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Gaming Tourneys Coming to U.S. Television 119

Posted by Zonk from the part-of-the-nightly-news dept.
greig writes "DirecTV is aiming to bring to the states what the South Koreans have been enjoying for years: regular broadcasts of videogaming tournaments. Games at the first tournament were Battlefield 2, Counterstrike 1.6, Halo 2, Project Gothem Racing and Dead or Alive 4. The initial broadcasts of the exhibition invitational are on the free DirecTV channel 101 this weekend. Is this the first step to escalating videogames to the status of the X-Games and poker?" Taken from the about section: "The Championship Gaming Series will launch as a league starting 2007; however, in 2006, we will broadcast 3 television events: Championship Gaming Invitational, the Cyberathlete Professional League (CPL) Winter Finals and an event that will be announced shortly."
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Gaming Tourneys Coming to U.S. Television More

Gaming Tourneys Coming to U.S. Television

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  • Not long now guys, warm up your Shock rifles. (Score:5, Informative)

    by LiquidCoooled ( 634315 ) on Sunday September 10, 2006 @05:39AM (#16074953) Homepage Journal
    In 2291, in an attempt to control violence among deep space miners the New Earth Government legalized no-holds-barred fighting.

    Liandri Mining Corporation, working with the NEG, established a series of leagues and bloody public exhibitions.

    The fight's popularity grew with their brutality. Soon, Liandri discovered that the public matches were their most profitable enterprise.

    The professional league was formed; a cabal of the most violent and skilled warriors in known space, selected to fight in a Grand Tournament.

    Now it is 2341, 50 years have passed since founding of DeathMatch. Profits from the Tournament number in the hundreds of billions.

    You have been selected to fight in the professional league by the Liandri Rules Board. Your strength and brutality are legendary.

    The time has come to prove you are the best; to crush your enemies; to win the Tournament.

    • Re:Not long now guys, warm up your Shock rifles. (Score:5, Funny)

      by DJHewi1025 ( 892912 ) on Sunday September 10, 2006 @05:50AM (#16074965)
      Best first post ever. Although.... what's funny about calling the gamers cyberathletes is you are gonna see one kid that's about 500 lbs. Now, that's just effing funny.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Raenex ( 947668 )

      And here's a YouTube link:

      Unreal Tournament Intro [youtube.com]

  • Is there really a market for this? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by hine_uk ( 783556 ) on Sunday September 10, 2006 @05:52AM (#16074970)
    Does anyone see a market for this sort of event? Gaming - a predominantly solo event (yes we can argue that it is 'social' when gaming online but thats another discussions) does not lend itself well to passive viewing. Isnt this one of the main arguements as to why gamers (myself included) claim that it takes consumer entertainment to a different level? Because unlike television where the viewer sits there; the gamer is immersing him (or her) self in the game world and experience and is the catalyst rather than the recepticle.

    Look at LAN parties, do you see people sat back watching the action in large numbers? No, instead everyone sees that Dust is on and jumps into the action. Games just arent fun to watch.

    To me it just doesnt seem like entertainment, I dont want to watch other people play games I want to play it myself - thats what games are for.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by kswtch ( 790406 )
      i don't see a market here but there is a regular esports broadcast [www.giga.de] in germany for some time now. Looks like there are at least a few people out there interested in observing gamers and how they play the game.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by omeg ( 907329 )
      Seen as how this is already a million-dollar industry in Korea, with multiple TV channels airing matches 24/7, and a gigantic amount of money being spent on sponsoring and merchandise, don't you think that perhaps the old-fashioned belief that games are "just to be played" is a fallacy?

      • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

        by hine_uk ( 783556 )
        Granted Korea has a large market for this sort of televised event with particular emphasis on games (if memory serves correct) as Starcraft and its vein being one of them.

        There is also the possible connection to real life sports. But that is what I base this on. Real life sports can be an entertaining event to watch with people physically battling it out on a real life arena.

        When the entire event is virtual it loses alot of the lure to be an enticing live event. Sure in one country it has a following but is

        • Re:Is there really a market for this? (Score:5, Informative)

          by Txiasaeia ( 581598 ) on Sunday September 10, 2006 @11:15AM (#16075735)
          I just arrived in South Korea two weeks ago from Canada, so perhaps I'm in a position to comment. I was shocked to see that my cable package included not one, but two games dedicated to PC gaming. One of these channels shows StarCraft games 24/7. Believe it or not, it's actually entertaining to watch these Korean kids duke it out in SC: there's no turtling, no slow and ponderous building of bases, but a fast-paced, exciting game in which both players execute multiple faints, ripostes, hit-and-run attacks, and finally the crushing defeat when one player's last nexus or hive comes crashing down. They usually don't go on for too long, but it's fascinating to see the dexterity and skill of these players. It's also very interesting to see reaction shots from the players when one of their strategies is foiled by their opponents, or when they mop up that last straggler on the map.

          It's very, very interesting to watch. I'm not into StarCraft in a big way, but I can stand to watch a few games per week. I never thought I'd enjoy watching live games of a video game, but once you take in a few, it's hard not to see the appeal.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by symbolic ( 11752 )
            I used to watch warcraft replays all the time - and those of other games - like Rise of Nations (I think that was it). I found watching good players to be quite intriguing- especially embracing the notion that "it's not over 'til it's over." I've seen some great comebacks that didn't seem at all likely based on how the game was progressing. Good stuff.
          • You make it sound a lot more exciting than I expected. We had a channel or two here on our digital cable (chicagoland) that played game tournaments a bunch. The tournaments were usually some fps, and it was probably the worst few minutes of TV I've ever seen.

            It sounds like Starcraft is much better, but I guess that makes sense since the visualization of strategy games like that is much easier to digest. Personally, I can't stand fps games because it's just too much too fast, with too little time to think
          • I think this highlights a key point: skill.

            My roommate and I were chatting last night about why G4 sucks so badly that you're now much more likely to find Arrested Development, Fastlane, or Star Trek being shown than anything game related. I claimed that it's not *that* difficult to construct an interesting game channel... as long as you sprinkle "hardcore" gamers around... instead of the gaping void that G4 is unaware of. Now, by hardcore, I don't mean people who love get drunk and spew racial epithets

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Squapper ( 787068 )
      To me, watching soccer doesn't seam like entertainment. Look at when a couple of kids are kicking ball at the school yard, do you see people watching the action? No, those who are interrested in the game wants to jump in too.

      However, i DO enyoy watching Starcraft matches, to learn from the masters and to watch spectacular moves. There's definitely a market for theese events, perhaps even a bigger market than for minor sports like tennis or pool.
    • "Does anyone see a market for this sort of event? Gaming - a predominantly solo event (yes we can argue that it is 'social' when gaming online but thats another discussions) does not lend itself well to passive viewing. Isnt this one of the main arguements as to why gamers (myself included) claim that it takes consumer entertainment to a different level? Because unlike television where the viewer sits there; the gamer is immersing him (or her) self in the game world and experience and is the catalyst rather

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Neoncow ( 802085 )
        Tip: Use the <blockquote> tag to quote something (don't forget the </blockquote> closing tag), so those reading your post don't have to skim a repeated chunk of text before getting to your content.

    • I definately don't want to just watch random people play games - G4 already had stuff like that, last time I flipped to them (many years ago). Does anyone actually watch their midnight run of "playing games to techno" filler?

      I wouldn't mind seeing some of the big competition matches occasionally - Fatal1ty, et al. Players who actually have some strategy can be pretty entertaining. Given the amount of high profile competitions that go on these days, they should have no shortage of footage.

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by addie ( 470476 )
      Does anyone see a market for this sort of event?

      Well, I live in South Korea. There is definitely a market for this, but the question is... is there a western market? There are two channels on my basic cable setup that show live gaming competitions exclusively. There's no gaming news, no gaming documentaries, nothing but live gaming action. One of the channels is StarCraft almost 24/7, but the other one varies quite a bit. Counterstrike and FIFA are popular, but I've also seen such strange stuff as 1v1

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by SamSim ( 630795 )

      Gaming does not lend itself well to passive viewing.

      Agreed - but that's because nobody has made a game with this specific aim in mind - yet. All games are designed so that they are enjoyable from the point of view of one player - not from the point of view of an observer. A game like Counter-Strike doesn't lend itself well to spectation because it's impossible to follow more than one person at once, but there might be three dozen people you need to keep track of to make sense of the flow of the game. Foot

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by sgtrock ( 191182 )
        It depends upon both the game engine and how it's filmed. Flying spectator cameras that were either independent of a person or would follow individuals have been around since at least Quake. Anyone else here ever log in on the old Online Gaming League to watch live ladder matches?

        Personally, I'd be happy with some sort of split screen view. Say, a center overview map with smaller cameras following the action around the edges of it. Maybe bounce one of the edge camera views into the middle if a producer
        • They've forgotten that the whole reason sports was filmed from single viewpoints in the past was because of technical limitations.

          What about the expectations of the audience? Do you think the median cable sports viewer would be able to follow a baseball game where all video comes from the players' helmet cams?

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by sgtrock ( 191182 )
            No, but you pick a good example. For baseball, I'd love to see:

            A center view of the whole field. A close up cam of the batter. Another of the pitcher. Isolation shots of baserunners. The usual closeup shots of the crowd. etc.

            Better yet, I'd love to have a means of choosing which view I'd have in the center and which should be around the edges. It's not really feasible to broadcast that much data for a live action video stream, but it should be doable for a computer game broadcast.
    • Look at LAN parties, do you see people sat back watching the action in large numbers? No, instead everyone sees that Dust is on and jumps into the action. Games just arent fun to watch.

      To me it just doesnt seem like entertainment, I dont want to watch other people play games I want to play it myself - thats what games are for.

      I watch people play the games. Especially DDR and fighting games. I find it more interesting than sports, actually. Super Smash Bros is a fun one to watch from outside the gam

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Neoncow ( 802085 )

        The main problem with this is going to be the FPS games as there is no way to see everything at once. They would have to come up with a complete interface for the audience to see the whole field at once for the genre. Otherwise, if the action is taking place in two places, you're going to miss out on something.

        Doesn't CS have a map interface where you can watch the match from a bird's eye point of view? You could hire people who understand the game to comment about the action as it unfolds. Since the game

        • Doesn't CS have a map interface where you can watch the match from a bird's eye point of view?

          Never played it so I can't say. One problem with birds eye views is that if you have multiple levels and can go inside of buildings or (as in several levels in other games I know of) it all takes place inside a cave, a birds eye isn't that useful. About the only thing I can figure out that would be needed would be a 3d radar map that would tell you where everyone is and some birds eyes of where the action is.

          • Re: (Score:1)

            by Neoncow ( 802085 )
            Yeah, I didn't think of the fact that they are 3D. I do believe that the CS maps have 3D controls and it wouldn't surprise me if most other FPS replay applications had 3D interfaces. My assumption would be that the view shown to the audience would be controlled by the commentators or at least directed by their comments. As with sports commentators, video game commentators are probably former gamers themselves, so controlling these interfaces would be second nature for them.
            • Ah, but the commentators would have experience controlling the view from the first person perspective, and more importantly, from the perspective of one teams side. If I'm watching, I'm going to want a "Grand Strategy" (think a generals) overview instead of a single players perspective. Watching a game from over one persons shoulder is a lot different than trying to watch both teams at once. Kind of like in a football game, the difference between a helmet cam and what you see from above the field.

              Actua

              • Re: (Score:1)

                by Neoncow ( 802085 )
                It would be a very small leap for an announcer to control a view of both sides. (With the assumption that the announcer is a former player). Remember that announcers wouldn't be controlling both teams or directing the action at all (we'll leave that to the commander), so they would have much more attention to dedicate to spotting interesting events (battles, non-standard strategies, interesting deployments etc.) and directing the audiences view.

                Using the football example, think of how a football coach mus
      • I know the final match at a BF2 tournament that took place a few weeks ago was recorded and we had close to 150 people watching it go down. I'm not sure what they did for camera set up as I was too busy in the match to look up. I think they had a few screens and just had each spectator following a cap point. I'm relatively sure they got a nice birds eye view of me knifing one of the other dudes. But anyway my point is that there was a lot of crowd reaction, especially since it was such a close match. Also,
    • There is most certainly a market for this.

      For example, I actually detest Street Fighter III, Third Strike but look at:
      The Infamous Daigo Parry [youtube.com]
      KO versus Daigo [youtube.com]

      which I admit were some of the greatest gaming footage I had ever seen. Listen to how the audience goes nuts during the entire thing; it was like watching art unravel before your eyes. The most telling thing was that a lot of the people in the audience knew aboslutely nothing about the game, but were going nuts anyways.

      I also think a game show like Ga
    • Every culture has its own weird customs. About a year ago, I spent six weeks in North Korea where the principal form of recreation was juggling geese. Baby geese. Goslings. They were juggled!
    • Of course there is a market for this. Maybe not 24/7 gaming, but the occasional tournament will definitely be on there. I play Call of Duty 2 online and used to play Warcraft III online and have encountered amazing players. I would definitely enjoy seeing these players match up. Think of baseball. I know a lot of people that say baseball is boring to watch but fun to play. However, there are as many people that love watching baseball. Once there is an understanding of the game, the nuances involved i
    • I disagree. We have a game room at work with twelve computers. We generally play Unreal. If all of the computers are filled, many times I will still stick around and watch the other players play for a little while. I prefer to play, but I enjoy watching other people play. I especially enjoy watching really talented people play. The difficult part I think would be getting good visual shots. The best view for watching the action as a spectator would not be from a player's screen. A third-person view w
    • So I guess nobody watches the NFL, MLB, NHL, etc. Take a look at some speed runs in video games, or even compedative matches at http://www.mlgpro.com/ [mlgpro.com] or http://www.halo-pro.com/cgi/index.php [halo-pro.com]
    • I think it's interesting to watch highlights, or particularly impressive moves/strategies, etc... but I can't see myself sitting down for 1-2 hours and watching it straight.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by grev ( 974855 )
      You have obviously never heard of events like WCG, CPL, ESWC, CSA, WSVG, CEVO, KODE5, Lethal Gamers, Dreamhack, the list goes on. Actually, you probably have never heard of Intel, AMD, ATI, Nvidia, Steelpad, Icemat, Sennheiser, PNY, EVGA, etc. That's a list of a few of the companies that sponsor gaming organizations. Gaming is NOT predominantly a solo even, as the #1 game at these tournaments is usually Counter Strike 1.6. Go take a trip down to Dallas and check out CPL Winter, you won't be bored.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by wolfi ( 94043 )
      To me it just doesnt seem like entertainment, I dont want to watch other people play games I want to play it myself - thats what games are for.


      That is of course the reason why sports broadcasts (soccer, basketball, baseball, football et al) are so unpopular around the world.
    • I always thought it was rediculous to have poker games broadcast on a sports channel, but it seems to be big business for ESPN. I thought it was the lamest thing I ever saw on the network, until they started airing dart tournaments. Jay Leno did a bit around ten years ago on ESSP - the Especially Stupid Sports Network, featuring things like Nordic Trek racing - darts would seem to be just one step above that. If they can do darts and poker, I don't see any reason why they couldn't broadcast a good Counte

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Snaller ( 147050 )
      Games just arent fun to watch.

      That's how i feel about football - there are clearly people who disagree.

      Of course there will be people to watch this, as they pointed out it has caught on in other places of the world. Its a new kind of sports, one that won't get you in good shape.
    • I can't believe poker has as many hours of dedicated broadcasting as it does, but there it is. Frankly, I'm no longer surprised by some of the stupid shit that passes for entertainment nowadays.
  • You might end up getting fragged by an eight year old [wired.com].
  • At Multiplay's i28 over here in the UK, we had the World Cyber Games finals for the UK. The marquee that Samsung had setup was packed solid for the "major" events (like CS: Source, CS 1.6, and watching Wizzo get owned by Fatal1ty -2 to 42). As I recall, the event was broadcast live over the net, too.

    Then again, lots of us were there for the free swag ;)

  • the Cyberathlete Professional League (CPL)

    Despite the fact that I'm a hardcore videogame player I don't like the idea of associating it to a sport. Sports have set rules, and you hone your skills for years in order to become the best.

    Videogames, on the other hand, will see your best stats nerfed, rules changed, new versions coming out, maps modified. It's like a basketball player who focused on his speed to outplay others, and who suddenly is given a pair of shackles because the creators thought that he w

    • Re:Videogame a sport ? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Troed ( 102527 ) on Sunday September 10, 2006 @07:01AM (#16075072) Homepage Journal
      Videogames, on the other hand, will see your best stats nerfed, rules changed, new versions coming out, maps modified

      Formula 1, on the other hand, will see your best stats nerfed, rules changed, new versions coming out, maps modified

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Chaffar ( 670874 )
        Point well-made, however there is a big difference. Formula 1 is a sport where the drivers lose 4kg of water every race; It is a physically painful experience. Do you think supporting lateral G's the way they do is given to anyone? They have to go through months of training just to not have their necks snapped on the first turn they take at 250 km/h.

        But in broader sense, I still think that there is no "stable" skillset that every videogamer must have in order to achieve 1337 skills. And that's why it's har

        • Obviously that's why you never see players transferring from one game to the other as time progresses. /me has a look at the last decade of FPS gaming.

          Oh wait, you do.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by Chaffar ( 670874 )
            Not because they become better players, but becomes the old game becomes obsolete. Not the same.
            • Your analogy is not entirely unlike a young player jumping from Halo(2) to a more complex PC FPS, I'd say. Although instead of a car company of some sort sponsoring their equipment it is generally their parents.

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by DohnJoe ( 900898 )
          an even bigger difference is that videogames are accessible to mostly everybody (if you have some money), young and old, fat and thin, etc.... while F1 is just for a happy few.
          Of course only a few will be good enough to be able to compete on a national championship but at least everybody can experience it and therefore relate more to it.
          If I watch F1 I can't really tell how difficult it is to do, I never tried anything remotely similar, but if I see someone ruling a deathmatch I'll know how good he is...

        • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

          by Anonymous Coward
          For 9 years I've been part of these gaming tournaments and can assure you that there are specific skills that must be developed to rate as a top professional gamer. Things like hand-eye coordination, reaction time, pixel acurate aim, focused concentration and precise strategy execution, all come to play and can determine the difference between a win or a lose at these high-stake tournaments.

          Competing at the CPL is not the same as playing videogames at your home, as playing pro baseball is not quite the sam
        • In Formula 1, you (usually) start by karting

          Do they have motherfcuking snakers [neogaf.com] too?

      • Formula 1 is based on real life physics which are constant, not arbitrary physics which can be changed with a single slider.
    • Video games are not a sport. Infact I feel modaratly insulted that they are called such. They are better than sport. Video games need brains, sport needs brawn. Video games have storylines, art, soundtrack and skillful design, sport does not. Video games evolve, sport remains as stale as ever.
      • I can't tell if were being facetious, but if you weren't i suggest you go out and give sport a try. ANY sport.

        You'd be surprised.
        • I was forced to play sport in high school. I hated every second of it.
          • I was forced to eat vegetables when i was a kid. I also hated every second of it. Doesn't mean i couldn't grow to like them, or that they where inherently bad,

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by tepples ( 727027 )

        Video games need brains, sport needs brawn.

        You underestimate the amount of thinking that goes into playing ball at the professional level. And are you calling top-rank chess not a sport?

        Video games have storylines, art, soundtrack and skillful design, sport does not.

        O rly [wwe.com]? Even if you don't accept professional rasslin as a sport, there are plenty of art and soundtrack in televised ball, and there's still plenty of drama in (say) steroid scandals.

        • Are you calling chess a sport?
        • Chess is not a sport, it is a video game predecessor. Cheating and hacking is the equivlent of sports steriod scandles. Saying that putting soundtracks and art on top of sport gives it those qualitys is like saying playing a piano next to a silent movie means it isn't silent.
    • So snooker and darts dont take years to master? Please, a video game veteran will easily beat a person who has been playing it a couple of weeks and has learned a trick or two.

      Sports I can guarantee have no such thing as "set rules". Sports constantly evolve, like your gimp night elf druid. Lets take an example, in rugby union (and rugby league) there are things called scrums. This involves the six largest players on each team push each other (in dual triangle formation) while the ball is fed into the m

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Snaller ( 147050 )
      This seems like mostly a pointless argument about semantics.

      People have to train to get good at these games, hence there is a different between who wins and who looses. The games have rules - and sometimes they must be changed for one reason or another - just like many sports games have had their rules changed. The fact that its not particularly physically taxing is not relveant. Sure Merriam-Webster describes it among other things as "a particular activity (as an athletic game) so engaged in" but also "a
  • I think Dead or Alive and Project Gotham will be the biggest two games there, since there is such a large propensity for style. Halo and CS will get boring to watch as the same thing is happening game-in game-out, but Project Gotham can have drift tourneys or drags or anything associated with cars today and DOA can have anything from massive brawls down to one-on-one fights or even 3-on-1 fights (does DOA let you?).

  • Could be done right (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    You have to keep the big picture in mind here. This doesn't have to be live gaming.

    BF2 already has a battlerecorder built in (not that any servers use it).

    If you unleashed a small army of talented post production people with the skills to place cameras in an already played event, it could become entirely watchable.

    You could event capture player face expressions with webcams during play and map them to the players avatars in post.

    This could be rendered far better than any gaming rig could handle.

    I think it w
  • You mean that thing I use for the PlayStation?

    What gods-honest self-respecting geek has cable? That would be a distraction from gaming and programming!

    I actually have cable service, now that I think of it -- but only for my ISP.
    • So how do you watch Battleship Galactica and Stargate?

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Crisses ( 776475 )
        > So how do you watch Battleship Galactica and Stargate?

        I downloaded the pilot of Firefly from iTunes and we have all the Star Trek originals on DVD. Computers and playstations play DVDs :)

        Never having watched Stargate or Battlestar Galatica, I don't miss them ;)

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by KDR_11k ( 778916 )
        With Bittorrent?
    • That's one of the problems I have with this. It's aimed at "jocks" not geeks.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Crisses ( 776475 )
        While I know some geeks that go to LAN parties, I don't know any diehard geeks who go to tournaments. Geeks don't show off, and they get paid just fine to code or support systems -- wasting hundreds of hours in tournaments for the golden carrot isn't a geek's style.

        I respectfully agree about "jocks" -- or maybe they're donkeys lured by the carrots. Some are social parasites, wanting to climb on the backs of the downtrodden to get their moment of fame. You see that type in the business world all the time
  • ...proves that people here would much rather play games than watch other guys do it!

    There is a reason that a "gaming channel" now shows nothing but startrek and the man show.

  • Is this the first step to escalating videogames to the status of the X-Games and poker?

    No. I cannot think of anything more boring than watching someone else play a video game. There is nothing dangerous happening. There is nothing all that interesting happening. It's akin to watching someone else watching a movie.

    Seriously, statements like the one quoted above just demonstrate the author's misguided desire that someday other people will share their love of video games... and maybe, just maybe their othe
    • I would have tended to agree with you, and then I happened to see the final of a battlefield 2(xbox, ps2) tournement. The prize money was split $200,000 / $50,000, so there was a lot of cash on the table. Saying that having "nothing on the line" is not true. Sure, filming a bunch of guys playing poker in their kitchen isn't really interesting, but filming the best poker players in the world playing for $2 million (so you know they're giving it their all out best) is exciting and can produce moments of te
  • Thanks for the timely story! I just tuned into channel 101 to see if I could catch some action on it. Want to know what I saw? CDUSA! And from the looks of things, it will be on channel 101 for the entire day! I'd like to thank you for the timely submission of this story, as when I follow the link, it tells me it was also shown on Friday and Saturday. Although, since it was 8:30am when I checked the channel and it wasn't on, it's possible that it wasn't on Friday and Saturday to begin with.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Aaron32 ( 891463 )
      I'm glad you wrote this. I too turned on my DirecTV and saw the stupid CD USA show. It looks like a bunch of teenie boppers playing bad music.

      Anyways, I went back (as my wonderful Tivo does) to the previous days and I saw that it was on Saturday, but not Friday. CD USA was on Friday.

      And yes, I appreciate a story telling me to watch something a day before the story came out as well.

  • Airing information (Score:3, Informative)

    by Caduceus1 ( 178942 ) on Sunday September 10, 2006 @10:48AM (#16075595) Homepage
    Since there are so many questions:

    - This is only on DirecTV. Don't have DirecTV? You ain't gonna see it.

    - It airs on Channel 101 (normally CDUSA) in the late evening.

    - Tonight (9/10), you can catch all three episodes, plus some animated shorts in between, starting at 6PM ET. Check your EPG to be sure - the west coast may have second feed that would air it later.

    • This is only on DirecTV. Don't have DirecTV? You ain't gonna see it.

      Of course, similar content has been available in high definition 24x7x365 on GamePlay HD [gameplayhd.com] via Voom and Dishnetwork for over a year, so while the story makes this sound like some DirecTV breakthrough, it's actually them just starting to play a little catchup with Dishnetwork.

      The game tournaments are fun to watch if you like the strategy elements. It helps a LOT if you've played the particular game that they're playing in the tournament, becau

  • I've watched a few tournaments that've aired on GamePlay HD [gameplayhd.com]. It's one of the VOOM networks that are on Dish Network [dishnetwork.com]. I have to say, if you want to watch the gaming, you have to do it in HD. Regular SD television can never show the full resolution inside the game, and so have to rely on boring interviews and hype.
  • Everything is on TV now.

    While a very few channels (mostly the networks) try to increase return on investment by spending more hoping to attract more viewers, the majority of channels try to increase return on investment by spending less hoping to get the same number of viewers.

    Given that by far most content on TV is not original, but licensed from someone else (typically a repeat), the key is to OWN YOUR OWN CONTENT. This is why ESPN created the X-games, because they own all the rights to the event and can
    • I don't know. Australia is only taking its first steps into gaming television, and the most recent attempt, called Cybershack, was absolutely dreadful. Apparently, it has alienated enough of the hardcore games it was meant to attract that it is trying to rebrand itself as a "popular tech" show.
  • I'd love to see some of the best Unreal 2k players in the world duke it out. As for other people that aren't into it, so what! You aren't into it - yippy.
  • Yay! now you can all see me playing Dance Dance Revolution on TV!!! I'll be representing Wisconsin and you all better recognize, biches! :-P hehehe. Then again, I haven't played in a while and yesterday I started coughing up a bit of blood after playing Dead End on maniac :( Those millions of trained expert kids from Connecticut or whatever got nothin on me!
  • I'm continuously hoping that G4 brings back the Starcade [starcade.tv] series again.

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