globe. But how many of them would happily sit through the final of a StarCraft tournament? The answer: not many. In fact most people haven’t even heard of StarCraft, a real-time strategy game for the PC.
In South Korea, however, StarCraft is quite simply a phenomenon. Three TV channels offer dedicated coverage of the game. Each night millions of fans crack open a cold one and settle into the sofa to watch top players going head-to-head. Tournaments are broadcast from one of the country’s two gaming stadiums, filled to the rafters with cheering fans.
These giants of the professional gaming scene have a level of fame comparable to that of a premiership footballer in the UK. They train for 8 hours or more each day, and earn hundreds of thousands of pounds in sponsorship deals and prize money. They are adored by the public. Groupies follow them everywhere. It’s pretty much every teenage boy’s idea of paradise.
So could competitive video gaming, or eSports as it’s commonly known, ever become a popular spectator sport here? Will an England squad of pro-gamers one day inspire a slew of rubbish pop songs harking back to their lone 2066 victory in the World Cyber Games?
Valiant attempts are certainly being made to convince The Great British Public that a game of Fifa 10 on the PS3 can be just as fun to watch as the real thing. A dedicated eSports channel, Xleague.TV, was launched on Sky in May 2007. The team behind it hoped to create homegrown gaming celebrities similar to those found in South Korea. But unfortunately XLeague.TV failed to set the world on fire and stopped broadcasting last year.
The failure of Xleague.TV is yet another example of the difficult relationship between video games and television. Since the demise of GamesMaster most programming has been lacklustre at best, at worst downright embarrassing. And if broadcasters can’t make a popular news and reviews show, the chances of them turning eSports into a mainstream spectator activity seem slim.
Still that’s not to say it’s impossible. Millions of people of all ages now play video games on a regular basis, and with the excellent graphical capabilities of the current crop of consoles and PCs, watching a skilled person play can be entertaining in its own right. So while the Xleague.TV channel may be no more, it probably won’t be the last attempt to turn video games into a spectator sport. After all, it’s got to be easier than getting the US to watch football.
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John Baker
I most certainly will not watch this event, nor any such.
I am sick to my back teeth with the endless dribble of sport and the bores that it represents.
There is more to life than running roeund in circles and/ or chasing a ball.
As for the BBC! Words cannot express the contempt I hold for this organisation that gloats when a train or two are late and then goes and throws away it’s own timetables and schedules in order to pander to this minority of morons who just sit on their tails and gaze at these idiots performing.
Dosen’t the trades description act have a reference to goods not being of the quality and as described being a procecutable offence?