RE: Video gaming as a spectator sport, and a bit of nostalgia

Former Member — Fri, 08 Feb 2013 09:30:04 GMT

Okay,

Time for a few corrections.

Lim Yo-Hwan isn't Japanese he's Korean.
Korea has been at the cutting edge of Cybersports for a number of years and the South Korean Airforce has it's own team. In fact some players have worked off their military service playing for military teams in tournaments.

It's important to note that the Starcraft tournaments you refer to in Korea are not virtual events but LAN games where opponents play the popular RTS in sealed booths while crowds watch on massive screens.

Pro Gaming dates back to the videogames rush of the 80s. The sort of arcade style tournaments rather than dying out with the steady growth of console and PC gaming have been kept alive but more as an underground scene and was reported on in Wired last year.

LAN gaming helped foster Cybersports in the nineties with titles like Quake, Doom III and Duke Nukem 3D grabbing the FPS bragging rights. However it really took off in the noughties with increased access to highspeed internet connections and while CoD BlOps II is novel Valve's Counterstrike remains the gold standard for tactical shooters. Streaming software from consoles with direct links from systems like the PS3 to YouTube are relatively new. The pick up in the PC gaming arena for built in software has been slower, mostly due to a number of free or cheap software packages being easily available for recording gameplay and the growth of Machinima (fan created movies).

In terms of competitions it is also worth checking out:

Dreamhack

The World Cyber Games
Electronic Sports League

If you want to talk about the evolution of gaming and importantly gamers away from isolated in bedrooms then the story is not from Mario to Halo. It's in the steady growth in online games, in particular the social elements of MMORPGs and more recently the growth of social games on Social Networks and mobile devices.

The tech you describe has already been easily available for a decade. The real cutting edge at where technology can take us and the how the virtual world will change how we play will likely come from augmented reality and the resurgence of Virtual Reality recently shown at this year's CES.