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Pro Gaming - EXTRA CREDITS
WildEEP
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
Sorry - the Thread Title messed up:
Xtra credits talked about the failure of pro-gaming catching on. Does anyone else feel that they did not address the point that gaming is still got a negative attachment from a vast section of the baby boomer population?
Xtra credits talked about the failure of pro-gaming catching on. Does anyone else feel that they did not address the point that gaming is still got a negative attachment from a vast section of the baby boomer population?
WildEEP on
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It's perfectly OK for the Fantasy Football playing - buys Madden every year gamer to get his football fix, but those World of Warcraft people are all mommy's basement dwellers.
And vice versa.
Hell, my Steam account is worth nearly $2000 and I think pro StarCraft gaming is idiotic.
PSN: Beltaine-77 | Steam: beltane77 | Battle.net BadHaggis#1433
I dunno, Let's Plays seem pretty popular.*
>.>
*I know this isn't what you're referring to.
I think MLG is the stupidest thing ever.
Until that day comes, "pro" gamers can suck it up and deal with my apathy.
I remember watching some of the MLG WoW arena "coverage," and it was just awful and annoying. The people they had covering it obviously didn't know the specifics of what was going on, were bad at explaining the things they did understand, and just weren't very proficient at being "sports" commentators. The only "cameras" they had were the actual players' viewpoints that didn't really give a great idea of what was going on in the match at a particular moment.
It was really hard for me to see what would keep you interested if you weren't already a high-end arena player, and if you were a high-end player you might as well just watch youtube videos because lord knows the MLG production wasn't adding anything.
that's why we call it the struggle, you're supposed to sweat
Games are fun to watch if you know what's going on. Having commentary that is informative without being ridiculous is a big key to that. A lot of the fighting game streams I watch are irritating because the commentators are so damn impressed with themselves and how funny they are that they suck a lot of the fun out of the match. Much like they talk about in Extra Credits, you could film an entire hourlong special for G4 by going to a single tournament and filming the proceeds. Then, when you air it, make sure to interview the players about their strategies and just show the most interesting matches. Also, have a host who isn't an idiot.
twitch.tv/Taramoor
@TaramoorPlays
Taramoor on Youtube
They even have announcers calling some of the higher profile pro races here and there, and have done things like taking the top iRacing driver and putting him in a real race car.
That said, it's such a special case that it's not really relevant.
edit: they also have readymade stars in the real drivers that use iRacing to learn tracks / stay sharp / have fun without all the stress of racing for real.
There are also sponsored teams. Most of this stuff happened after I more or less backed out due to time constraints. I just run solo laps when I feel like it now, so I'm not too up on what's happening in the larger community.
The same goes for people who play sports. If you're good at football or baseball or whatever the most popular sport is at the moment, but you're helpless the moment someone puts you on a horse and hands you a mallet, you're not a real athlete.
that's why we call it the struggle, you're supposed to sweat
Why, may I ask?
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As more games come out that have a focus on spectator gaming, it'll grow. It also has possibilities that tradition spectator sports do not have, such as viewers each having a client where they can look anywhere they want during the game.
Whether or not it'll even reach the broad success that sports has, I dunno. But I see little reason to doubt that it'll succeed on some level.
COD could be interesting, but I think most of the time they heavily restrict the game and strip it down to Famas V Famas. Boring. I want to see that madcap action. It doesn't lend itself to live commentary either. With some video editing it could work fine afterward.
Because both these games have the ability built into them to be spectated and edited, they make good candidates for pro gaming broadcast. Most games don't have these features built in, so they would not be very good to watch. The limited viewpoint wouldn't lend itself to the experience. The more they make it like sports varying viewpoints and replays the more watchable it will be.
but they're listening to every word I say
I agree. That was one part of the video I thought they could expand on more. I find it pretty jarring and not very interesting to watch (for example) someone play an FPS. But, if I could watch the entire game from a top-down view like it was a football game or a game like Starcraft, where I can see all the players' movements and the progressions of the teams themselves? Much more interesting.
The big problems are that producers of Pro-Gaming as Televised Entertainment only infrequently stumble upon how to hook an audience. They often get too caught up in explaining how the game works, over and over again, things that never happen in broadcasts of Football, Basketball, Baseball, Tennis, etc. Sure, there are discussions of the rules (as they are broken) and techniques in play (as they are executed) but for the most part, that stuff is left for the viewer to glean on their own, either via context or study. So a lot of the commentary/focus is already wasted, and the broadcast becomes something closer to a documentary rather than a sporting event. On the opposite side of this are commentators who obfuscate the techniques/rules even further than normal by applying slang terminologies to the exclusion of almost everything else. On top of further confusing the audience, it adds a level of annoyance on top of the general frustration.
Also - people only RARELY take the time to give a reason why you should either root for or against somebody. The players of these games DO have personalities, and their strategies can be painted as ruthless, mercenary, honorable, fair - all the sorts of things that cause rivalries and passions in a viewer. Often, that stuff is either given minor consideration, or completely whitewashed so as to make EVERYONE in the game look like nice, clean-cut, polite young men.
Giving the audience the benefit of an omniscient viewpoint of the contest, helping them to understand what they're seeing with knowledgeable but plain-spoken commentary, infusing the contest with an element of honest emotion and focusing less on the game and more on what the game means to the people playing it needs to happen WAY more consistently for gaming to become a more widely accepted form of programming.
Geek: Remixed - A Decade's worth of ruined pop culture memories
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Look at say, Starcraft. We see the cliffs and barriers and say "OK, you can't go over there unless you are X or Y" conversely a non-gamer looks at it and then looks at the Terran Marine or whatever and says "Why doesn't that guy climb up that cliff?"
It's a problem of presentation. In sports, you aren't allowed to cross the white line or whatever, it doesn't matter that you could since the rules ban it. In gaming, it isn't that you aren't allowed, but that you can't. And things being unable to do things which people think they should be able to do because they 'can't' do them doesn't make sense. The game's very graphics and realism serve as a weapon against it. Maybe starcraft would be a better spectator sport played on a green field with white "don't cross" lines.
Also, I definately agree on the lack of engagement or rivalries. You need to have a favorite player in a real sport, or to root for one side or the other.
I don't think you pay attention to the League of Legends competitive scene. There is an intense rivalry between NA and Europe, and between the best NA teams.
"Orkses never lose a battle. If we win we win, if we die we die fightin so it don't count. If we runs for it we don't die neither, cos we can come back for annuver go, see!".
Let 'em eat fucking pineapples!
COD?! Can you Imagine Battlefield 3? I really think there's a market for televised FPS matches in war games. With the rich spectator environment and now we have fully destructible worlds, vehicles, and top notch graphics. Plus with two 32-man teams vying for control of objectives on a map you'd have high level strategic gameplay plus low level tactical gameplay when it came to squads. You'd get the best of RTS and twitch in one go. I am surprised no one has done this already, someone ought to, post-haste! ;p
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I don't think that's as big a barrier as a lot of gamers (and producers of gaming entertainment) think. Football & Hockey, I think, are WAY more complicated than Starcraft. I mean, you can laugh at that (I've heard em before) but that doesn't prevent new fans from climbing on all the time. It's not about the complication of the game, its giving people who are watching a reason to KEEP watching until they've soaked up how/why the game works. It's a question of trusting the audience, and a lot of gamers/gaming producers simply don't trust the audience to suss out what's going on - and so they either spend too much time overexplaining the mechanics, or they go the other way and completely abandon the audience to shorthand and slang.
So far as the visual aspect goes, with FPS' I really think the only way that gets solved is by going to the manufacturers themselves and having a special version of the game used FOR tournaments solely, that plays exactly the same as the retail version of the game, but gives producers and such access to a view-only mode that allows them to manipulate the camera like any other sports director would have access to the cameras ringing the stadium.
Geek: Remixed - A Decade's worth of ruined pop culture memories
Xbox Live - Fatboy PDX
The problem is that a viewer loses a sense of the action. If you see, from a non-first person view, something interesting happen, like 1 guy taking down 3 guys, most people are going to think, "I wish I could have seen exactly what he did to take on 3 guys by himself." But in a strictly first-person view you need a very good camera guy or you lose even more of the action when the viewpoint player isn't involved. This is why I think duels would be the best for spectators, but no modern fps has duels.
There have been experiments with multiple view demos, but that involves a lot more work for the viewers.
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Why would I want to watch someone play Madden, when I could just, you know, watch real football?
Another reason I think that Pro-Gaming isn't as watcher friendly is that it's always changing. There's always new games, updated graphics, different systems they're played on etc. So say someone gets into watching competitive LoL, well that's great, but in a year, it may not be there; it may be replaced by a completely different game, or just have interest in it die out, and the focus on pro-gaming has switched to a completely different genre of game.
When was the last time the MLB said, "You know these rules suck, and the balls are unbalanced, lets change everything up; add some new "character", how about the out field unicycler; anytime the unicycler catches a ball and remains on the unicycle it counts for 2 outs instead of one." etc.
I think there are many reasons why gaming won't ever become a mainstream spectator event; but I think the biggest reason is it's an ever changing medium, which doesn't really lend itself IMO to a mainstream spectator venue.
To me, expecting all games to make the transition to tv is naive, just like expecting all sports to be equally compelling is naive. Some stuff just doesn't work. I think fighting games have a much easier time of making the transition because its easy enough to grasp the basic mechanics, and that can translate from game to game within that genre. FPS a little less, but it can be managed, depending on whether the directors are good at keeping viewers oriented. That takes a completely different skill than just staring at 2 dudes on a 2d plane throwing fireballs at each other. Even if the access to simultaneous in-game cameras on one control panel were readily available, you still have to know who to cut to, when to cut , and how to introduce graphic assistance without being distracting.
Geek: Remixed - A Decade's worth of ruined pop culture memories
Xbox Live - Fatboy PDX
I found a youtube channel that has some examples of iRacing broadcasts. There is a bit of a gap in terms of broadcaster skill and definitely in camera work, but watching this is basically the same experience of watching the real Nationwide race at Road Atlanta.
StarCraft approached this level. Maybe Halo.