Cybersports

Hobbes

http://www.avault.com/articles/getarticle.asp?name=sport

Intresting read.

Jak

I'm a tad cynical toward this whole concept of cyber'sport' and cyber'athletes'.

Quake, Unreal .. whatever ... they are fun, but they are just below Darts in my estimation on the sporting ladder.

Most people outside of gaming communities will take an even more derogatory view than my own.

havok*

sport (spôrt, sprt)
n.

1. An activity involving physical exertion and skill that is governed by a set of rules or customs and often undertaken competitively.
2. An active pastime; recreation.

granted theres not much Physical exrtion but there is alot of skill, eye hand co-ordanation involved, Quake for example is played competivaly. And for a lot of ppl is an active pasttime.

Look @ snooker. thats concidered a sport. Requires Aim, hand-eye co-ordination, tactics, timing..

hmm remind u of anythng?

i'd say in mabye 5 years Cyber soprts will be on TV and the like, and will be accepted buy most by then.

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Clan Acid
Clan Bio

Dr_Teeth

Yes, and then will come the Quake groupies. Oh yes.

Teeth.

Shinji

At the moment there are lots of things holding back gaming from being properly professional, not least of which is the fact that many "pro" gamers are amazingly unprofessional. When you put the majority of top gamers in front of a camera or a microphone for an interview, they have nothing to say for themselves; and those that DO open their mouths seem to do it only in order to take one foot out and put the other in. Witness Hakeem recently at a pro event, saying that he didn't want to be there, hated the game and was only there because his sponsors told him to; the latest in a long line of "pro" players managing to p1ss off their sponsors massively with stupid, egotistical comments.

A big part of any sport is having interesting participants. Pro gaming doesn't have this, and far too many of the players conform to the "sad nerd" stereotype that we all hate so much. Perhaps some work by media agencies or whatever can fix this; but right now, it's a really big problem, and in the UK alone it has put off most of the big TV stations (all of whom at one point or another had plans for gaming-focused shows) and caused a number of high-profile sponsors to drop out of gaming.

Ja,
Rob

havok*

Good point shinji.

If a Proper governing body was apponted, not to run leauges but to look over them. Its not only some of the players that are unprofessional but the leauges themselfs are. Take for example the CPL in Claone.
They first tryed to cover up obvious cheeting in the Blue Vs Excalibur game, that should never have happened. And was only sorted (a week after the tourney) because CPL got so much stick for it.
Also the incident of racism the happend to Twilight is a discrace, getting kicked out of a leauge because of ur ethnic origin dos'nd happen in any other sport.

If an orginzation was set up that was above the leauge admins, Professional Cyber gaming might start to get treated as a sport.

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Clan Acid
Clan Bio

Shinji

The CPL is all there is, but they're a bunch of w4nkers at the best of times. Angel Munoz... argh, the ego that walks, and he has all the professionalism of a gnat.

Dustaz

Surely the biggest obstacle is how it is presented on TV. With a team game like CS or Q3 surely the action is so spread out and simultanious (sp) that it would not be practical or cost effective to cover properly? In all large televised sports, the action is concentrated around (usually) the ball and so is focused, not so with online games.
I dont play q3, but i heard something about quakeTV , some way you can watch live games happening? maybe this would prove me wrong.
My personal favorite, Tribes, has quite a following in the US with Shoutcasting and even live streaming , but its up to the commentator to pick out who he observes. With so many things happening at the same time , its easy to miss a lot.
From an even broader perspective, i cant see many ppl outside the gaming community enjoying a night in watching CS on the box.