Though CBS broadcast outtakes from the World Series of Video Games during the late morning hours on Sunday when everyone is presumably at church (or in Miami Beach, just waking up), the idea of having video game competitions telecast as a sort of pseudo sport is exciting.
Graffiti Wall Rumor Monger reports that Rob Correa, senior vice president for programming at CBS Sports, told the New York Times that in 10 years time this will be seen as a “significant moment”.
He said that there are an enormous amount of people of all ages who play video games these days, so CBS wanted to see if video games’ popularity could translate into a viable television audience.
Popularity in video games has been boosted by the Internet and skill game providers such as SkillGround.com
There are also an enormous number of people who paint their own houses so soon paint drying might also become prime time viewing.
But, one thing that will not be seen are violent shooting games like Halo and Quake. Apparently CBS says that only relatively tame games would suffice. It might put punters off the boxing.
Like with online poker, potentially the competition could start seeking qualifiers via the Internet.
The World Series of Video Games, or WSVG for short, is an international professional electronic sports competition. It held its first season in 2006, with competitions in six different games and six events held around the world including the finals of the event.
The total prize purse of the season was 750,000 USD which includes the 240,000 dollar prize purse that was winnable at the finals. The WSVG is operated by Games Media Properties, an American gaming company founded in 2002.
The total prize purse of the 2007 series will be 574,000 USD, of which 175,000 will be winnable at the finals of the event which will take place at the world’s biggest LAN party, Dreamhack in Sweden (November 29 - December 2).
The series are partially regarded as the continuation of the one million dollar 2005 CPL World Tour, as one of the founders of the WSVG as well as the major sponsor (Intel) of the tour left the Cyberathlete Professional League to help find these series.
WSVG’s second season features Fight Night Round 3, Guitar Hero 2, Quake 4 and World of Warcraft as main circuit games. Counter-Strike, Warcraft III, Call of Duty 2 and Gears of War will also make appearances at a number of events.
The circuit’s total prize purse will be 574,000 USD, there will also be travel funds made available to a number of high finishing participants[15].
Famous professional gamers such as Johan ‘Toxic’ Quick, ‘Jang ‘Moon’ Jae Ho, Manuel ‘Grubby’ Schenkhuizen, Sander ‘vo0′ Kaasjager & Li ‘Sky’ Xiaofeng have already announced their intend to attend the first stop or are widely expected to compete in their respective games.
